Kishimoto does not seem to get the show not tell when it comes to sakura. Like with her seal like yes we know its strong with tsunade but we only see glimpses of it with sakura. She should of had a full on on fight with it
The problem with Kishimoto is how he sees shounen heroine.
Tell me, what are your thoughts on American cartoons, what are you're thoughts of 80's action cartoons, and the action cartoons that came out since the 1980's?
Now here is something people who works on an American action cartoon have been saying since the end of the eighties interviews to hype up their shows. "We are trying to make are story more meaningful and deeper. None of that villain losing every week and saying I'll get you next time." Now, they have been saying that for more than thirty years at this point, why? Because the impression of Action Cartoons that are in peoples' minds are from the eighties. So, Action Cartoons have been repeating the same thing for 30 years to try to escape the shadow of the 80's shows.
Now back to kishi. He doesn't read or watch shounen stories from my understanding. He prefers Live actions Japanese dramas and Hollywood movies. His impression of shounen mangas therefor remain of when he read shounen manga. Pretty much 80s-90s era and maybe his coworkers stuff when he was working on Naruto. So, he has not really kept up with the changes especially since Naruto started. So he both hasn't kept up with the changes of the genre since he read it, and is trying to write with his understanding of what shounen manga is. Similar to the people that work on American action cartoons trying to be ground-breaking in their genre from their understanding, but ignore the fact that the genre has to naturally change over the years. Granted many people working on American cartoon never realized this and that's partially why action cartoons have all but disappeared. With anime and anime inspired show dominating that genre.
So for his heroines lets first look at Anna from Samurai 8. She is the classical shounen heroine, she spend her time on the sidelines thinking, "oh main character-kun," praying that he will win, except her prayers do actually impower him. It would have been creative if not innovative in the 2000's, its archaic now-a-days because that heroine archetype isn't really that common in shounen stories' now-a-days.
Now, with Sakura she was the 80-90's shounen heroine a spunky girl that hits the main character a lot and rarely if ever fights. "Except she is on a combat team and is expected to fight," we all say. Why yes, but the problem is that this is the archetype kishimoto grew up with. So, he has mental blocks that make it difficult for him to fully accept girls regularly fighting in shounen stories is fine, granted many of his contemporaries have this problem even Oda. I mentioned this before but part of Sakura appeal to the Japanese is she sort of represented this shift in the genre of a girl that is both suppose to but at the same time not fight coming into her own and finding her own path and resolving to fight. Of course since the Japanese were fine with her development because of that, it allowed Kishimoto to coast with her only needing to patch her up every once and awhile...at least when Yahagi was his editor.
Edited by Bail o' Lies, 17 December 2022 - 05:48 PM.