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Part 1: The Wasted Potential of Hinata and the Reality of Ino
Let's talk about it: when it comes to underwhelming female characters, Hinata took the cake for me. The issue is how they threw her in our faces. If she was just the awkward girl that liked Naruto, we would have looked at her and thought, "Oh, it makes sense that you become a housewife."
But they built her up in this way that they kept throwing her in our faces, and so we were looking at her and we were expecting her to rise to her full potential. They gave her titles like Byakugan Princess—they gave her titles, they gave her actual attributes—and they were pushing this narrative like, "We're going to give her a power-up, we're going to make her a full-time character, we're going to give her an actual dynamic that blows her out of the water and makes her actually tolerable, likable, and more desirable than just being attractive."
And then they never did that. Literally, they just narrowed her back down to the girl that likes Naruto, and she was just Naruto's wife that stayed home and waited for him because she likes Naruto. It felt like her entire growth arc devolved into nothingness. She had a starting point, then she circled right back to that point, and it feels like she never actually progressed.
The Chunin Exams and the "Bug" Filler
Hinata didn't have much going for her to begin with. She was established as a baseline of weakness, and then the one time she did have something beyond that, they knocked her back down a few pegs and were like, "Actually, just forget about her."
Then they come back around and they're like, "Oh, look, she learned something new," and so we're looking at her like, "What else is she going to do?" And then she does nothing.
You have the fucking Chunin Exams, and this bitch held her own. She lost, but for the viewers that were really looking closely, they would have looked at her and said, "Well, okay, she did something. She held out far longer than we thought she would." Maybe that's just my dumbass looking at the fact that Naruto really had an impact on her that was positive in making her a stronger fighter. I feel like she really took his words to heart, and he was a motivator for her, not just a love interest.
Then that just kind of blew out the window. But let me digress—a few seasons later (was it a few episodes? Anyways, a while later), she has that whole hand thing, right? Eight Trigrams... those long-ass fucking words really mess me up because why do you need anything to sound like that? Anyways, she basically has that; she's killing a bunch of bugs and we're like, "Okay, okay, it's a bit dramatic, it's a bit excessive, but she's been training. She learned something, she can do something."
I feel like the issue is they never made her an innovator; they never moved her past that stage. Not really. Her clan was built of warriors, soldiers, and as their leader, she should have either risen to the occasion or never been granted the position of their leader to begin with. She simply didn't deserve it. So every time people looked at her as a princess, it felt unearned. It felt like she was never going to be a leader, or a commander, or a true figure that was worth following, because she wasn't a person in herself—she was the girl that followed Naruto.
Ino: An Actual Person
Think about it, we have people like Ino. Ino as a character is interesting because she isn't just obsessed with Sasuke. She's an actual person out there; she's compassionate, she's kind, and she seems to genuinely care about Sakura and considered her a friend.
The thing is, if they had done shit like this with Ino or even Sakura, it would have made sense. Ino specifically was a compassionate person, and we always saw her soul in a way that was demeaning or belittling to her as a character, as an individual. It's a matter of where they chose to place this.
Part 2: The Truth About Sakura's Motivations
Ultimately, I think all of these women had power in their potential. I don't believe that Sakura would have failed to be a good ninja; I'm just saying her motivations were always cloggy in this way that never felt true to her character up to a point, and it seems to be a distortion that happens a lot. Perhaps it's because of how overused the character was—she was supposed to be one of the main characters, and so it was essential to give her a power-up to make her above the other girls—but it just felt unearned.
The Forest of Death vs. The Ino Fight
Literally, her fight with Ino was absolutely depressing. I think everybody was looking at it and thinking, "Why didn't you do this in the woods? You could have literally gotten two boys killed, along with this girl and her friends, because you were unable to put up a fight, and suddenly, within the five minutes that you've been out of the woods, you've become a Chunin warrior."
Sakura's Core: Conniving and Desperate
Sakura was a downright thirsty and desperate bitch that only wanted Sasuke. She was ungrateful, trifling, and wicked. We see it when she literally calls out Naruto for not having parents—trashy. She was just a kid, she was so young, okay—what about a while later when Naruto literally rushes out of the water, breaking his back to get her onto shore, and collapses? And what does she do? Walks off gushing over Sasuke, who doesn't even bat an eyelash in her direction to cool her down.
That is who she was, that is who she is at her core, and I don't think that's ever going to change. If it's being true to her character, it's not that she's incapable of fighting; it's that her reasons, her determination, her motivation for anything is Sasuke.
Again, I don't think it's specifically Sasuke; I think it's the ideal man—the idea of a man that is powerful, caretaking, and that can take worries over her shoulders. She wants the high-society life, she wants to be established as somebody's wife, and she wants to be good about it. She wants to be above everybody else's wife without doing anything—not because she's incapable, but because that is what she desires. That is who she is as a person: she's a social climber, and we see it in every facet of her personality from an earlier stage in her life at the beginning of the show.
Sakura has never been a healer or a giving person; that is not who she is as an individual. All hate aside, she was always a conniving and aggressive person. Her cunning was her tactic; it was what guided her every action. She badmouths Naruto, even though she never seems to have direct issues with him outside of him trying to snuggle up to her. Why would she suddenly decide to badmouth him to Sasuke to win a favor? She sees the guy that every girl wants, and she tries to get in good with him first because she sees what other people don't: his absolute hatred of Naruto. This is where her cunning comes in, because that is what she is—conniving.
Part 3: The Downfall of Early Naruto and the Loss of Ninja Lore
I feel like another huge understatement is Naruto, because who remembers at the Bell Test when Naruto reached up out of the fucking sand? This boy was struggling with his powers, and he was a real struggler. He was struggling, and do you know what he does? Uses his limited knowledge and he thinks with his head. This is the same boy that stole secret scrolls; this is the boy I was rooting for.
Literally, he had this man [Kakashi] so on edge. Naruto rushes over, multiple Shadow Clones closing in, and little Mr. Untouchable is dropping to the ground, and his eye widens when he realizes how close he came to getting run up on. Naruto fucking reaches a hand out of the ground!
What a foundational moment. I feel like people don't talk about the tactical implications enough. That was my favorite version of Naruto: the early version, the struggling version that was doing the work. Every other version just came to glowing power. It didn't feel like ninja work anymore; it felt like fucking subtitles for every move that someone committed. It wasn't legitimate, hands-on, somebody getting flicked around—it felt so raw in the beginning, and there was a sincerity to the lore that dissolved over time.
I just didn't appreciate that we established this very core baseline of suffering and pain between both Naruto and Hinata, and the narrative never gave us anything of substance with that. We went from a tactician to just the kid that glows orange-yellow. We went from a kid with real trailblazing potential—the guy that was going to stand against the world to do whatever it took—to just some loudmouth with a shitload of power.