It bugs me when I remember writing my Sakura fanfic was that the only reason it was popular was because... Sakura Haruno was badly written. Both her motivations and development were stunted.
Regardless of the depth Masashi Kishimoto had given her over time, he sucks at writing females.
Name one female ninja in Naruto who isn't just thrown into support as a Healer. Even if they aren't healing, their fights never impact the story as meaningfully as even comic reliefs like Might Guy.
Sure, Sakura had her fight with Sasori, but we never see her character develop beyond that.
It's like all we get is glimpses of potential...
In all seriousness, I'm amazed that next to Sasuke's dark past and Naruto's ambition, Sakura wasn't even developed despite clear potential being right there. Anyone with decent skills as a writer in writing female characters could make her great.
I'm not sure why Kishimoto put a girl who only thought in really generic Shoujo logic between the two, but it was still acceptable. Having her grow as a person after dealing with them would've worked.
Instead, what we get is her attaching herself to the resident 'bad boy' like glue with no development.
She's portrayed as so in her own 'girly' world that she can't even see past regular biases of others.
Why was she even a main character?
We have the components of an underdog in her lack of a great Shinobi background, initially starting off relatively normal, and being in contact with the main characters. She had a lot of opportunities.
Still, Kishimoto wrote her like a mindless damsel.
Every time the going got tough (like with the Pain Arc), she either lost badly, called for help, or both.
It's embarrassing just looking at this character.
It isn't 'writing talent' that I could make such a character seem interesting. The natural result of her interacting with Sasuke and Naruto should have given countless opportunities for her already.
The main thing is that Kishimoto decided the best thing to do was keep her as the team's 'support'.
Almost as if girls can't be anything but that.
Why is it most of the female cast are eventually relegated to that? They just don't stand out.
One Piece and Bleach have female characters that create ripples in their respective stories. You can at least say that one female character in those stories impact the narrative in a way that's memorable.
Comparatively, Naruto only has female characters that exist as love interests first before being themselves. Hinata started out as Naruto's love interest, Sakura also started as Naruto's love interest, even Ino was just Sakura's 'rival in love'.
It's so cliche and stereotypical that only young boys who haven't read anything better could call them developed characters. Regular readers only see that they don't exactly exist 'independently'.
Whatever the case may be. It's not that I'm great at writing females, it's Kishimoto bad writing them.
The the main point of this blog...