This is the first of my Sarada analysis threads. This one will be focused on her character arc in Naruto Gaiden.

I’ll be making threads in the future analysing why Sarada wants to be hokage, her respective relationships with Sasuke and Sakura, their bond as a family and probably some other stuff too. So there’ll be stuff I’ll skim or skip over bc I’ll discuss those topics at a later date.

I adore Sarada and it’s not just because she’s the SS baby. I relate to her as a character and I find her character arc compelling. Quite frankly, the fact that Sasuke and Sakura’s relationship produced such an awesome baby just makes me love them more.

I’m going to be discussing some personal stuff in this thread because it relates to why I personally relate to Sarada and how I view her character. I’ll be discussing some sensitive stuff, including death and trauma.

When we meet Sarada in chapter one of Naruto Gaiden, she is going through an identity crisis. She’s approaching the end of her studies at the ninja academy, but Sarada doesn’t seem particularly enthused about it. She isn’t sure she even wants to be a ninja.

As Sarada walks home from school, she observes her classmates interacting with their fathers. Inojin calls Sai’s art style old-fashioned, Boruto antagonizes Naruto, Chocho is embarrassed by Choji.

Despite the negative tone present in these interactions, it is clear that Sarada craves that kind of relationship in her own life.

As someone who lost a parent very young myself, I find this scene to be incredibly true to life.

At this point in the story, Sarada says she has no memories of Sasuke and only has two photos of him(this is a poorly thought out plot device, but I’ll forgive Kishimoto here because he did have a very tight deadline). She doesn’t know that much about him either.

Sakura is cagey about Sasuke when Sarada asks him about her.

(I’m going to get more into Sarada and Sakura’s relationship in a future thread so I’ll the discussion about why I think Sakura was so reluctant to talk about Sasuke to Sarada until then.)

Sarada thinking Karin could be her mother solely because she wears glasses has been mocked by a lot of the fandom, but she was only 11 and, as we saw, Sakura often deflected and avoided questions when Sarada asked her about Sasuke and his top-secret mission.

So while I do think the whole plot is very silly, I do sort of buy it.

Chocho serves as comic relief and a foil to Sarada and her arc. She suspects that her parents aren’t really her parents for reasons that are ridiculous to both the audience and to Sarada.

I’ve heard it theorised that this is Kishimoto mocking all the fans who believed Karin could be Sarada’s mother based entirely on them wearing glasses back when chapter 700 first came out and I can totally buy that.

This is where Kishimoto goes full meta, coming dangerous close to breaking the fourth wall.

Mitsuki shows up at the diner where Sarada and Chocho are talking and tells ChoCho she is suffering from “tragic heroine syndrome”. Clearly he’s been reading TV Tropes.

Mitsuki tells Chocho that he can recognise that she is an Akimichi without even seeing her family crest because of the way she looks and acts.
This leads Sarada to ask “who am I”? As we get a nice big close up of the Uchiha crest.

At this point, Sarada is the only person with Uchiha blood in the village. The anime outright states that Sarada knows very little about her clan and I imagine the same is true for the manga, considering how reluctant Sakura is to tell Sarada anything about Sasuke.

Sarada knows that she and her father are the only Uchihas left and that’s about it. She feels disconnected to the clan whose name she bears and whose emblem she wears.

The curious thing is that, just like with Chocho, Mitsuki recognizes Sarada as an Uchiha, even without seeing her crest.

This is Kishimoto telling us that while Sarada may feel like she’s distant with her father and the Uchiha clan, she’s connected to her family through her appearance and her actions.

As Sakura tells her, Sasuke may be gone, but their feelings are connected.

In fact, in the very first page of this manga, we see Sarada striking this iconic pose.

Kishimoto is telling us that it isn’t just looks that are passed down from parent to child, but their behaviour as well. Considering this, it’s obvious even at this point in the story, that Sarada is Sakura’s biological daughter.

Sarada is still just a kid and kids tend to focus on the most obvious physical details: hair colour, eye colour, glasses. But if you take away the glasses, Sarada is basically a palette-swapped version of Sakura.

But of course, it isn’t just her appearance that makes Sarada resemble Sakura, but her personality as well. This is highlighted when Naruto meets up with Sarada and Chocho and they give him the bento.

It makes him flashback to when Sasuke and Sakura fed him during the bell test when they were just newbie genin.

Sarada is super happy that Naruto tells her more about Sasuke and comments on their resemblance, but she’s especially happy when he tells her that she acts just like Sakura.

Emboldened by the new information about her parents, Sarada impetuously runs off to meet Sasuke, awakening her sharingan in the process.

