I've also often heard the misogyny argument used to explain why Sakura is so badly written. Memory's not specific on this, but probs also to explain why Tenten is underused.
I disagree. I'll take that tangent and explore it for a while. It's kind of a long-ass stream-of-consciousness approach, so pls bear with me.
For Tenten, let's approach the glaring issue: she can't seem to do much with her weapons. Well, 1. not accurate—watch her fight herself early in Shippuuden (the Akatsuki Tailed Beast Sealing cave, the trap spell on the barrier tags). And 2. of course she struggles—she wants to be awesome like Tsunade but doesn't know how to approach it. She is excellent with weapons, but what jackass thought she'd be fine training with every ninja weapon ever designed? She can't use her weapons effectively because she hasn't mastered any particular one to the point her talents would allow.
What she ends up doing is using them as projectiles first and foremost; what she's mastered is the scroll technique for releasing them.
If you ask me, she ought to be using on one arm some sort of gauntlet that uses an auto-feed multi-scroll system to launch various kunai/shuriken (basic, paper-bomb-wrapped, wire-tether, chakra-tether-guided, lightning-release taser, netting, etc; also excellent reason to learn Flying Raijin) and on the other arm a guantlet that uses the same system to place in her hand any of a variety of less-expendable (but she still packs several) melee weapons—manriki chain, nunchaku, bo that can change to triple staff (sansetsukon), naginata, and ffs a goshdarn ninjatou.
Why the actual F doesn't she have a sword in her primary loadout?!
Fuckin' srsly tho, why isn't she the Seven-Swords Woman of the Leaf? She could carry a sword for every occasion on her person in the space it takes to carry a small tantou, such as the kaisen EDC'ed by samurai women.
Tenten is depicted as culturally more Chinese than everyone else in the 11 bar Lee, and would've done well to come up with a paper-bomb-and-closed-pipe blunderbuss. With the right barrel shape, a paper-bomb-wrapped kunai turns into something closely approaching a mortar; more so with a payload inside the blade. Back to the fancy Iron Man multipurpose gauntlet weapons system: we see plenty of clever contraptions used by shinobi (e.g. Shizune's senbon launcher on her arm), and such things could easily be built. The paper-bomb sword of the Hidden Mist is a start for proof of this concept. Neji could have trained her to release small bursts of chakra from the major chakra points in her arm to activate the seals in the various weapon scrolls mounted in the gauntlet. The gauntlets would probs be kinda heavy for anyone EXCEPT a teammate of someone as training-insane as Lee. They'd also be a good bludgeon in a tight spot.
Who was poorly written? Now that I analyze this, I'd have to say Might Guy as a genin team mentor—by and large, he actually trains Lee in his specialist martial arts style and mostly just gives advice and pep-talks to Neji and Tenten. The former of those two is a genius and trained in clan-specific techniques by others; the latter is...well, she's just another kunoichi in a ninja's world. She should have been trained properly in weapons use (she seems self-taught post-Academy) by a variety of specialists. Instead, the village treated her weapons expertise as a showy gimmick and handed her training to a sensei ill-equipped to train anyone but the kid he sees so much of himself in, because that kid specifically wishes to specialize in taijutsu. Guy is a good team leader but not a well-rounded sensei, despite being the Tony Robbins of Konoha. Tenten should have had kenjutsu lessons with Hayate Gekko, for starters. She also could have been an excellent shinobi for Kishi to write as an archer, given that Sasuke seemed to never touch a bow post-UCM until his Susano'o manifested one.
Honestly, instead of throwing her a wartime bone by handing her mythic weapons that she didn't have the Outsutsuki-ness to use effectively use, I say she should've been caught up in some fumbling of Madara's right Rinnegan and immediately intuited how to use the Asura Path. Go-Go-Rinnegadget-Tenten...pack your bags, fellas, war's over. One-Rinnegan Asura-Path Tenten and 8 Gates Guy would've done a proper number on Maddy instead of just making him anxious and cracking a rib, and having her shower him with mini-missiles and blast him with an arm cannon Megaman-style would've been an excellent way to bring full-circle Guy's point about embracing her specialty as a ranged fighter instead of aspiring to brawlerhood. Madara, that dumbass fish, he had it too easy getting his eyes back—especially for how excellent a martial artist he was shown to be in the desert battle. The man is beautiful when he kicks ass....
Also, did the village forget that Tenten has a low chakra expenditure rate in combat, since she uses it primarily to trigger scroll seals to release? No wonder she could wave Hagoromo's fan around for more than two seconds in the middle of the 4GNW without either Tailed Beast chakra or that good, good Outsutsuki Vitality.
