Naruto vs Sakura as ninjas Pt. 2
This is part 2 of my analysis of Kishimoto's juxtaposition of Naruto and Sakura's skills and abilities as ninjas. I already discussed how Kishimoto juxtaposed their skills as genin in Part 1 [LINK] so for this second part I will be focusing on their skills from the beginning of Shippuden until Naruto's development of the rasenshurikan. I will continue then with the Pain fight and the War arc which will be the third and maybe final part of this analysis (unless I decide to also do one of them as adult ninjas)
So, without further ado, let's get started.
In Part 2, Kakashi himself states Naruto is more of direct learner than someone who understands theory (Naruto struggles to follow verbal explanations of a jutsu), once again reitarating the type of unusual ninja and learner Naruto is compared to others.
Right off the beginning of Part 2 of the series, we encounter teenage Sakura and Naruto as the latter returns from his training with Jiraiya. During these three years Sakura had been training with Tsunade to sharpen her own skills. Once they reunite Kakashi tells them they're once again Team 7 and he will test them again. The examination is the same one they did as genins, they must retrieve the bells from Kakashi and they have the whole day to achieve it. However, this time Kakashi says he will put more effort fighting or rather avoiding his students as he acknowledges his students have grown and matured as ninjas.
Naruto does a more polished version of what would be his strategy as a ninja; use the kage bunshin no jutsu to deceive his enemy. He first throws some shurikens to distract Kakashi and then creates a clone, when Kakashi throws shurikens back at him Naruto pretends he's going to use one of the clones as a giant shuriken but when Kakashi restrains him it is revealed that the actual Naruto had studied Kakashi's old strategy he had used on him on the first test to get behind him. Kakashi congratulates him for this but he was also using a clone himself.
As for Sakura, her strategy is much more simple. She can't see Kakashi anywhere, so she concludes Kakashi must be hiding underground and punches it with great raw power and she turns out to be correct. This time, Sakura seems to be more aware of her surroundings compared to her genin self during the chuunin exams where she kind of ignored it when it came to planting traps. Kakashi is also impressed by her chakra control and he even mentions she's adept at genjutsu. But other than that, we don't see Sakura do anything more than punching the ground.
But who comes up with the strategy to finally get the bells from Kakashi is Naruto, who comes up with an unorthodox method of retrieval. Sakura even points out he's the No. 1 Maverick ninja, emphasizing how non-traditional of a ninja Naruto is just like Jiraiya had done back in Part 1.
Naruto, remembers Kakashi is a big fan of the Icha Icha saga and had just gotten the new installment of the series, so he presumes Kakashi wouldn't like to hear spoilers of said book, his suppositions turns out to be correct and both Sakura and Naruto manage to get each a bell from a distracted Kakashi.
Moving on, during Team Kakashi's mission to save Gaara, Sakura demonstrates her skills as a medic-nin and the fruits of her training with Tsunade being able to neutralize Sasori's poison no one else except Tsunade would have been able to do. Sakura also creates an antidote against such poison and takes some dosages with her just in case, this being the first time we see Sakura in the manga being cautious and forehanded about upcoming battles.
Then we move to what it's Sakura's peak as a ninja: her and Chiyo vs Sasori. During this mission Deidara and Sasori killed Gaara and extracted the bijuu from him, Sakura and Chiyo fight Sasori while Naruto and Kakashi chase Deidara. Let's discuss Sakura's battle performance first.
The strategy goes like this, Chiyo knows better than anyone Sasori's fight style and she's also aware of Sakura's impressive brutal strenght, so she comes up with a plan to help and guide Sakura during the fight and destroy Sasori's puppets and defeat him. As the caption at the end of chapter 265 says Demolished! With Chiyo's plan and Sakura's might, a single attack crushes the puppet!! So as we had discussed in Part 1 of this analysis series, Sakura is at her best as a ninja when she's being guided by a more experienced ninja, whether it be Kakashi, Chiyo or Tsunade since she isn't the best strategist out there.
The fight is mostly treated as a duel between puppeteers with Chiyo controlling Sakura and puppets and Sasori controlling his own puppets. However, there is a moment in which Sakura gets trapped in a cloud of poison by Sasori, because she's also been trapped by Sasori she can't move but then she thinks of both of her teammates that give her the strenght or rather the wit to come up with a plan to escape the poison cloud: blow herself out of it with a paper bomb. This moment is reminiscent of Sasuke restraining his curse mark by also thinking of his teammates or Naruto thinking of both Sakura and Sasuke and we can see them in his iris when Kakashi is about to train him exhaustedly. Sakura cares about team 7 just like Naruto does and Sasuke did. It's also a massive improvement from her previous plans she would enact during the chuunin exam at the forest of the death where she would always fail.
