"Worst Written Women" | A Defense of Naruto Women 

everyone wants to be hokage ME: nah shikamaru wants to be a cloud 🌥 😂

I like how Tenten only gets mentioned briefly once in this video, perfectly sums up her character LOL!

i will never tolerate tsunade disrespect. I know kishimoto isn’t the best at writing women but what he did w tsunade deserves praise. truly one of my fav characters in the naruto verse period 😊

I think the hate on female characters is just an extension of Naruto's problem with barely using its side characters as much as the reader would like. Then it's pushed further by the early Sakura and Ino story, and having every woman's story centered around a guy in their life.

Oh no Merphy, you didn't go into the forums. That's the Internet equivalent of being a war photographer.

Ino is a triple threat. She fights, learned medical ninjutsu and later became a sensory ninja like her dad.

I think Kushina wanted to be a hokage for a similar reason as Naruto. She wanted to be acknowledged for more than a girl with a demon spirit in her. But I think Minato helped her realize that that wasn't necessary.

I think people are less angry about women being healers, and more mad that no men are.

Rip Anko's potential

I've never thought Tsunade was poorly written. I do have issues with Sakura though.

I never thought i'd see you do the Hinata "Naruto kun" 😭😭😭

Glad someone is out here defending the Naruto women fairly while also pointing out criticisms. Kushina is one of my favorite characters in the whole series and she's absolutely amazing.

Tsunade is a fantastically written female character

This dude merphy is completely on point here. The assertion that female strength only exists in the form of being more masculine is completely ignoring the strengths of femininity

The "tank, damage, support" thing is called the holy trinity because they are all important roles to fill in combat. Healers and supports get such a bad reputation in all media for not being flashy enough

We found another character that Merphy dislike as much as Caribou in One Piece : Karen. She is so damn annoying Loved the video and agreed with your points

"Even some male characters get pushed aside for naruto" Immediately thought of Kiba, Shino who btw has 0 L's, and konahamaru lol

It enrages me when they get characters like sakura, ino and ESPECIALLY KARIN to be in love with sasuke for no other reason than him being cool and handsome. Nothing more in depth than that. It makes the characters look weaker than they are

Tsunade might be the most developed character in the show.

I loved the arc with Sasori and the puppets. Yeah that has to be the highlight of two strong women in the story. They kicked ass. It’s good stuff. Sakura made quite the leap and she showcased all that she learned. Chiyo way passed her prime was still enough to take down members of the Akatsuki. That arc doesn’t get enough love! Awesome video!

I understand that Sakura is a normal girl, but that could be more explored, like we've seen with Lee, that has an character arc about not been very talented. But what it seems to me, is that she has nothing because Kishimoto didn't know what to do with her, in fact, the only flashback we got of her had nothing to do with this, but was about Sasuke or her big forehead. What I felt watching, was that on the Shippuden Kishimoto saw that she wasn't working, and then decided do copy all of tsunade's abilities. It just felt lazy to me..

people portray Kishi like this evil Misogynistic dude when i think he just lacks confidence and ends up with clunky execution, , hell the strongest character in universe of the original series is a woman, and in the sequel and the main boruto era thing he wrote focused entirely on a female lead. i think his hearts in the right place, his execution is a bit mixed. that being said, you mentioned liking Kushiha, id suggest reading the minato one shot that came out last year, its honestly such amazing little story for how long it is.

I wouldn't say Kishimoto ia necessarily bad at writing women, even if he himself thinks so. He more seems unsure what to do with his female characters so he avoids writing them.

“Karen… existing”. Yeah that pretty much sums it up.

Hinata is not the best written female character but she is better than worse imo, her battle to overcome her meekness and emulate naruto's ninja way of never going back on her word are better than a lot of the other characters in the story Shyness->bravery is one of the best character arcs in story writing

I think one of the biggest think I appreciate about Naruto’s female cast is their character design. Most shonen have women (and most often times girls, under the age of 18) with a design that is way too oversexualized while Naruto, they always seemed reasonable. Not every female character has a skimpy outfit with unrealistic proportions: they’re just normal teenager. I get they’re doing this because it’s for an audience of teenage boys but still

19:46 "Why are support roles so undervalued?" Ever played a game online which has a different class system with other people as a support class?

I really hope Merphy reads the “Whorl Within the Spiral” one-shot that Kishimoto put out last year. I honestly thought it was some of his best work and it focuses so much on Kushina, so I think Merphy would love it.

