Rock Lee My Beloved

I love getting requests for Naruto fanart or just to yap about my thoughts, but pls be wary of where I am in the series before mentioning something that contains potential spoilers!!!!

Ep 21:

-yoooo the reveal of Sasori’s real voice was good. I like the kind of detached way he talks

-annnnnd there’s the puppet twink at last

-whoaaaa crazyyyy Sasori was the reason for the third Kazekage’s disappearance? Who could have seen this cominggggg?

-oh Chiyo is fucking PISSED

-oh hell yeah this guitar battle theme is so sick

-ok so I was looking up Sasori’s age and saw that Deidara is only 19… he should be at the club😔

Ep 22:

-I really don’t like the chewing sounds Deidara’s hands make. It reminds me of eating ASMR, which is my least favorite ASMR

-hm I wonder where Deidara gets his detonating clay from

-yippee for Sakura getting a nice little character moment showing her determination!

-okay Sakura’s voice actor was kinda popping off when she was yelling at Sasori

-yo Chiyo is using puppets of Sasori’s PARENTS???? Idk what I was expecting but it wasn’t that. And they look pretty indistinguishable from Sasori’s human puppets so I actually thought for a moment that it was the literal bodies of his parents, which would have been majorly fucked-up

-(speaking of which, I wish the human puppets were more visually distinct from the regular puppets. The concept of turning real human bodies into puppets is SO dark, and I kinda wish the designs of the human puppets conveyed the horror of it better)

-okay the animation towards the end of this episode of Sasori and Chiyo going at it was kinda hilariously wonky

-I’m really not too sure how Sasori is able to have his human puppet use jutsu that Sasori himself can’t use. Like I get that the puppet is made out of the third Kazekage’s body, but how does that allow Sasori to make use of the Kazekage’s jutsu?

Ep 23:

-okay they answered my question pretty much immediately but tbh im not super satisfied with the answer

-holy shit Chiyo’s also got puppet parts???? I actually wasn’t expecting that

-I know Sasori is going to be defeated but the fact that he’s getting so much backstory is making me think he’s going to straight-up die

-I’m kinda wondering how Kankuro learned puppet jutsu now. It seems like a bit of a protected art

-oh shit the music that kicks in when Sakura starts becoming determined was hype as hell

-Sakura really said “I may not have a bunch of fancy puppet weapons but I can throw hands” (and she was so real for that)

Ep 24:

-the animation of this opening battle scene is a lil goofy. Everything seems to be moving pretty slowly

-why is Sakura’s hair long in the flashback of Tsunade teaching her? Unless she grew out her hair and then chopped it again pre-Shippuden, she should only ever have had short hair since meeting Tsunade

-also I definitely do want to see more of Sakura’s time training with Tsunade

-I find it funny that the 3rd Kazekage puppet is just constantly T-posing

-okayyyyyy pop off Sakura

Ep 25:

-okay so if Sakura only has three minutes to act while the antidote is working, why is she exposition-dumping to Chiyo? (Yes I know it’s so the audience understands what happened but in-universe it’s a little silly)

-so like is Chiyo a medical ninja or not??? Because I thought she was but Sasori is making it sound like she isn’t

-I know it will likely never be explained but why does Deidara even have hand mouths in the first place? Is he from some clan with hand mouths or something?

-Deidara is kinda a pro ragebaiter actually

-damn Sasori is starting to look unhinged

Ep 26:

-I’m somewhat torn on this Sakura and Chiyo versus Sasori fight because on one hand it’s good to see Sakura fighting and it wouldn’t make sense for Sasori to go down quickly, but on the other hand I feel like the fight has been dragging on forever

-…is it weird that the song playing in this episode is giving me pirate-y vibes

-damnnnnn okay Sakura holy shit!!!!! Also Sasori’s puppet body being knocked into pieces was a cool visual

-yeah I knew Sasori wasn’t going to go down so easily but like… can this fight be over already

-sooooo is the implication here that all 100 of Sasori’s red-cloaked puppets are people he killed and made into puppets? Because if so… Jesus Christ, dude

-god puppetry is just so cool

-also I forgot to write this down earlier but I understand now why Deidara was hyping up Sasori’s strength so much. I definitely underestimated him

-okay that slowed-down ending scene of Sasori going to kill Chiyo and Sakura taking the hit instead went SO hard actually. I was actually on the edge of my seat a little

Ep 27:

-holy shit Sakura took that sword like a champ

-I knew Chiyo would give Sakura the antidote and now I’m almost positive she’s going to die. Oh Lady Chiyo you were a real one :(

-wow of course the puppets that Chiyo uses to kill Sasori are his parents

-how tf is Sasori bleeding???? He’s a puppet????