There’s been debate about what exactly caused her to awaken her sharingan at this moment. The anime has her awaken the sharingan at a much younger age but it was dormant until this moment. Some theorise that Sarada awakened it out of excitement at meeting her father again.

The idea that Sarada would awaken her sharingan out of love not hate is an interesting one, especially as the first Uchiha born after the curse of hatred and was raised without contact with other Uchihas.

I feel like this will be confirmed by someone later so I don’t want to speculate. Especially since no one can decide just how canon the Boruto anime is.

As she rushes towards the tower where Sasuke is waiting, we see a glimpse of how Sarada expects their reunion to go. She has clearly been fantasising about this moment her entire life.

Unfortunately, Sasuke mistakes her for a Shin clone and threatens her. It isn’t until Sarada calls him Papa that he realises that it’s her.
We see Sarada looking at the image she had in her head, now glazed over as if she’s looking out through a window.

My heart breaks for Sarada in this moment.
She’s waiting her entire life to meet her dad and not only does he not recognise her, he mistakes her for an enemy.

Sarada starts giving Sasuke the third degree, but just like Sakura, Sasuke is cagey and refuses to answer. Sarada runs off and Naruto tried to comfort her by telling her that telling her that Sasuke is the strongest shinobi there is.

Considering how disillusioned Sarada is by the whole ninja thing, this isn’t exactly much comfort to her.

However, it isn’t Sasuke who Sarada is depressed about in this scene, it’s Sakura.

(I really love these panels where Sarada and Sakura thinking of each other at the same time. Their feelings really are connected.)

Sasuke didn’t answer when she asked him if Sakura was her real mother and now she’s more uncertain than ever.

At that moment, they are attacked by Shin and Sasuke steps in to save Sarada. This is where Sarada gets to see Sasuke fight for the first time and she is impressed.

Sarada is stunned when Sasuke is struck and weakened by Shin’s metal blade things. After all, Lord Seventh had just told her that Papa was the strongest shinobi there is.

and that’s when Sakura comes out of nowhere to defend her hubby and beloved daughter.

It’s important to note Sarada likely hasn’t seen Sakura fight much either. This may be her first time she sees Sakura outside her role as a mother and head doctor of Konoha.

This is the first Sarada is seeing both of her parents together at the same time. It should be a happy moment, but it’s not. They’re still not being entirely open with her. Even when they’re discussing the situation, they’re talking to each other not to her.

Just as it looks like Sasuke is about to say something to Sakura, Shin kidnaps her and teleports away.

This makes for a sad little salad. She may be mad at her parents for not being truthful with her and she may still have suspicions about her parents, but she still loves her mother more than anything in the world.

Which makes it all the more heartbreaking when she thinks Sakura isn’t her real mother.

Speaking of that. I want to talk about Sarada’s reaction to the botched DNA test for a bit, the lowest point for her in the story.

Of course Sarada should have been suspicious when she perfectly matched with Karin. Even if she was her real mother, she would only share 50% of her dna with her.

But look at what Sarada just went through. She met her father for the first time and he mistook her for an enemy, her mother was kidnapped, and now she thinks that her mother isn’t her mother at all. She’s not exactly in the right headspace at this moment.

And she’s 11.

Naruto and Suigetsu should have suspicious about the “perfect match” too, but... it’s Naruto and Suigetsu.

Imagine going through your whole life raised by one woman and suddenly you “discover” that she’s not your real mother.

Anyway, here’s where I’m going to get personal.

I want to talk about how I relate to Sarada on a personal level.

When I was eight years old, my mother died very suddenly. Losing someone so central to your existence is traumatising beyond belief especially when it’s sudden and without warning.

Imagine you’re just a normal kid who only cares about normal kid things. And suddenly one of the most important people in your life just disappears with no explanation.

I’m not sure how old Sarada was when Sasuke left. I believe that it’s intentionally left vague by Kishimoto to help the audience relate to her.

Sarada has a blurry memory of Sasuke helping her to walk. Most people don’t have memories from before the age of three and even those memories aren’t solid, so that’s when I personally believe Sasuke left.

However, it’s possible that Sarada was a little older than we think she was. Traumatic events, such as a parent leaving, can cause children to repress memories as a coping mechanism.

When my mother died, I stopped thinking about her altogether because even the happy memories were painful for me.

As an adult, I have completely blocked out the years of childhood shortly after my mother’s death. I am slowly starting to deal with those years of my life, but I don’t know if I will ever fully process them.

Something that supports the idea that Sarada may have been older when Sasuke left is that the Boruto opening shows her playing with Sasuke before he disappears.