The problem with Naruto women is how often they get dropped to the sideline. They get some oretty cool arc or set up....for like a couple chapters and then are forgotten. You guys remember Anko and her whole thing with Orochimaru? You guys remember how Sakura said she loved Naruto so he would stop chasing after Sasuke so she could kill him, only to fail in the last second, not because Sasuke was too strong, but because she "couldn't bring herself to do it"? You guys remember when Shikamaru's father died, and it was a super emotional moment because of the interactions we have seen between him and Shikamaru, but then Ino's das died at the exact same time and no one cared because we never seen him interact with her? Or when Shikamaru and Choji got cathartic moments with their fallen sensei Asuma but Ino got absolutely nothing? Not to mention how few female characters are there to begin with. Every single team is two boys and a girl, akatsuki only has a single female member, Tsunade was the first female hokage, the Sasuke rescue team at the end of part 1? Didn't have a single girl in it until Temari dropped to save Shikamaru's ass. The sound quartet (or quintet) only had a single girl in their ranks... you have so few women in your manga already and you do NOTHING with them. I'm glad you found reason to enjoy these characters, but most of those reasons once in a huge while. Characters like Kakashi, Naruto, Gaara, Shikamaru, all of them get multiple opportunities to grow, to change, to show how cool and badass they are. Girls get a single moment if that, and their moments are usually unresolved.

Chiyo isn't talk about enough in Naruto fandom, i feel like there's not many old women representation in anime. Usually most author wanted beautiful or sexy women in their series but Chiyo is not only a powerful fighter in the series she's also pivotal to the theme of the story.

"Just a healer" Looks at clips of Sakura and Tsunade breaking opponents bones and creating craters. "Yup, just a healer" .... 😂😂😂

As someone who thinks Kishimoto doesn't write women well, Tsunade has always been the exception for me. She's an extremely well-written character (in her introductory arc at least, before getting sidelined). I also think the issue of female characters getting sidelined applies to most of the male characters as well. Naruto and Sasuke take the front seat to the detriment of most of the OG cast from Konoha. I'll never forgive the complete sidelining of Rock Lee after Part 1

I think part of this is also that some of the worst moments in the story are centered on decisions made by the women. Sakura telling Naruto she loves him to try to guilt him back to the village is pretty egregious in this regard. But Sakura also participates in the Rescue Gaara in a way that highlights all the best parts of her character and my favorite fight in the story alongside Chiyo (who is easily my favorite side character)

FINALLY. Someone who I know will tackle the issue with nuance.

Such an awesome video, thank you Merphy! This series holds a special place in my heart and always didn’t like how much people were over hating this story (in my opinion)