-anyways the expression on Sasori’s face when he first realizes that his core has been stabbed is so good

-so Chiyo IS a medical ninja, which makes me retroactively annoyed again that Sakura could make an antidote to Sasori’s poisons when Chiyo couldn’t

-okay Sakura punching Sasori in the face out of nowhere made me giggle

-Sasori just cutting off mid-sentence and dying was not what I expected at all but damn the scene of Sakura and Chiyo realizing he was dead was really good. Overall I liked the latter half/ending of the fight a lot more than the first half

Ep 28:

-look I love Team Gai but I really can’t find it in me to care much about their doppelganger fights

-yeah Chiyo is absolutely gonna die sacrificing her life to bring Gaara back

-soooo are they going to explain how Kakashi was able to activate a new sharingan or…???

-the animation in the doppelganger fights is uh… not very good

-aw the Team Gai flashback was cute tho

-see Team Gai doesn’t win with the power of friendship, they win with the power of YOUTH! It was absolutely a cop-out victory tho

-also I can’t lie I wanted Team Gai to defeat the doppelgangers by switching opponents (their doppelgangers could match them perfectly since they “thought” exactly like them, so switching up who’s fighting who would let the team be able to make moves the doppelgangers couldn’t predict). Also it would be rewarding to see Tenten find a way to take down a Lee or Neji doppelganger

Ep 29:

-Neji’s hair is so dramatic lol

-I really don’t understand what going on with Kakashi and his sharingan and his fuckin black hole jutsu

-welp rip BOTH of Deidara’s arms. Bro still doesn’t seem to care much about that tho

-oh Team Gai I may not have liked your last battle but your silliness never fails to amuse me

-there’s no way Kakashi’s visual jutsu is as powerful as Itachi’s like Deidara says it is. That’s just making him too OP at this point

-holy fuck Naruto bloodying his knuckles beating the shit out of Deidara was crazy. Also he was straight up going to KILL him with a Rasengan to the chest (not that I blame him tho)

Ep 30:

-so yes I know the bubbling orange chakra is the Nine Tails chakra and it’s forming tails n shit but also it kinda looks like Naruto is releasing one hell of a fart

-wow Naruto is going full furry

-there’s absolutely no way Sakura and Chiyo would have caught up to Naruto and Kakashi so quickly but I’ll suspend my disbelief I guess

-what I’m NOT going to suspend my disbelief for, though, is armless/jutsuless Deidara evading all of Team Gai

-so far Deidara’s two biggest moves have been 1) making a nuke and 2) blowing himself up

-god Naruto has really matured so much. Idk the calmness of his voice when he checked on Kakashi and asked Sakura to look at Gaara really stuck out to me for some reason

-honestly Naruto is having a very well-deserved crashout and it’s hitting me like a truck (also I gotta give Naruto’s VA some kudos for this bc they really sold his breakdown)

I’m not intentionally excluding Sasuke: I just draw a lot of art of the Konoha teams, and he’s no longer part of that group in Shippuden. I definitely will be drawing him in the future, so don’t worry!

Also since you mentioned the height chart, here’s where he would fit in:

So just for fun, I’ve made a hypothetical lineup of genin teams that I think would be cool

-I’m basing these pairings off of the kids’ abilities at the end of OG Naruto, so if someone develops a skill later on that matches perfectly with a certain sensei, I’m not counting it

-I tried to follow the two boys/one girl team compositions

-I’ve thrown Team Gai in the mix so just pretend everyone is the same age or something idk

TEAM KAKASHI: Kiba, Hinata, Choji

-Kiba

While Kakashi wouldn’t be able to help much with Kiba’s clan jutsu, he could still help him train with Akamaru since he has a whole bunch of ninja dog summons. I also know that Kakashi can use scent to track just like Kiba can, so he could help him work on his tracking as well. And I’m not sure how much Kakashi’s teaching got through to Naruto, but Kiba could definitely also benefit from the same lesson of “think more before acting”.

-Hinata

I think Hinata is someone who really benefits from having supportive teammates, and I think Kiba and Choji are actually two of the best teammates for her because of that. Since her teammates are close-combat types like her, she could spar with them for taijutsu practice, and she could work with Kakashi and Kiba on tracking stuff.