When Chiyo feels defeated by Sasori after he destroyed two of her puppets and destroyed one of her own arms, Sakura asks her to use her as a puppet as a replacement, citing that although she didn't have special weapons she did have her physical strenght. Chiyo agrees and Sakura manages to counter one of Sasori's attacks and is able to start deciphering his pattern of attack. We're seeing here the fruits of Tsunade's strenuous training with Sakura, as she has flashbacks of what her mentor taught her for when she's out in real-life battles, something she did not have in Part 1 and made her fail in battle whether because she was predictable in her attacks and couldn't read her enemy or because she would simply be paralyzed in fear.
For the final act of the fight, Sasori poisons Sakura but she reveals she had brought with her two out of the three doses of antidote she had created (the other one she'd used on Kankuro) so she uses one on herself. Then Sasori manages to also poison Chiyo and then Sakura allows herself to be stabbed by Sasori's poisoned sword, meaning only one of them can use the dose of antidote left. Sakura asks Chiyo to use it on herself but the old lady administers it to Sakura instead, using that moment of distraction to stab Sasori defeating and killing him once and for all.
Although Chiyo would later state that Sasori "actually knew" about her final attack all along and he had just let them win for some reason. I'm gonna be very honest here, I don't like this writing decision from Kishimoto at all. I don't know if he wrote it because he can't let Sakura have anything or if after the talk Chiyo, Sakura and Sasori have about shinobis having feelings unlike the puppets they control he wanted to make it seem like Sasori wanted to die so he could be with his parents because deep down he still had feelings like a normal human being and he was just denying them (in that scene both Chiyo and Sakura are looking at Sasori's dead body laying next to his parents), but I don't like it either way, I think it's cheap writing specially after we saw Chiyo and Sakura giving it their all in this fight and genuinely outsmarting Sasori.
But anyway, moving on to Kakashi and Naruto's chase after Deidara. It's here where Kishimoto introduces or rather starts to delve deeper into Naruto's status as a jinchuuriki and how he struggles to fully control the Kyuubi's chakra. Here's where he also introduces Kakashi's mangekyo sharingan.
Kakashi explains to Naruto that Deidara is a long-distance fighter so Naruto who is used to short-distance battles is at a disadvantage against him and will need Kakashi's support to strike him.
Rather than an actual fight against Deidara, the goal here is to retrieve Gaara's dead body which both Kakashi and Naruto achieve. Naruto uses once again the kage bunshin jutsu and rasengan to get to Gaara's body but once he sees it he gets irate towards Deidara unleashes two kyuubi tails but Kakashi neutralizes him quickly, making him go unconscious. Thus, Kishimoto establishes Naruto's conflict for the upcoming arc: Naruto learning to control the kyuubi's chakra.
It's clear that during this arc, the main fight or act is Chiyo and Sakura's fight against Sasori which took several chapters of it.
We move onto Yamato's team/Team 7 reunion arc where Sai joins team 7 and Yamato is the temporal captain of Team Kakashi.
They're in a mission to find Orochimaru's hideout and Sasuke but first Yamato puts them all in a test to force them into a cohesive fighting unit, since Naruto and Sakura don't like Sai.
During this activity they're supposed to catch Yamato but due to Naruto mistaking a doppelganger for the real Yamato, Sai decides to leave Naruto behind letting him be trapped so he can catch the real Yamato. Neither of them want to work as a team. Sai tells Naruto he finds him to be impulsive and falls for obvious baits leaving him no option but to act by himself.
Right after this, we get Team Yamato ready to ambush Kabuto (they don't know it's Kabuto yet, but instead one of Orochimaru's lackeys).
Once Kabuto reveals his true identity to the shock of everyone, we see Sai, Naruto and Sakura ponder of what they should do to capture Kabuto. Naruto is the most impulsive wanting to throw the mission over the window whereas Sai and Sakura suggest they wait to see what Yamato, the most experienced of them all, plans to do so no one puts the mission at risk.
Eventually Kabuto reveals his true identity and Orochimaru appears, they both tell Yamato they know who he is and that he brought his three juniors with him. So, back to Naruto and Sakura, Naruto loses control of the Kyuubi after Orochimaru teases him over Sasuke.
So the mission forgotten, the goal is now to bring Naruto under control. Kabuto tries to attack Naruto from behind but Naruto lashes out against him wounding him AND Sakura who hits her head and falls unconscious, due to this Sakura becomes a burden for her team, for now Yamato has to worry about saving her on top of focusing on Naruto who's going berserk as well as not noticing Sai is betraying them.
It's worth noting that both Kabuto and Sakura who have been positioned as medic-nin prodigies were both attacked and Kishimoto parallels the hit they received but Kabuto does not become unconscious unlike Sakura. Additionally, Yamato expresses shock Sakura fell unconscious claiming "she couldn't have fainted, could she?" so we could say Kishimoto is trying to point out how Sakura "failed" as a ninja here by not resisting the kyuubi's hit better.
