The Infuriatingly Wasted Potential of Lady Tsunade

You could legitimately take most of the women in Naruto right out of Naruto, and it would pretty much be the exact same show.

Which is pretty insane.

Naruto is known for being a staple in the anime community. Being one of the Big Three, beside powerhouse shows Bleach and One Piece, Naruto is an immense success story of an anime about a determined young ninja who wants to become Hokage, the leader of the Leaf Village.

Naruto is known for many things. Its solid villains. Its emotional depth. Its inevitable need to show the audience a character’s sad backstory over and over again. And yes, it’s heartwrenching every time.

However, it’s also known for something a little more unfortunate: its terrible female characters.

A majority of the Naruto fanbase hates Sakura, the female lead of the show. I’ve actually had to hop on the Sakura defense a few times, despite the fact that she’s pretty inarguably a bad character, because the hate train can get that out of hand. It’s hard for some people to agree that she has even one good moment in the entire show—which says something, because the anime is over 700 episodes.

Sakura’s a not-so-great character for a number of reasons. The main one is that her only thing is really loving Sasuke, and that’s her entire character. Take that away from her and she just might crumble into dust.

She’s also pretty mean a lot of the time, which isn’t a good look when your entire character is as vapid as hers is. She calls Naruto a stupid orphan and a loser and stuff like that, which is pretty crappy and out of pocket. She grows out of it eventually, but still.

But hey, at least that gave her a quality that wasn’t loving Sasuke.

Additionally, Sakura kind of just stands in the background for most of the show while the other two main characters, Naruto and Sasuke, grow and develop both in strength and as characters. Sakura gets stronger and kinder along the way, but it’s too little, too late. And she never overcomes being defined by her crush on Sasuke, literally ever. She doesn’t even try.

And then there’s Hinata.

Naruto fans will look you dead in the face and tell you Hinata is a good character. It’s actually buck wild.

Let me reiterate. Naruto fans—mostly male Naruto fans, who seem to just love Hinata to the goddamn moon and back—will not only tell you that Hinata is a better character than Sakura (which is debatable, and honestly, probably not even true), but that she is a character that is good.

They are sorely mistaken.

Make no mistake: Hinata is more likable than Sakura a lot of the time. She’s very shy and soft-spoken, whereas Sakura is more brash and assertive and, at times, kind of bitchy. She’s the nicer person for sure. Hinata is very lovely and sweet. But as a character, she is no better.

The unfortunate truth is that a lot of male fans like Hinata just because she’s submissive and loyal to Naruto. And that’s her entire character. Are we seeing a theme here?

But while Sakura gets hit with the useless allegations, and rightfully so, Hinata doesn’t receive that same flack—even though in the show, she’s even more useless than Sakura. Sakura is a main character, so she has to become somewhat strong; that’s to be expected. But Hinata never really does. She has this big moment in the war arc where she uses a move her (male) cousin was able to use when he was twelve, which was pretty cringey and embarrassing of the writer. At least try to hide your misogyny, man.

You can argue Hinata was never a prodigy or a fighter, blah, blah—and that’s true. But not only is she not a good fighter, she’s not good at anything. The only thing she’s good at, sadly, is having a crush on Naruto.

Like Sakura, Hinata has a very scarce number of good moments. Her main best character moment is when she jumps in during Naruto’s fight with Pain, a fearsome and powerful antagonist, and is killed by him—for love. (She’s brought back, don’t worry—it’s an anime.) It’s super centered around her loving Naruto, and it’s her best moment by far. Sigh.

It is cute, though.

But I don’t want to talk about any of the bad female characters Naruto has to offer. I want to talk about one of the only good ones it has to offer. And that’s Lady Tsunade.

Tsunade is the Hokage for a good portion of the story, meaning she is the leader of the Leaf Village where Naruto and company live. It’s the highest ranked job in the village.

Personally, I am a huge Tsunade fan. I think Tsunade is immensely awesome and cool, powerful and brave, beautiful and strong in equal measure. I love her fighting style. I love her character design. I love how fierce and contemplative she is, and I love the aura she exudes. I love Tsunade.

But is Tsunade just a good female character by Naruto standards, or is she actually a character that is good overall?

It’s the age old question, and here’s my answer.

Compared to the other female characters in Naruto, Tsunade is an extremely solid character. However, Tsunade, compared to her male peers and counterparts, is the very definition of wasted potential. And that absolutely breaks my Tsunade-loving heart.

Let’s delve into it.