-Choji

I’m going to be honest, I’m putting Choji here because I wasn’t sure where else to put him. I recognize that this team is very much a close-combat team and thus might be better suited for Gai or Asuma, but Kakashi is a jack of all trades so he can A) still help them with close-combat and B) use his arsenal of jutsu to support them with mid- and long- range attacks, helping to balance the team out a little. I also recognize that this team is lacking a “leader” member (aka a braincell holder like Shikamaru or Neji), but Kakashi makes up for that as well. I’d like to think that eventually Hinata could become the leader. I also think it would be interesting to see how Kakashi is as a sensei when his squad ISN’T a complete disaster. Hopefully he’d be able to lead his underdog (no pun intended) team to prove themselves.

TEAM GAI: Lee, Shino, Ino

-Lee

This is so self-explanatory I feel like I don’t even need to elaborate.

-Shino

As purely close-range fighters, Lee and Gai would benefit from someone who can cover for them from afar, and Gai could help Shino with his taijutsu, which is his weak point. Also respectfully Gai and Lee need someone to be the voice of reason sometimes. Anyways I think the team might have a rocky start bc Gai and Lee would annoy/frustrate Shino, but I think it would end up being like Shino’s canon relationship with Kiba where they irritate each other sometimes but overall they’re cool. Shino would be the leader of this team.

-Ino

Putting Ino on this team makes it a kind of an altered version of Inoshikacho, where Lee is Choji (the distractor/brute force), Shino is Shikamaru (the trapper), and Ino is herself (the secondary trapper/finisher). I think Shino is an especially good teammate for Ino because he can use his insects to efficiently get her body to safety or monitor it while she’s in somebody else’s body, and though he can’t completely immobilize people the way Shikamaru can, his insects would be great at herding people into position for Ino to do her thing. I also think Ino would benefit from taijutsu training. Plus, it would be interesting for boy-crazy, Sasuke-obsessed genin Ino to be on a team with some of the strangest and least “cute anime boy” type dudes around- her coming to appreciate her teammates could be a sort of character development for her.

TEAM KURENAI: Sakura, Sasuke, Neji

-Sakura

Sakura definitely had the potential to develop a genjutsu specialty (Kakashi literally calls her a “genjutsu type” at one point). I also think Sakura would benefit from having a female role model before Tsunade, especially if she’s still going to be on the same team as Sasuke. Finally, though I think having two prodigies on her team would make her feel useless for a bit, it hopefully would also push her to improve quickly.

-Sasuke

First of all Sasuke could technically still learn about the chidori and his sharingan from Kakashi without being part of his team, so he’d still have that. But as part of team Kurenai, he could work on the genjutsu abilities of the sharingan, and sparring with Neji would probably help him improve his taijutsu.

-Neji

Okay hear me out on this one. Yes, I know that putting Neji and Sasuke on a team together is potentially a recipe for disaster: Neji could prompt Sasuke to have an inferiority complex (a different kind of inferiority complex than the one he has towards Naruto in canon, but an inferiority complex nonetheless). But I also think that Sasuke would appreciate having someone as competent as Neji on his team, and vice versa…and I also unironically think Neji would see Sakura pining after Sasuke and be like “ew that’s so embarrassing for you” and it would snap Sakura out of it a little. Sometimes you just need your judgiest friend to give you a reality check. Now admittedly, Neji wouldn’t gain as much from Kurenai as he would from the other senseis, but he’s a prodigy so he could probably pick up genjutsu knowledge, and he could get a lot from having Sasuke as a sparring partner. He would be the team leader.

TEAM ASUMA: Tenten, Shikamaru, Naruto

-Tenten

After Gai, Asuma has the most no-frills, combat-forward fighting style, which suits Tenten because she doesn’t really use any fancy jutsu. They also both use weapons, so I think Tenten could learn a lot from him.

-Shikamaru

On this team, Shikamaru would have a bajillion different weapons and a bajillion different Naruto clones to use in his strategies, giving him endless options to work with. I also think he would absolutely work best under Asuma so I wanted to keep him on Asuma’s team. Oh and also Naruto is going to need someone to give him some directions in fights, and Shikamaru is an ideal team leader.

-Naruto

(Plus a noteless version)

Thank you so much! As for your question, here are my headcanons for how tall the sand sibs are in Shippuden era:

-Gaara is 5’4.5, landing between Hinata and Sakura in the chart I made (in my head his growth was kinda stunted by trauma initially and he remains pretty short)

-Temari is 5’6.5, landing between Kiba and Naruto on the height chart

-Kankuro is the tallest sibling at 5’9, landing between Shikamaru and Lee on the height chart

(Plus more zoomed in versions)