It must be said however, that Sakura was never warned or informed about how to deal with a Naruto that loses control of the kyuubi for it was strictly confidential information only Yamato was privy to (although we can assume Sai had some notion thanks to Danzo and Kabuto and Orochimaru are well, spies and criminals and everything lol) so her being the one wounded the worst makes sense in that regard.
Seeing Naruto transformed into a beast Sakura starts to cry out of guilt, at this point of the story she still believes Naruto is putting himself through all of this because of the promise he made to her to bring Sasuke back, so she charges mindlessly (something she will do more often from this point onwards in the story) towards Naruto, what did she intend to do? who knows, but naturally she gets wounded again.
So for this arc Sakura doesn't shine for her ninja skills like she did in the previous arc (and she quite frankly won't again outside of her medic-nin skills) she's used as some sort of emotional anchorage here, as if she's the character that Kishimoto's using to show the readers how much Naruto is risking for Sasuke here.
However, I will point out that unlike in Part 1 where Sakura had zero interest in asking anyone to train her until Sasuke left the village, here Sakura asks Yamato to personally train her so that she knows what to do if/when Naruto loses control of the kyuubi again, which I think it's progress from her as a ninja (Yamato still didn't train her bc his jutsus require a special kekkei genkai only he and Hashirama have)
Moving on to Team 7's reunion with Sasuke, this is mostly a scene to introduce a grown Sasuke and show us his skills which at this moment are superior to both Naruto and Sakura's. Nevertheless, I'd still like to point out we get to see a glimpse of Sai and Naruto working together as a team even if Sasuke is able to take them both and defeat them. This happens after Naruto and Sai discuss their differences and Naruto explains why Sasuke matters so much to him which causes a big impact on Sai, so Kishimoto like any seasoned shonen writer ties the emotional beats of his story to the fights, in this case specifically, Naruto and Sai getting cloeer makes them a better duo than before.
As for Sakura, I noticed that all of Part 2 until now in the manga, Kishimoto has this pattern of "Sakura thinks of genin team 7 in one panel then next panel she does something against the enemy". In her fight with Chiyo against Sasori she thinks of genin Sasuke and Naruto (wounded after his fight with the aforementioned) before taking herself out of the poisoned cloud; when she saw the 4-tailed Kyuubi she thought again of wounded Naruto who made the promise to her; and right here that she's seen Sasuke defeat Naruto and Sai she thinks of the promise she made to Naruto after he came back "next time I'll come with you". Those three flashbacks are all about the promise to bring Sasuke back so it is Sakura the character who is entirely motivated by it, which I find interesting because the discourse in the fandom is that Naruto did all that for Sasuke because of the promise he made to Sakura however, the character that's motivated by that promise and has her actions shaped by it is Sakura, not Naruto. All flashbacks related to that promise come from Sakura's mind, not Naruto's.
But back to the ninja skills which is what pertains this post, Sakura is as easily defeated by Sasuke just like Naruto. Neither of them are match for Sasuke's speed but when it comes to Sakura we don't see how her teamwork skills have progressed so far for she acts alone and Yamato jumps in to save her.
I'm also noticing that Kishimoto uses Yamato to point out Sakura's flaws as a ninja. First, when Sakura fainted after Naruto hit her and now here ("watch out, Sakura") Yamato makes comments as if Kishimoto wants to let the reader know Sakura is or isn't supposed to react certain ways towards an enemy attack.
To end with this very long post, I will lastly focus on Naruto training to develop the rasenshuriken. In volume 35 Kishimoto creates this parallel between Naruto and Sakura where Naruto trains until exhaustion and beyond while Sakura doesn't train or do anything that will bring her closer to her goal of bringing back Sasuke and instead cries.
Sakura basically disappears from volume 36 and we wouldn't see her again until in volume 37 where it's pointed out she's "sharp" because she comes up with a plan to hunt down Hidan and Kakuzu after Asuma's death. This is one of the few instances we see Sakura come up with a strategy that's actually carried out before going out on a mission.
In conclusion, the beginning of Part 2 show us a Naruto and Sakura that aren't genin anymore but aren't seasoned veterans yet. Sakura shows growth from her genin self, being more proactive than before and she finally comes up with plans and strategies every now and then, I wouldn't say she's the weakest of Team 7 at this point of the story, considering her and Naruto to be on the same level skillwise until Naruto develops the rasenshurinken and learns how to properly use it. But Kishimoto still refrains from developing Sakura's ninja skills "too much" as if he doesn't actually want her to get all that good.
As for Naruto, this segment of the story is dedicated to showing us how difficult it is to manage the power of the kyuubi and the challenges Naruto faces with a tailed-beast inside him. He's easily affected by his emotions (so is Sakura but since she isn't a jinchuuriki she doesn't lash out like Naruto) so this sort of stunts his growth as a ninja compared to Sakura and Sasuke. Right after he learns the Rasenshuriken this changes as he will learn how to be in balance with the beast inside him.
I will continue this saga covering Naruto's training with the frogs, his fight against Pain and eventually the War Arc
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