Tenten isn't underutilized by Kishi as a character so much as she's under-and mis-utilized by the Hidden Leaf, which needed to be shown to have its ducks well out of a row for Sasuke's well-founded grievances to make sense to anyone not a geopolitics and/or human rights womp. Like most of the Shinobi World, personnel aren't expected to be much more than sacrificial operators and ablative human shielding for the feudal nobility's interests. This problem of values is precisely why the Shinobi world didn't develop significant infrastructure until Naruto pursued peace with a fervor not seen since Hagoromo was a hobbyist bridge-builder. Hidden Villages are IMFs, and disavowal is the norm. Choose to accept your mission and your life will be much easier. Refuse to accept it, like Itachi, Sasuke, and Naruto, and things get fucked up to varying degrees.
Why does it make sense that Tenten was underdeveloped by the Leaf, and not by Kishi?
Look at how the Shinobi World utilizes Jinchuuriki. Seal a Bijuu into a person and leave them to stew in prejudice and they become a fail-hazardous nuke with a detonator as easily armed as a grenade's. Only one Hidden Village, the Cloud, developed their Jinchuuriki as specialists, but even then, not much more than to improve Bijuu-Jinchuuriki compatibility results. Naruto was the first, possibly since S6P himself, to develop an Outsutsuki-style Chakra Mode. The unwillingness to develop Shinobi as specialist operators by default reflects the cynicism in their world.
I guess I also need to admit I'm fond of Tenten...she's just a real brick and under-appreciated for it, dattebane. She's probably one of the most level-headed shinobi of her generation and possibly her era, and I guess I also kinda have a thing for women with a double-bun hairstyle who could obliterate me in the octagon. Or triple buns and Space Chidori, but that's yet another fandom.
Sakura is not poorly written, either.
We just aren't paying enough attention to how she is written because, well, she's just a kunoichi in a shounen ninja manga.
She's a letdown on the battlefield, a damn fool for chasing Sasuke to the point of a severely dysfunctional marriage—apropos of that, she's a well-masked yandere—and it's her own fault she's useless.
She has a severe self-esteem problem. That's it.
She's a civvy kunoichi with the potential to surpass several times over both the Senju scion Tsunade and quasi-oni Orochimaru as a medic and a scientist, respectively. The chakra-storage process is so intuitive for her that she ends up using it more effectively as a teenager than Tsunade does as a middle-aged woman (Chuunin exams 2 desert boogaloo, she joins Ino & Chouji); she could probably go toe-to-toe with Naruto's Frog Kumite with her base strength-enhancement techniques, and with the Strength of One Hundred seal released (and not summoning Big Katsuyu) she could probably take on the likes of Isshiki in taijutsu—I won't say Baryon Naruto here because Baryon Mode causes chakra-fusion radiation poisoning. Instead of being a martially flamboyant shounen brawler hero, she's Konoha's Susano'o. Full tilt, she'd repel any of the –shiki's—that is, IFF (look up "iff" if you aren't familiar with it) she's feeling confident. She seems to only use her Kryptonian strength fluidly when she's fired up and feeling badass (see hers and Chiyo's duel with Sasori).
And she's brilliant, to boot. She's probably somewhere between Sasuke (Academy valedictorian in their year) and Shikamaru (savant strategist) in intellect, and her confidence problem ties a mental hand behind her back like Kakashi up a cliff. Watch her feeling driven and see her develop an effective antidote to a complex poison cocktail in a day with only medic's field equipment, when the professional toxicology lab (read: puppet master Lady Chiyo and assistants) in the Sand couldn't crack it in years.
She's had the confidence problem since her very early Academy days; her parents seem the type to forget to balance their nagging with commensurate and earnest praise (they also publicly insult her personal management skills in Road to Ninja) and she was the Academy's resident pincushion for the class bullies' sharpest bitchy insults until Ino took her under her wing. Their childhood dynamic kinda reminds me of Hazumu and Tomari in Kashimashi GMG, come to think of it. For a while, Sakura is enlivened, albeit stuck to Ino like burrs to hiking socks. Then, once the UCM happens and Sasuke turns from adorable ambitious soft boy with flowers on his bag to the withdrawn, ruminating, quietly irritable, moody n' broody boy who happens to be top of the class (the girls see: Cool Kid™ with ice-cold skillz), the thing to do for status as a kunoichi becomes the pursuit of Sasuke's affections (I hate to break it to ya, ladies...), and fired up with the expectation of the reward, she steps out from under Ino's wing (with way too much antagonism to keep herself from changing her mind, I'd imagine) and declares that she is in love with Sasuke. Had she even had a conversation with him by that point? She did it because it was the popular thing to do. She convinced herself that it was her ticket to status and importance in the eyes of her peers, and she eventually became so dependent on it for propping up her self-esteem that she stuck with it far beyond the point it ceased to be a status symbol and became a valid reason to question her judgment. Does she still love Sasuke? Yeah, but there's a lot to unpack from it, and there's a found family thing going on with Team 7. Dom Toretto could tell you how much that means. But Sakura wasn't operating on good judgment when she decided to pursue Sasuke, she was operating on compulsion and fear of social rejection. Those two things tend to show up when a child is bullied and struggles to build a social life. Sakura mostly played by herself in a forest as a young child. For a while, Ino wasn't just her dearest friend, she was Sakura's ONLY friend. I know what it's like to chase social status to avoid the ache in the center of the chest that comes from feeling like you're an undesirable person socially.