Tsunade is the best, most skilled doctor in the entire village. We are explicitly told that in the story arc when we meet her for the first time.

That’s pretty awesome, right? I sure thought it was.

Tsunade does a ton of awesome stuff with her healing powers. She heals the entire village when it’s basically cratered by Pain, a powerful antagonist. She has this giant slug that can divide into hundreds and thousands of baby slugs that go around healing anyone who needs it. It’s great.

We can excuse the fact that almost all of the healers/medics in Naruto are in fact women—because what are women supposed to do, fight? Hell no. They can just stay back and heal the men so that they can go do the cool fighting stuff.

Even so, medics are a necessity, and they’re cool in their own way. And that’s still a pretty broken and awesome thing: to be the very best at your craft. The greatest doctor in the entire village. That’s who Tsunade is. Fuck yeah.

Until we learn that actually, she’s not. She never was.

Actually, it was her grandfather who was truly the greatest doctor of all time—way better than Tsunade could ever dream of being, apparently. He was capable of such insane healing techniques with so little effort that in contrast, Tsunade—and one of her grandfather’s associates literally says this to her during battle—is merely a weak woman.

Okay, awesome. Cool.

So Tsunade isn’t actually the best doctor—she’s just really, really good at medical ninjutsu. She’s the best living doctor in the village. That’s still cool. We can still take it.

And luckily, Tsunade isn’t just a great healer—she’s also insanely strong. She can knock walls down with a single punch and crack the very ground open with a single kick. She’s absolutely broken.

The sheer manpower she possesses in pure strength is unlike anything we see before we meet her. Her physical abilities are insane. She must be one of the strongest characters with capabilities like that—right?

Nope. Wrong again.

Tsunade is strong. But even in her well-known group of three, the Legendary Sanin, Tsunade is the weakest member, and there’s kind of no contest or debate about it.

She’s still immensely powerful, there’s no denying that—which is more than pretty much any other woman in this entire verse can say, with very few exceptions. But she, the only woman, is by far the least powerful member of her team, as well as the least powerful Hokage in their prime to ever rule over the Leaf Village.

Okay. Cool.

But what about the other four villages? She’s got to be stronger than some of those leaders, right?

Wrong again, actually. Every other leader of the those villages is also stronger than her—except for, of course, the one other woman, who’s an absolutely abominable character. I won’t even talk about her.

But strength isn’t everything. What about her courage? The merit of her spirit? It must be absolutely unmatched. After all, this is a woman who faced down Madara Uchiha, one of the strongest ninja to ever live, with the utmost determination on the battlefield. She’s a legend, a Sanin—she knows war. Nothing in the world could possibly scare her.

Except that when we meet her, she has a new, very random, horrible fear of blood that cripples her so badly, she even struggles in a fight against a lackey of her contemporary.

If this fear of blood was better executed as a meaningful piece of story, it would be one thing. But this massive phobia disappears immediately after this story arc, making it feel like an excuse to cripple Tsunade’s strength. But why?

Because Naruto has no respect for the sanctity and strength of its female characters—even the good ones.

It is endlessly annoying and despicable what is done to Tsunade. She is described as the best this, the best that, the greatest this, the mighty that. But truly, the only way Tsunade stands at the top of anything, or is the best at anything, is when she is compared to the show’s other female characters, who are all lackluster.

Tsunade, who is by far the most physically capable of all the leaders of the villages, even loses an arm wrestle to the Raikage, the leader of the Cloud village. It’s a funny, dramatic scene between the two, and a significant character later states that Tsunade is in fact stronger than the Raikage, who in turn is faster than her, making them (allegedly) equals—but yet again, deep down, we are being told something and never shown it. If she’s truly phsyically stronger, why couldn’t she just have won?

It’s silly, and a little like begging for scraps, but the question is still valid since time and time again, Tsunade is bested and one-upped by a man. The one thing she should have had in the bag, the show doesn’t give to her. Why? Because the Raikage had good arm wrestling strategy? Oh my god, it’s so dumb.

There are these weird limitations where we are never shown the extent of how cool Tsunade can be, whereas we get arcs and arcs of powerful male characters being insanely strong and broken. It feels like the show refuses to validate Tsunade’s strength and have her truly excel and prosper as the powerhouse she’s described to be and occasionally is—like it doesn’t want to admit she is one at all.

All in all, I love Naruto, and I love Tsunade. But the way the story weakens and undermines her infuriates me.

Tsunade deserved better.

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Thanks for reading! If you guys watched Naruto, tell me what you think :)