Radioactive Rodent

You: Great! So what’s going to happen in it?

 Kishimoto: Well, these characters live in a world where they are trained to be child soldiers. Most of them had very traumatic childhoods that will be brought up repeatedly throughout the story, and it will become clearer and clearer to the audience as time goes on that they’ve been utterly failed by the government and the adults in their life. They’re going to fight some villains, but the villains will be pretty similar to them and will be sympathetic too, and most of them will only be evil because they were failed by the system too.

You: Oh, okay. So I’m guessing that this large cast of likeable characters is going to rebel against the corrupt government in the end and change how things work.

Kishimoto: What? Why would you think that? No I think they’re going to…fight an alien or something.

You: Why wouldn’t they try to change things?

Like how they're both constantly lying, mostly to others but maybe also to themselves. It's there in almost every chapter of early Naruto. There should have been parallels drawn between Inner Sakura and Sasuke's constant "I don't care about anyone" comments right before he freaks out that either Naruto or Sakura is in danger. The dichotomy between their imperfectly vulnerable inner dialogue versus the put-together outer presentation. Naruto is honest to a fault while his teammates are faking everything.

And the inferiority complex, man... Sakura got perfect test scores in the academy and has excellent chakra control, while Sasuke had the best overall grades and ninjutsu abilities, but none of that matters to either of them because they're trying to live up to impossible standards. They will never feel good enough. The confidence is a shell. One failure and they instantly spiral. They're also constantly desperate for scraps of validation, but only from the handful of people that they care about.