Now you have finished the manga I want to talk to you about 2 cultural problems that the ending of Naruto have: 1)Kaguya Zetsu betraying Madara has been planned since the end of Naruto Part 1. After Naruto's first fight against Sasuke in the Valley of the End (chapters 233 and 234) Sasuke has a reaction similar to that of Hashirama (chapters 626 and 681) to the fact that Zetsu is watching them and Kakashi says in these chapters to how similar Naruto and Sasuke's story is to Hashirama and Madara's story. This is a foreshadowing of the fact that Zetsu manipulates the reincarnations of Indra and Ashura in the shadows. The cultural problem here is the fact that since his first appearance Black Zetsu speaks in katakana (the Japanese speaks in 3 languages: hiragana, katakana and kanji). Everyone in Naruto speaks in hiragana except black Zetsu who speaks in katakana. When the Divine Tree (Kaguya) tells Madara to absorb it (after his fight against Gai) the dialogue is written in katakana, it's a foreshadowing on the fact that Black Zetsu has been his will all along (this is why the revelation comes out of nowhere when we see it in the translated version). As you can imagine, this is a detail that the Japanese noticed and which was ignored during the translation. This point is a little more subjective but I thought it would be better for you to know this detail. 2)The reincarnations This point is a little more complicated, sorry. Maybe after seeing it you wondered how this concept of reincarnation worked (don't worry, you're not the only one) This concept of reincarnation is samsara (rinnegan means "eye of samsara") and it's the main belief of Buddhism and Hinduism (Japan is a Buddhist country and the universe of Naruto is based on the Japanese religions). The main belief of the concept is that each person lives several lives and that the basic situation of each of their lives is decided by the actions of their past lives but each person can react to this situation on their own (karma except that it is over several lives). It's a religion whose main belief is free will. This mainly means 2 things: 1. Hashirama and Madara's choices influenced the life context of Naruto and Sasuke. Hashirama abandoned Madara and Madara manipulated Obito who caused the Kyubi's attack on Konoha (Naruto's life context). And the Kyubi attack on Konoha caused the Uchiha clan to be rejected from the village, their revolution and therefore their massacre (Sasuke's life context). But as it is a religion which believes above all in free will, it's Naruto and Sasuke who make their own choices by themselves and that from the beginning (that's why they can stop the cycle by stopping to fight, it's because of karma) 2. Everyone in Naruto is a reincarnation, it's not just Naruto and Sasuke. It concerns everyone, the fact that Naruto is Ashura's doesn't change that. He is subject to the same rules as everyone else. If I'm talking to you about it, it's because many criticize this concept in the "well, Naruto wasn't a failure since he was destined to fight Sasuke" mode. It's totally false, it influences them (because of karma) but as I told you it's a concept whose main belief is free will and that's the reason why Naruto and Sasuke do peace at the end. Naruto has accomplished everything by himself since the beginning (this is the main rule and belief of this reincarnation) This concept of reincarnation is what Naruto deals with from the beginning (with Pain's speech on the cycle of hatred, Obito and Madara's plan and the situation of the ninja world) and the final questioning that Kishimoto brings here it's "the fact that your life context is similar to another one, does that mean that you will make the same decisions?". The answer is no, Naruto did not abandon Sasuke like Hashirama did and Sasuke did not choose the same path as Madara. The fact that your life started in a certain way does not mean that you will end it the same way, it is you and you alone who choose the destiny you want to follow. There you go, sorry if this part is a little longer but this point is a much more complicated cultural problem If you still have some questions don't hesitate to ask me

Saying that Sakura is weak considering her impact during the Kaguya fight where she was the only human being while Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, and Obito were all essentially demigods during that fight is rediculous.

im sure he respects her now that hes married to her 💀💀💀

Love hearing your breakdowns, they're very eye opening and usually on point when presented the way you do

I adore Naruto as a series, but tbh, I feel like the big complaint in how the women are written is the wasted potential. There are so many fantastically designed female characters, but they fall by the wayside. Kurenai is the most powerful non uchiha genjutsu user in konoha, and is used exclusively to show how powerful itachi is. And she’s there to mourn asuma, and that’s it. We don’t even see the major impact that she has on her team like we do with kakashi and asuma. There are very few actual jonin in the series, with most of the adults being either chunin or “special jonin”, so having the only female character with that rank never really get to show her strength or even pass along her experience, feels like wasted potential. Beyond that, tenten is effectively a joke, hinata’s character is hard to describe if you can’t bring up naruto while doing it, which is a shame because her clan is incredibly interesting politically, she just never feels connected to those politics. yugao was set up so well to avenge hayate after the chunin exams, but that never comes to light. Anko mitarashi could have been used for more of the orochimaru stories. And sakura despite being the female character with front page billing always felt like an afterthought. I’d say Ino, Temari, and Tsunade are the only major female characters who got properly used, and even then I have a hunch ino wouldn’t have that honor had shikamaru not been so popular

"I'm sure he respects her more now that he's married to her" One thing Boruto does really well imo is the Sasuke-Sakura marriage Yeah, Sasuke's absent from home a lot, but that's mainly due to him being the Shadow Hokage to atone for his sins. I really enjoy all the little scenes we do get of adult Sasuke and Sakura's relationship

Fantastic video! You definitely changed my mind

Im always so excited to hear merphys takes! Especially when its about a series i grew up with. Thanks for all you do merph! 🤘

Never thought the day of Merphy Naruto days would come but here we are. Can't wait for her to read the last arc.

Can't believe you're already done with Naruto, feels like only a weeks ago when you started. I alittle sad that the Naruto journey is already over but I'm sure once you start another, I'll be like "Cool, new series."

The Karin shots were hilarious 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Starting to think she's not a fan of Sasuke's Sacrificial Side Piece 😂😂😂 10:26 15:21 17:48 18:33

Fighting is destructive, and healing is constructive. In the grand scheme of things, destroying things is easy, making things is hard, and making things is far FAR more important than breaking things.

