A series of articles crossposted from Goodreads that will be posted on a new blog, SpecFemme, which I will link to when it is up and running. Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
3. Naruto
EDIT* I think it'd be smart to put a spoiler warning here. Like, spoiler warning for practically every big event in the series. So yeah.
Enter Naruto.
Some of you may be surprised to see Naruto on this list. And I don't blame you. After all, there are plenty of female characters right? So even if some of them are sexist, there should still be plenty to even out those and make the manga tolerable, right? That's what you would think.
Sakura is one of the most offensive female characters I've ever come across. She's not an offensive woman, even. She's an offensive human being.
In the first part of Naruto, Sakura Haruno is very whiny and pretty violent, but she is known as being a crybaby. She cries a lot over her teammates -- read: Sasuke Uchiha. She has a crush on him, along with every other girl roughly his age. He is the brooding, tormented child genius of Konoha, who Naruto envies and holds a rivalry with.
But back to Sakura, although I personally didn't find her as annoying as people say in the first half, she does do a lot of unnecessary crying. When Naruto ended, I was practically rolling my eyes in relief.
Then...Shippuden.
Sakura completely flipped her lid! She emerged from her crying, whining cocoon and into a beautiful, strong-willed and interesting young woman! Lo and behold I actually found myself liking her. Sure, there was still the mark of female-on-male violence played for laughs, but it was slightly more tolerable for some reason. Possibly because there weren't so many other negative aspects weighing her down.
So anyway, in Shippuden Sakura had promised herself she wouldn't sit back and let Naruto and Sasuke get all the spotlight anymore. "I'm going to shine, and this time they'll be watching my back!" she said. "I'm going to protect them this time!" she said. "Ah blah blah blah INTELLIGENCE AND STRENGTH," she promised.
And you know what? As the story progressed, I actually believed her. I put my faith in Sakura Haruno and she was winning me over, almost my favorite character...and then...and then...
Sasuke Uchiha came back.
You see, he had disappeared after a certain point in the first half to kill his brother Itachi (another part of his great brooding angst -- his need for revenge). So Sasuke kills Itachi, finally, but to add more angst we figure out that Itachi actually wasn't the person Sasuke should have killed if he wanted revenge. Apparently, Itachi was innocent all along and just thought it'd be funny to string his little brother along for years, to make him want to kill him.
So instead of killing the people responsible for the crime Itachi was innocent of...Sasuke decides to kill all of Konoha. Why? Don't ask. Kishimoto seemed to be running out of ideas at this point. So Sakura tells Naruto he can stop trying to fight Sasuke, and she even uses a love confession as to distract him. So she goes to handle her schoolgirl crush herself, face him off for once and for all.
She goes to do it! I'm cheering for her!
She...flubs. She flubs and Sasuke almost kills her.
Naruto has to save her.
...and it gets worse.
Her development flushes down the toilet right about here: So, Naruto faces down Sasuke once and for all for trying to kill Sakura, right? Well, yeah. But it's a gruesome and bloody fight, and Sasuke ends up using a magical asspull portal to get away. No, portals did not exist in the Naruto world until this point. Well, enough ranting about the idiotic plot, get this...
Sakura watches the battle, sees her friend and ex-friend fighting for her lives, right? So instead of promising herself that she won't flub up next time she plans to kill someone, or instead of deciding that her and Naruto can take care of Sasuke together, she just says "I guess the only thing I can do is believe in them!"
...
...
You are a powerful ninja. You have multiple jutsu's mastered and are an expert in posions and healing. You have the nerve enough to hunt down this dude and try to put him out of his insane misery before he hurts you and your family. So, you fail. Big deal. But really, now you have to leave it all up to Naruto? The only thing you can do is believe in them? Is that really all you're capable of?
And it wouldn't be as enraging if every female character in this manga wasn't as equally infuriating. They all fall under three stereotypes:
Reserved, violent and "catty", or sexy and seductive. Yes, really, any female character in Naruto can fall under one of those. Sakura herself, no matter how pathetic, can fall into the second as she is quite violent (played for laughs of course) towards Naruto. And Sai.
Tsunade, some may argue, is a good female character. While she has flaws, she's still Hokage, right? So that's good. But I'd beg to differ even more. To me, Tsunade is just fanservice.