When Sakura gets any opportunity to excel, she can't help but think about how she falls short of Sasuke and Naruto, which is super fucked because of how the Shinobi World values fighters over healers and harming over healing to the degree that it does. Remember how everyone gawked at how Naruto shared Kurama's chakra as a powerup to help everyone kick even more ass (but only an amount of ass for each person proportional to how much ass they usually kick, ofc), and were totally meh when Sakura literally hacked slug biology to enable the Floor Is Health Pack cheat code? Pepperidge Farm remembers. It's the Shinobi World's value system in stark relief upon the page. +1 Kishi for a depiction of Sakura living in a society so true-to-life we thought it was he who lives in a society. Maybe it was both, in truth. Either way, WE live in a society, too. And because of her society, Sakura kept looking at how she fell short of her Teammates so hard that when she decided she'd caught up with them, she actually did fall short because she wasn't focusing on her own strengths, but on the comparisons of herself to others. She spends so much time worrying about her value that she gets in her own way developing her own strengths. If she spent time developing offensive jutsu for her strengths, she'd be squarely between Sasuke and Naruto in power level because whatever her caliber, she's got a drum mag of chakra. Remember how much Tony had to do to scratch Thanos' cheek? Kaguya was easily Thanos-level and got her bell rung by Sakura in one punch. Shave Sakura's head and call her One Punch Woman.
In that case, were she a high-level brawler, she'd still be wasting her abilities. With a healthy sense of self-worth and the confidence in her skills she deserves, she'd use her water and earth releases to turn any battlefield, earth or water in its surface, into a selective healing surface. She could do all sorts of things, real sorceress stuff. It's really too bad the confidence she needs she already had, and she split it into a rambunctious headmate. As I take her narrative apart and turn it over in my dialectic hands, I'm starting to think Ino co-created the mental health clinic in part with the hope that Sakura would avail herself of its services. Sakura needs thousands of hugs applied retroactively throughout her past, she needs therapy, and she needs to have expectations placed on her that respect the magnitude of her skills and potential.
But neither the Shinobi Society nor ours are remotely kind to headstrong girls and women, and if you're a Western who believes mental healthcare in the West is lacking, you should see Japan.... Indeed, Sakura's first surgical procedure was to excise her confident and headstrong side. The confidence she has acquired had to rub off on her outer self from Inner and from Tsunade and Ino just to get her to where she is now.
This brings me to think of a fanfic that really does a good job developing Sakura as a shinobi, by Aesolucian and AgenderArcee, which depicts Sakura taking the nukenin path and being taught advanced medical ninjutsu by Kabuto. As you can expect, she becomes quite capable, even if in somewhat disturbing ways, to the point that she's nearly unkillable. In that fic she's probably harder to kill than Boro of Kara. She doesn't fare any better vis-a-vis her mental health, but damn if she isn't a master of bleeding—no, catastrophically hemorrhaging-edge medical ninjutsu.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/33976252
Point is, Sakura could've been taught a lot better in the Leaf (ahem, Kakashi; Tsuna-chan, put down the booze), and afforded a lot more reasons by the people in her life to feel valued. Instead she was bullied and unpraised, and one person stood up tall for her. She was compared to her peers in misogynist ways and her talents were left underdeveloped. I know this: I am incompetent when my head's not in the right place, and I'm brilliantly talented when i'm confident.
Point is, Tenten was in the same boat RE: the teaching and under-appreciation. While Neji was the pride of the Hyuuga and Lee the inheritor of the Hidden Leaf's best school of taijutsu, Tenten was left to her own devices with all the weapons and precious little of the specific training and guidance she needed to develop her talents.
An additional point is: Tsunade was known far and wide for being
1. busty af
2. gambly af
2.b. losey af
3. thirsty af
3.b. pretty sure she has a clinically-significant drinking problem
and not for being
4. strong af
4.b. as in if she could levitate and had a heat-ray doujutsu, her name would be Kara Zor-El
5. doctory af
5.b. literally, like, the best healthcare practitioner on the planet, hands down, for probs > a decade.
...Because they were just kunoichi in a ninja's world, and shinobi in a world where shinobi are thrown at geopolitical problems with the same care and value as the kunai and shuriken they throw at enemies. The Shinobi World could only be more explicit with its expectations of shinobi if it quoted Goldfinger: "No, [Shinobi], I expect you to die!"
So, was Sakura a useless failed heroine badly written by a misogynist mangaka, and Tenten an underused martial arts gimmick badly written by said misogynist mangaka, or did Kishi nail the human condition and especially the militarist Japanese-like culture of the Shinobi World?
Did we fail to notice that Kishi was mundanely pointing out to us how awful the Shinobi world is to people, and especially to women, just like our world is? Just like so much of Japanese society still is?
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
germansingergirl
titsay
vaporwave
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
gracieabrams