Hot take, but I think Sakuras false confession to Naruto is really good. Is it uncomfortable to read? Yes. Its supposed to be. But Sakuras arc is about learning to understand people thru Sasuke and Naruto, since she did not go thru what they did growing up. Shes like us, the reader, kinda an audience surrogate, and while shes improves at understanding them, shes still not doing quite what they need. Also look at things from Sakuras perspective. Shes learned Naruto carries this heavy burden of the ninetails, but also feels responsible for the promise he made to her about Sasuke. He has, in a very short amt of time, lost control and jeopardized a mission, lost control and hurt her and almost hurt his team, was going to suicide by Sasuke, got his arm injured by his own jutsu, failed to get sasuke or itachi, lost his teacher, village got smooshed, lost control and barely won vs pain, got beat up for sasuke, and now is about to come to the defense of a criminal to the whole world. From Sakuras perspective, shes trying to potentially save Narutos life. Its a very selfless act coming from a character who was very selfish in part 1

I’m not a Naruto fan, but I have seen a few videos criticizing the writing of the women in the series. So it surprised me to see a woman actually defend their role and impact to the story while so acknowledging the flaws in the writing. - - - - - BTW, love your videos on both your channels. Ever heard of Rumiko Takahashi?

As for the combat vs. medical debate, Merph, I think part of it comes down to the audience understanding the complexities. For example, we learn the Rasengan is incredibly difficult from its chakra flow to shaping that chakra. It's so difficult that Naruto started off using Shadow Clones to compensate. The evolution of this is when Naruto has to learn the Rasenshuriken by infusing the Rasengan with Wind chakra. The audience has a good understanding of how this pipeline happened, and there is a strong uniqueness to it. Sasuke is generally on the opposite end where his combat techniques are more associated with cost. When he uses his Mangekyo Sharingan, there's a spiral into insanity and darkness for him as well as great pain and a risk of going blind. Every time Sasuke used it until EMS, those threats were constant. The entire 5 Kage Summit was seeing how complicated it was for Sasuke to learn new Mangekyo Sharingan techniques before his eyes or body gave out as he took on threats beyond his capabilities pre MS. In contrast, Sakura struggles on this front because medical ninjutsu is a bit more underdeveloped. The best technique medical ninjutsu has is...storing chakra until you want to release it, at which point the user is effectively immortal. We already don't necessarily know the ins and outs of it, so the capstone is more confusing. As for the men aspect, Madara directly insults Tsunade for her craft not measuring up to Hashirama, and the worst part is that he's right. Hashirama's cells alone lower the time limit of KotoAmatsukami from 10 years to a day. All of the strongest villains are utilizing it in some way or other to heal or adjust biological limitations. Tsunade's medical ninjutsu, her years of study and hard work, ultimately don't measure up to a guy who's been dead for a long time simply existing, and that's obviously very demeaning on its own. However, paired with the ambiguity of how medical ninjutsu works, it's worse. One begins to question why the seals *can't* accomplish similar feats. I hope this paints a clearer picture.

I really like this video you had a lot of great points

definetely not a useless video, very well put, and thought provoking!

thank you for this

Hinata was my favorite character in the show and I used to think she was well-written, all because she was the most relatable character to me and I struggled very strongly with skittishness and shyness at her age. Sadly, she got so very little attention overall. Her one moment post-time skip was hype and still stands as one of my favorite moments in the show (she did what just about no one else could do at the time), but her character arc is nonetheless centered around her feelings for a boy and too brief to carry the weight that many other characters carried. Honestly, I ended up liking her character arc in the "The Last" film more overall. It was a nice bridge between the ending and the epilogue. I just wish her motivations involved something other than pining for Naruto.

Great video

I'm so grateful you had such an even-handed perspective on this! It drives me insane when people downplay the girls' achievements just because they aren't as strong as Naruto and Sasuke. A statement that holds true for 98% of the cast. The fact remains that the women of Naruto are some of the most influential badasses in the past 2 decades. Especially Sakura, whose infamous scene I will continue to argue, has much more depth than people give it credit for. I do ultimately agree with the perspective that there's a lot of missed potential with the female cast though- it would have been awesome to see powerful Jounin like Kurenai and Anko get a real chance to show their stuff. I mean, Kurenai is literally the best Genjutsu user in the whole village- without magic eyes! And Anko, don't get me started on Anko. Nothing screams missed opportunity more than Anko.