Even still, she was their last choice for Hokage. They wanted Kakashi before her. Jiaraya, even. Seriously, Jiaraya? Yes, even him. That was the whole point. Jiaraya had taken Naruto to find Tsunade because he didn't want to be Hokage, but knew that if there wasn't someone to step up in his place he couldn't get out of it. How is a last resort empowering?
Also, not that being attractive is a bad thing, but let's take a look at all of the female Hokage's, shall we? I believe there are only two, maybe three. Compare those to the men. What do you see? While all the female Hokages are drawn as to be especially attractive, the male Hokages fail to fall to the same standards. Sure, Gaara is an exception. So is that other one, Raikage? Not even him, he's pretty old. Yondaime could count, but he's dead so I wouldn't say him. That seems like a pretty horrible double standard. Not even one of the three could be an older woman, perhaps a wise woman or something? They're all twenty something looking? Although in reality, they're all forty and older?
Has there been one girl on a featured three-team in Konoha that is even remotely competent?
Ino is like Sakura 2.0, only with back stabbing qualities. Yes, Ino was willing to give away Sakura's friendship just because they both liked Sasuke. She wasn't even willing. She did give up their friendship for that exact reason. At least she didn't lie about it, though. Honesty goes a long way. She is also a shallow, self absorbed, vain, twat. Yay Ino?
Hinata? She spends the first half of the manga thinking about how worthless and stupid she is, because her evil jerk of a dad has demeaned and belittled her for her entire life, in favor of her cousin Neji and even her younger sister. Apparently, Hinata is weak. So we don't even get to see her skills, and when we are shown them they're used to sacrifice herself for Naruto, as she is in love with him. Bonus points? Not only is she knocked away like a little fly after using her most powerful techniques on the person trying to kill Naruto, but her love confession is promptly forgotten. Couldn't Naruto at least find a little time out of his busy ninja schedule to say a quick "hey, thanks for saving my life!" or something? He could at least have sent her a card while she was in hospital. What? Naruto has refrigerators and bottled milk, what do you mean they don't have hallmark or postage?
Ten-Ten, apparently, is lazy compared to her hardworking (coincidentally....male!) teammates, Lee and Neji. Also, her biggest aspiration is to be like Tsunade, who is also a gambling degenerate. This chick needs better role-models. But not that you can blame her too much, Ten-Ten hardly gets any screentime so she hasn't yet explained her reasonings.
Those are the top three I can think of...and they all fail on being even remotely relateable. Of course, some may say that a shrill femnazi can find sexism in anything. She can: believe me, I've tried, and it's very possible to do so. But at least take the time to consider what I'm saying. Naruto may not be a terrible manga, but it is pretty sexist once you look at every single female character, their roles and how they are treated. I take that back. At this point, it is a terrible manga, but going into the horrible plotlines and plotholes in the worldbuilding, the faulty logic and many other things wrong with this series will take another, and much longer, post.
EDIT*
Before I move on to the atrocity that is next, let me mention something else that was just reminded to me by someone who said I must add this:
There are strong female characters in Naruto. Two of them. Anko and Konan. Anko was a teacher for Naruto, and she was the only test subject who came out intact from an experiment done on her by Orochimaru. Who, she used to idolize. But eventually she grew out of her idolization and came to the fact that Orochimaru was kind of evil. So she left. Konan, is the only survivor of the World Peace Group created by her two best friends, one of them who is Nagato, aka Pein. She, along with Pein, used to be in the Akatsuki. Then Konan realized that they were kind of evil and she was getting bored with that. So she left.
Anko and Konan are both pretty awesome, in my opinion. They're self sufficient and although they both have the marks of a Kishimoto female character (being kidnapped and having to be saved by a male character at some point in their story) they grow out of this mentality and become stronger! They move on!
But here's why I didn't mention them: Konan dies. Madara impales her. And Anko gets kidnapped and used as a human battery/host type thing by Kabuto -- a kind of lame, nerdy looking fanboy for Orochimaru. So, I didn't think they really counted at this point.
But, yep, that's the ultimate fate of the two most tolerable female characters in Naruto; kidnapped, tortured, and killed!
Isn't it just empowering?
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