Haruno Sakura

Haruno Sakura (春野サクラ Haruno Sakura) is a fictional character in the manga and anime Naruto. In the beginning of the manga, she is a genin student of Hatake Kakashi's, but she later becomes a Chûnin under Tsunade's guidance.

Sakura has a crush on Uchiha Sasuke. This appears to be her main characteristic up until advanced stages of the series. She's often self-conscious about the size of her forehead and got teased by being called "forehead girl" at school (Ino, Sakura's childhood friend and now rival for Sasuke's affections, continues this honourable tradition). During the Chûnin exam, Sakura realizes that in her infatuation with Sasuke, she has neglected her duties as a team member - this coincides with her chopping off most of her hair (which she grew long because she thinks Sasuke likes long hair), which an attacking sound-nin used to hold her by, thus symbolically freeing herself from her previous restraining tunnel vision. She still has a way to go before she fully deals with and reconciles her infatuation, however. Sakura starts out extremely disliking Uzumaki Naruto (who has a crush on her much like her own crush on Sasuke), but slowly starts respecting him over the course of their being a team.

In her early school years, Sakura was timid and was occasionally made fun of and bullied. That was until the popular Ino approached her and became her friend. Sakura looked up to Ino's looks and ability a lot; while she appreciated Ino's friendship, she couldn't help the feelings of inferiority she induced in her, as if Ino was a fully-bloomed flower and Sakura only a bud. Their friendship continued until it became clear that both of them liked Sasuke, and Sakura felt that she could never equal Ino, let alone surpass her at anything, while she was trapping herself as Ino's mere sidekick in her mind. She handed Ino her ribbon back and proclaimed that they were rivals from that point on.

And bitter rivals they were, until the second stage of the chûnin exam, where Ino witnessed Sakura cut her own hair- even though it was "known" (or rather believed by the girls) that Sasuke liked girls with long hair- to set herself free from her captor. It was the moment that both of them were simultaneously stricken with the fact that there are more important things than teenage romance. Later, when they tied on their battle in the third stage preliminaries, Ino told Sakura that she finally had blossomed, and- each acknowledging the other as her equal- they became friends again, although they snap into (mild) rivalry mode again whenever Sasuke is mentioned.

Sakura's main strengths are her intelligence and her great chakra control. She was able to climb trees using her chakra while it took days of constant training for Sasuke and Naruto to manage it. However, Sakura's weakness lies in her lack of stamina and overall talent. She has only learned a few skills over the course of the series, the most advanced of which is Kai (Or Cancel, for dispelling genjutsu). On the other hand, Kakashi does note at one point in the story, that Sakura has a talent for genjutsu.

In the first stage of the Chûnin exam, she knew the answers to a test designed specifically to be so difficult for genin to accomplish that they would have to cheat.

Inside Sakura resides the "Inner Sakura", which ridiculously seems to be much more mean-tempered than Naruto's Kyubi. "Inner Sakura" seems to represent an assertive part of her personality and serves mostly comedy purposes as Sakura's typical gentle responses are juxtaposed with the inner Sakura's constant "Hell yeah"s and "Damn it"s. In the anime Sakura's having 'two minds' actually came in handy when Ino hit her with the Art of the Valentine (Shintenshin no Jutsu, literally Body-Mind Switch Technique), Inner Sakura combating Ino's spirit where in the case of a regular person there would be no resistance. The same occurs in the manga after one of Naruto's inspirational comments causes Sakura's inner self to awaken and subsequently defeat the Art of the Valentine.

The name "Haruno" means "the spring field". A spring field can be cultivated and orderly or it can be wild, like how Sakura's personality is. "Sakura" means "cherry blossom", which represents loyalty, love, and samurai, in addition to being the national flower of Japan. Sakura is obsessed over Sasuke and her loyalty makes her accept Naruto, though initially grudgingly.

Currently, she is training under 5th Hokage Tsunade, as a ninja medic. This means that each of Team Seven (Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke) are now training with each of the legendary Sannin (Jiraiya, Tsundade, and Orochimaru). This causes some to speculate that the three young ninjas will become the successors to the old Sannin.

Sakura, being trained by Tsunade, has learnt the 5th hokage's well-known "monstrous strength", and is now at Chûnin level.

Her seiyū is Chie Nakamura .

See also

• Naruto characters