To answer your question about why healing is seen as bad. It's not being a healer that's bad. It's that female characters are often regulated to that role, with few men maybe filling them, while very few females get to do battle, if they even ever do, but mostly men fight. There are clever ways to tackle that sort of level of sexism, like what we see in Avatar the Last Airbender where the female water tribe members in the North were regulated to being healers because of a sexist belief they had, and Katara challenged that by "disrespecting Master Paku's culture, beliefs and himself", but he later acknowledged the potential in women as fighters. Same with Sokka, as he was a product of that same belief. My point is that if something like that was a part of the culture in the Naruto-verse, it would've made some more sense. It actually could've been a strong motivator for many if not all the female characters to push beyond the limits society places on them. That's one way I see that "female = healer" could've been "fixed" in any story. Another way would've been to just write female characters better.

Awesome video, really delved well into the critiques which some are valid and positives that nobody shines light on regarding rin and obito, shes more of a representation of light and hope for him than just a love interest, illuminating his path in the dark and guiding him forward (for without which he would be lost in the dark) when that light was extinguished, Madara became his false lightpost this is why I love when he says "Rin is someone not meant to die, so the dead Rin is also an imposter" You probably already knew this fact, but alot of people just view the surface level and call him a simp cant wait for your next part review to drop

This is such a balanced, thoughtful review.

Think that Naruto has overall good female characters. The problem they have is the samma as most other characters that aren't Naruto or someone with a sharingan is that they didn't get enough screen time. Would rely have liked to see more of Hinata, to se more of the huga clan and how they were suppose to be a rivel to the Uchiha and there sharingan.

This is a great video and why I'm subscribed, balanced.

Mic Drop video/points on this argument, well done.

Such a good video essay.

I can’t wait to get your take on Bleach. Considering you’ve read two of the “Big Three,” I think it’s almost necessary at this point that you start that!

finally someone!!

I stg the hate of women in naruto is truly just based off sakura not being a fellow god along side naruto / sasuke. Also the “i love you” ploy from sakura genuinely killed her off to humanity

❤ Awesome as always thanks the side characters and women get more time to shine in the anime

Tsunade is my favorite Naruto character!

The problem i mainly have with how Sakura's writing was handled was how inconsistent it tended to be, almost as if Kishimoto couldn't commit to making her a skilled and powerful ninja just like the other team 7 memebers. Sakura's comeback at the start of shippuden was IMPRESSIVE to say the least, she comes back as a highly intelligent medical ninja who outshines the entirety of the hidden sands medical unit and saves Kankuro's life, she plays a massive role in defeating the first akatsuki member taken out in the series while demonstrating how truly skilled she is in both combat and intellect, but then, all this momentum just dies. She doesn't have anymore big standout moments up until the war and practically just exists when Naruto and Sasuke are involved, we don't see her training in the background or interact meaningfully with anyone but Naruto. In the five kage summit arc she's essentially used as a plot device for Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi to be more interesting, even during the war Kishimoto manages to sneak in the fact that she was so disappointed when Sasuke didn't care about her after Madara stabbed her, despite the fact that the last time she saw him he tried to mercilessly kill her in cold blood so by all means she really shouldn't have been surprised, but for some reason Kishi thought that any sane person would care about such during the potential end of the world. Small inconsistencies and a lack of hype make her the least interesting in team 7 to most viewers (She's still my fav character though, hence why i have so much to say about her so forgive me lol). It also doesn't help that she doesn't display any unique abilities throughout shippuden beyond everything Tsunade can do but vaguely better, basically turning her into Tsunade 2.0. You'd expect a main character to have at least one new technique to improve upon all they were taught but Kishimoto doesn't do this for her and instead goes down the lazier route, she's still really cool imo though, just needed a bit of polish.

I think most the prominent or cinematic abilities were performed by the male chacters so that makes them more memorable. A character like Shikamaru has shadow manipulation and Ino one of his team members specializes in phycic abilities like mind swapping and mind control.

The thoughts over why healers are devalued is really fascinating!

Sakura is a genjutsu master. I think if Kishimoto had focused on that aspect of her skill before she became a medical ninja, Western audiences would have received her better.

