How can I say this… I think that team 7 had POTENTIAL to be good, but that potential got ruined from the very beginning.
I agree with you that it was Naruto who held the team together, but when you think about it and look back on part 1, even that ‘holding together’ was very… I can’t find a word for it.
Because Naruto was the only one chasing after both Sasuke and Sakura because he was starving for bonds. And yet, Sakura cared only about Sasuke and Sasuke only found relevance in Naruto. It wasn’t a bond between the three of them, those bonds were superficial. Sasuke saw Naruto as an individual, while Sakura and Kakashi were ‘team7′, there beside Naruto.
Yes, Sakura did learn how to respect and care about Naruto, but still, throughout the story, her feelings for Sasuke have always been selfish and a burden to Naruto, who was in love with her and constantly listening to her sigh over someone who didn’t love her when he was right there. Makes one wonder about how much she cared about him, in the end, and if she’d really be a good friend if given the chance to be with Sasuke at an earlier stage.
Because Gaiden Sakura seems to not care about anyone or anything but Sasuke and the fucking Uchiha crest on her back. Not even Naruto knows a lot about Sarada, which shows exactly how their relatinship is.
Sai was… I don’t know how to describe how stupid Sai’s reception was to the team. He talked his mouth off about stuff he didn’t know about, yeah, but both Naruto and Sakura had defensive stances towards him from the beginning because he was ‘Sasuke’s replacement’, and that’s not cool. Sai wasn’t to blame for Sasuke’s departure. I always felt that both Naruto and Sakura had very selfish reasons to want Sasuke back, and always felt very selfishly about him, as if only THEY understood what Sasuke meant to them as individuals and no one else had the right to meddle in.
It LOOKED like they understood each other’s pain regarding Sasuke’s absence, but they didn’t. They bonded OVER Sasuke’s absence but didn’t really understand each other. Naruto never told Sakura his pain, and Sakura simply didn’t know how to explain her feelings to Naruto because she was aware that she was selfish and useless compared to him.
Is this healthy? No. Not a healthy friendship at all, when all you have to bond you is a past you both long for with someone who’s no longer around.
Kakashi was…he failed a lot. He always prioritized one student in order to neglect the other two. First he trained Sasuke alone and neglected Naruto and Sakura, and then he trained Naruto and left Sakura behind. And in the end, he defended Sakura’s feelings for Sasuke, neglecting both Naruto’s and Sasuke’s feelings.
I’m not saying he meant to, but he did fail his team many times, and nothing he has ever done for any of those three can be considered life-altering or meaningful, not that I see. The only thing he’s ever said of good was that whole ‘people who leave their friends behind are worse than scum’.
Kakashi is just a cynical character. It took YEARS for him to look at his students and realize he liked them (in the moment he saw the three of them fighting together in the war) and that sort of… says a lot about his character and how much he ‘cared’. I’m not saying he didn’t, I’m just saying that maybe he didn’t care enough to make an actual difference.
I don’t dislike Kakashi’s character, but I don’t see him as this badass perfect dude many people tend to claim him to be. He has annoyed me many times during the course of the manga.
And Sasuke… yeah, it was always about Naruto. He saw team 7 as a family, but it’s like… in his mind, team 7 was attached to the individual that was ‘Naruto’. I’m sure he wanted a ‘family’ at some point, only if to regain that innocence and happiness he had when his family was still alive.
Sasuke is a very innocent character, very pure, deep down, wanting to reach his own innocence badly. Which is why I can’t understand SS, because from the logic of the things he has said in chapter 699, ‘Sakura’ was the ‘family’ that was = to his past and innocence. And so was Kakashi.
Sasuke once loved team 7 because they made him feel like he did when he had a family. Loving them as a teenager or a grown up wouldn’t change that.
Sasuke and Sakura becoming lovers automatically taints Sakura from that image of purity and ‘love’ he had. Some may disagree, but it’s the way I see it. If Sasuke allowed that ‘love’ to be tainted, maybe he really didn’t care for Sakura that much. Also, by allowing it, he allowed team 7 dynamics to go wild and fall apart. Because he cares about Naruto the most in the world, but ended up marrying the woman his precious person loved.
I mean… this can’t be ‘acceptable’ no matter how many people say that it’s ‘okay to move on’. You can ‘move on’, but you won’t forget. It’s a conflict of feelings, and if ‘The Last’ is canon, than we can see how badly it all turned out. Sakura shoved Naruto (who loved her) towards another woman to keep him away from Sasuke, and in turn, Sakura is seen as bitch (dismissing Naruto’s feelings for both her and Sasuke) and steals Sasuke away from Naruto. Naruto loved them both the most in the world, and Sakura deliberately pushed him away from them and into Hinata’s arms. Naruto must’ve been devastated.
I don’t know, as I said, team 7 had potential, but it wasn’t worked properly. Also, as you can tell from the previous paragraph, I often think that Sakura ruins the team regardless of how much she’s grown, but this is just Kishi’s portrayal of her.
Just like Hinata, Sakura is the character that always acts impulsively (and selfishly) in a crazy desire to show off, kicks ass and then fails only to become a burden. No matter how much she tried to keep up with Naruto and Sasuke, she’s still faaaar behind them. And this is not good for team dynamics. And if this was only a strenght issue it would be okay, but she’s still miles away from understanding (or trying to) the boys’ feelings. Even Naruto, whom she’s been closer to.
This is a HUGE wall separating her from those two. Kakashi, on the other hand, understands and knows things about them, yet he refuses to acknowledge them. To Kakashi, everything’s superficial and easy to overcome. He also turns his back on things rather easily once he deems them done for. Kakashi is either black or white, nad he does what he thinks should be done no matter what his students feel about it. Take his decision to kill Sasuke, for example.
As I always say, for the three of them to manage to connect without issues, no one in team 7 could hook up within the team. Because, from the very beginning, it was always about ‘feelings’ and the individual pairs. As Kishi himself said many years ago, ‘Naruto likes Sakura, Sakura likes Sasuke and Sasuke has special feelings for Naruto’. When romantic feelings are involved in such a way, with three people feeling so differently but so similarly, it can’t work properly. It never will. Because there will always be resentment, regardless of how happy they are for their friends, regardless of them ‘moving on’.
That’s why an open ending would’ve been better. That’s why Sakura moving on from Sasuke would’ve been good. Those three would’ve been able to become who they were supposed to become, do what they were supposed to with their lives, become friends and learn how to respect each other.They would’ve been able to have become a real family instead of falling apart the way they did and in ways no-one understands. They would’ve all been faithful to their feelings for each other but WOULD HAVE MOVED ON and had a fresh start. Because that’s what they needed.
But instead, we can’t feel a bond anymore. Sasuke’s and Sakura’s is Sarada and nothing else, Naruto’s and Sasuke’s feels like a Freudian repression and Naruto’s and Sakura’s… it’s like he doens’t give a shit and neither does she.
Kakashi??? Who’s that???