During this little vignette, she looks to be around the age she was during the kiss/poke conversation, and she already has her glasses.
Of course that might just be SP taking poetic license

When Sarada “finds out” that Sakura isn’t her real mother, she feels betrayed by everyone. She’s angry to the point that she doesn’t want to save her mother and wants to run off and abandon the village.

Sarada’s reaction is extreme, but understandable.

For a long time I assumed that my mother had died due to a health condition that I knew she had. A few years later, I learned the truth about how she died when I was snooping through my dad’s papers.

That information destroyed me. My mother’s death had radically changed me as a person. My family hadn’t exactly lied to me, but they hadn’t told me the truth about an event that defined me as a person. I felt betrayed by every single adult in my life.

As an adult, I understand why no one told me the truth. I was far too young to deal with something like that.

To recap, Sarada has just found out (or so she thinks) that her mother didn’t actually give birth to her. She’s been lying to her for her entire life. She thinks she just found out that her dad cheated on her mother and left her to raise her on her own.

Sarada is at her lowest moment here. Even though she just learned “the truth” about her mother, she’s more confused about her identity than ever. And to compound this confusion, she’s subject to a successive wave of events that contradict the information she just learned.

When Orochimaru suggests that Sakura could be killed by Shin, Sasuke responds by saying that Sakura can handle herself well. Sarada can see that he clearly respects Sakura and her abilities.

This confuses the hell out of her and she reflects on this as well the interaction she witnessed between Sasuke and Sakura from earlier.

Sarada wonders how Sasuke truly feels about Sakura. He clearly respects her, but he had a baby with another woman?

When they arrive at the hideout, Sarada witnesses Sasuke and Sakura involved in a tender moment. Again, he reiterates his respect for her abilities and tenderly helps her up. Sakura calls him dear and gazes at him lovingly.

It makes Sarada happy to see them like this. They clearly do love each other after all.

god my mind is blanking and I can’t remember what that little eyeball dude’s name. But Sarada punches it into oblivion, cracking the ground in the process. The first sign we get that she inherited Sakura’s abilities.

Upon seeing the army of Shin clones, Sakura pushes Sarada back to protect her. But Sakura is clearly injured and weak from her battle with Shin. So Sarada takes matters into her own hands and leaps forward to protect Sakura.

In a move deeply reminiscent of Sakura, Sarada punches the ground and knocks out the army of Shin clones in one fell swoop. Sakura, Chocho, and Naruto are stunned by this. Sasuke is proud that inherited her Mama’s strength.

but no one is more stunned than Sarada. She stares at her fist, unable to believe she really just did THAT.

Sakura tells Sarada that of course she’s her real child, though Sarada is kinda still kinda confused. So she asks Sasuke really loves her mother and says yes. Sarada remains unconvinced and asks for proof and Sasuke tells her that her existence of proof of his and Sakura’s love.

What Sasuke means here(since so many people seem to have trouble understanding this very simple line) is that Sarada was born because Sasuke and Sakura loved each other. This completely puts to rest all of Sarada’s doubts about her parentage and her parents’ love for each other.

Funny how an eleven year old girl can understand this, but certain people in this fandom can’t.

With everything resolved, the reunited Uchiha family heads home and they have a nice family dinner together. And I assume at some point, they filled Sarada in on the “Karin helped Sakura give birth when Sakura went in labor and that’s why she has Sarada’s umbilical cord” thing.

Let’s look back at how Sarada started this story. She was going through an identity crisis. She was reaching the end of her training, but she was complete disillusioned by being a ninja and wasn’t even sure if she wanted that life.

She knew nothing about her father or his family, she doubted her parents’ relationship and marriage, and she wasn’t even sure if her mother was really her biological mother.

This is illustrated perfectly by the family photo from the first chapter. It’s not so much a family photo as it is a collage, with each member of her family in their own compartment. It perfectly encapsulates Sarada’s physical and emotional distance from her parents.

At beginning of this story, Sarada didn’t know who she really was. She knew nothing about her past, her present, or her future.

But as she looks upon the new family photo in the closing chapters of Gaiden, she knows exactly who she is and what her place in the world is.

She is Sarada Uchiha, the beloved daughter of Sasuke and Sakura Uchiha.

She is a descendant of the Uchiha clan.

She is Konoha’s future Hokage.

If you made it to the end of this thread, thank you! I’ll be making more threads in the future about why Sarada wants to be hokage, her respective relationships with Sasuke and Sakura, their bond as a family, and maybe some other stuff too.

In the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy, and support BLM. It’s what Sarada would want.