I will say this in defense of Kishimoto, the anime was much worse about the portrayal of the female cast with the flanderization, sexualization, & cutting out key scenes/even outright altering key scenes

great commentary. i feel like it boils down to: 1. screen/page time 2. sooo many discarded side characters 3. SAKURA you point it out really well in your lee vs sakura comparison. it’s the same shit, lee just got more love, more time, and a stronger journey-probably cause Kishimoto felt comfy writing Lee! Some of the women needed more time for us to see them go through a development that felt real, well-paced, and satisfying. Sakura’s training happens in the time skip and she gets discarded by mid shippuden, Hinata has little independence outside of Naruto. i Would’ve LOVED to see her inventing her jutsus, or reforming her clan, or developing a better relationship with Hanabi, ANYTHING. building off of that, as others have pointed out, one of the biggest criticisms I have of Shippuden is how sooo many side characters are just forgotten. so much potential we never get to see come to fruition and i think the women end up getting scrutinized heavily as a result which is a bit unfair. i really appreciate your video because there ARE well written women in this series and they deserve to be celebrated. I think Sakura’s visibility makes it even EASIER to disregard the merit and value all of these women bring in their own ways to the story. It’s unfortunate but having her right there with Naruto and Sasuke doesn’t do her many favors, her relationship with Sasuke is really hard to swallow at some points, and a lot of people just HATE her. i’m not even saying she deserves the hate, i don’t think she does at all. but because she sticks out like a sore thumb, she naturally becomes the example and frankly i think some of the vitriol directed towards her is giving misogynist

I only just started learning how to be a better writer, so any info is great. Writing female characters is not a strength of mine but always happy to learn how to improve. Great video.

Thank you for making this video. I've always liked the women in Naruto, whether it is because I'm biased due to this show being such a big part of my childhood or that they are legitimately well written. I liked how nuanced the discussion was because most of the time, people criticize these women in absolutes instead of actually picking apart and seeing their strengths and weaknesses. And I just find that very reductive and frustrating. Especially when they are obvious examples of well written female characters in the story (including Sakura, specifically in the timeskip), yet people always seem to just deliberately exclude them from the discussion or devalue their valuable actions in order to further push their rhethoric/argument. Again, thanks for the nuanced discussion. It feels nice to feel some validation.

Agreed. And yes, Sakura should not have ended up with Sasuke. Pick someone else. Literally anyone else, like Lee who always liked her and would have understood her struggles, or even Kankuro after she saved his life from the posion... I just feel like ending up with Sasuke the absentee husband is not fair to her and cheapens her character arc.

Great Video! It put alot of perspective on the topic of I would even say Shonen female character in general. Honestly, I never had a problem with a character's focus being on a love interest as long as it informs a bit of character, which is why I like Hinata's crush over say Sakura's crush. That Hinata's character may be looking at Naruto and saying his name, but she's herself stated that she looks at him as a pillar of confidence. Knowing that Naruto is sure in himself makes her feel as she can be sure in her own actions, and that I feel is a good basis to have a crush be worked into a character. The problem of course coming in that she's never actually allowed to show that growth and we get snippets of her through the story, As Naruto is a story about war trauma and how that can break bonds, not really focusing on too much on happiness that could be found in between that those times. Had Naruto had time to explore more thing I would feel like Hinata's character would've not got as squandered. Though I feel that gets blown up, similarly to how you said, to focus on just the bad. That because there is this one iffy element that the whole story can never try to correct itself. Sometimes not even by the merit of the series itself but by others in the same genre. Dragonball is always brought into discussions since most Shonens constantly get compared to it as the bedrock of the genre, and I feel that means some of it's issues kinda bled into other series purely out of hitting similar beats that many people see even if it doesn't align 100%. People often think of Toriyama's 90% rate of female fighting character getting married and no longer being a prominent fighter. So when they see that someone in a different series going down a similar path say someone Sakura, they are become pretty dismissive. Which ironically is spreading a "trauma" forward that eventually leads to a hate of these characters, which is only slightly funny. This is not to say people aren't entitled to how they feel a character is written, just that often it coming from the worry that another series that is popular has become known for saying "Oh I hope this doesn't become a Dragonball, or a Naruto, or a One Piece" situation. And it doesn't apply to everyone and isn't the single answer to the why people hate how female characters are written in manga, but as a long time manga fan you often see that fear be created due to another manga's decision, even if there is very little overlap in writing and characters. There is for sure alot to celebrate in female characters, that even the male main characters display, such as kindness and the willing to give it their very all until the bitter end. Even if not every character is getting the final punch on every big bad that doesn't degrade from how much their character is giving all the way there. Like you said it's a very strong message, I feel doubly so due to many of the themes of shonens is picking your own path and helping how you want to help. Once again a great video, they are always fun with so much passion!

I am glad you have appreciated these things as well. I always felt that despite it all, Naruto actually does extremely well at giving deep respect to the medicinal and health focused ideals as well as professions. Ironically, the role and profession that tends to be filled with women gets a lot of respect and depth as a field worthy of investment. I also felt that the fact that he gave the female characters many movements of genuine, painful vulnerability as well as moments of deep conviction and resilience was something rare to see and greatly appreciated. I do think the female characters often don’t feel that they live up to all of their potential but frankly I believe that that applies to most Naruto characters and it mostly feels that way because we are exposed to so many interesting and constantly developing characters already.

7:18 Merphy Bloopers XD

What's worse, though, Karens negative presence or Tenten's lack of it?

Been really enjoying the Naruto reviews. I hope you check out one of my favorites D.Gray-man one day

A lot of people are going to tell you to avoid Boruto, I'd say you should ABSOLUTELY check out the boruto manga, and the Naruto light novels (traditional books) as well as watch The Last: Naruto the Movie. The Boruto anime has a lot of production issues but the manga is oftentimes one of the most popular and hype new releases in manga.

As someone who loves Sakura Haruno and Tsunade, this was an interesting video to watch.

I'd be more general and say that a lot of secondary characters are not written very well, or more often just forgotten about. It just happens that more of them are female. Besides Sakura and I guess Tsunade, female characters are just not important enough in the story to matter in the series overall. Especially among antagonists: besides the very last one (who nobody likes), there are just no female main antagonists. They are just henchmen (henchwomen?). Konan is awesome, but she's put aside to give the spotlight to Nagato and Yahiko. Mei is a cool kage, but she's the least developped (and weakest) of the 5 Kage by far. What about female uchihas or senjus? Yeah... Konoha's teachers? Kurenai is the only woman and...where is she? All the other teachers got their moments.

Merphy pronunciation is the best!!

It's beautiful that Kushina chooses to focus on being a mom and caring about her family, and I love her character, but again Minato never had to make such a choice

People generally dont like girls being the healers because its an established trope at this point. You see it in video games the most where the girl is always the medic while the boys fight and take hits. Its not necessarily bad, but the connotation is that the healer is always passive and reactive without their own agency. Many people thus equate the trope of girls being healers to them basically being passive and on the sidelines healing people and not part of the action. Its an important thing happening in the story but also puts them out of the story essentially. Pain invading konoha for example. Sakura is healing people in a hospital and thats great and all but she's basically a silent background character at that point. Thats mainly why I think the healer criticism is a thing. Healers stand and watch and dont get cool moments in shonen where people come for action. Its also kinda meh that we never see super competent medic males. The only real named one is kabuto

Tsunade is pretty good, but sakura feels like kishimoto wrote himself into a corner with her

Tsunade is badass. Totally agree with you on her character. Temari is also one of my favorites. :D

Thank you! This video mirrored so many of my own thoughts on this subject, especially with Sakura and the missed potential! It's so sad to see that potential wasted because it feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kishimoto thinks he can't write women well, so then he doesn't try, leading to people having issues with his female characters, which then reinforces the idea he can't write women well.

The saddest argument around Kushina is that in most extra media her personhood is boiled down to just being a wife/mother with no focus on her skills as a ninja

merphy is a blessing

Great video, you make some really valid points. I think a lot of people misunderstand how good characters like Tsunade are outside of a fight. Tsunade lead the village in arguably the most difficult time outside of the founding of it. She revolutionized team strategy worldwide with the idea of having medics everywhere, and helped defend against the Pain assault specifically for a pretty decent amount of time before Naruto showed up. I appreciate that you mentioned this too. One thing I would slightly disagree about would be the idea that Obito did everything because of his attachment to Rin. She definitely was a huge reason for his motivations, I won’t deny, but his mindset went much further than that. He was groomed by Madara after a literal near death experience, and was then manipulated into seeing one of his only friends murder ANOTHER of his only friends, as well as the person he had the strongest feelings for. I think combining Obito’s age at the time, with the trauma he had suffered up to that point, anyone would’ve broken from that. He even tells Kakashi outright that him “letting Rin die” wasn’t actually his motivation. Rather, he saw no point to saving a world that would allow Rin’s death in such a matter to begin with. I get flamed for this opinion constantly, and Obito is my favorite character. Not saying that’s your whole interpretation of his motivation, just that it’s more complex than having a thing for Rin, which I’m sure you understand already. Great video as always, excited to see your thoughts on the rest of the story 👍

I think you offer such an interesting point of view, believe it or not there's not many mothers who cover shonen animanga such as Naruto. I've always been a fan of many Naruto women but I think that's been reinforced even more after hearing your point of view. I don't think you can find many people who can represent the topic better than you, and you done a really good job with this video.

I personally think Sakura is written very well unlike the other women characters especially Hinata, Ino and Ten Ten. People hate sakura way to much as for me I think she has great development. We started with the trio of three idiots. Sakura was selfish totally obsessed with sasuke and ignorant and even mean to Naruto. Later she realized how weak she is and started to train with tsunade also because she and Naruto became friends and she felt guilty for the things she done and him feeling bad for not saving sasuke. She wanted to become strong to bring sasuke back herself and not let Naruto handle her problems. When Naruto came back after the timeskip we saw how strong she became and how good they work as a duo because of their friendship. Later she gets told naruto is in love with her and Sauske is evil. As a 14/15 yo girl this makes her unsure how to feel and she wants to bring her self to love Naruto to. As Naruto says she lied to her self. In the final war we saw that sakura was able to heal a lot of injured ninjas and damaged many enemies as well as discovered zetsus secret. Later she kept Naruto alive. She was a important supor role for Naruto and Sasuke to defeat Kaguya. The other women lacked of screentime and development in my opinion. Konan and Tsunade got their development and grew on my. But Ino had some nice moments but they didn’t stand out for me and her character didn’t develop at all. Her relationship with a certain character also came kinda out of nowhere. Hinata also wanted to become strong but we never saw her becoming strong. She wasn’t that shy anymore later but after her confession to Naruto nothing changed. She couldn’t do anything in the war arc and hasn’t won any fight. I think this potential was wasted and they could haved used her to show how strong she became just for Naruto. On one hand are Temari and Tenten had lovestorys with Neji and shikamaru. Unfortunately we did not saw a lot of this and this would actually help to give them more character and personality. Rin on the other hand only was shown in flashbacks but her love story with Obito was very detailed and give her a personality that was more than just the girl. She was ready to sacrifice her self and support Obito as her friend. She was not very strong but her backstory showed what her strengths were and also explains for me why sakura reminds obito of her. As Naruto is obito, Kakashi is Sasuke and Sakura is rin of team 7.

there are SOME who are well written, but most are not. the thing you are picking up on is that they all get good writing at some points, but that then gets utterly undermined. we fans were hurt by that wasted potential. when you look at how men vs women are written, women are obviously being limited by his awareness that they are women, in a bad way. i personally want my women characters to be written as people first.

my goat, finally someone with an audience says the facts.

I think the reason why people don't view being a medic as important as being a fighter, is because this is a shonen anime/ manga series where everyone is supposed to be action packed so viewers and readers aren't really looking for the support teams they're looking for the action

Never hated how Naruto women were written cause i feel so many characters that are also male were fumbled too lol. But yeah, folks just took Kishimoto saying he admits writing for female characters was something he felt he struggles with and discourse over the years just exaggerated that to mean Naruto has some of the worst female characters is manga history and that contributed a bit to folks saying in fact, manga in general always has shitty female characters, ignore that most the ppl saying this only read the most talked about 4 or 5 big names made for the literal young boys demographic (mostly under the same publisher too) which they constantly mistake as its own genre and assume that all manga with said label are the same fantasy action affairs and therefore must all write characters the same way. It's just decades of hyperbole born from frustration that sometimes a female character isnt always at the forefront of the action and that they actually have to read and understand their characters instead of being able to just get excited at them always doing cool hype action shit. And also definitely some cultural dissonance with a story written originally in Japan in Japanese by a Japanese author primarily for Japanese readers and THEIR preferences in literature amongst their culture (i know its not a monolith but of course there's gonna be differing tastes for some things compared to us reading from Murica). Its a weird rabbit hole really. Only further intensified by at least the Western anime community online these days having become a lot of ppl trying to farm engagement through basic bitch hot takes repeated every few weeks.