Sakura Haruno

In the Land of Waves, Sakura spends most of the mission guarding Tazuna while the boys fight. In the Chūnin Exams, she's the one left standing when Naruto and Sasuke go down in the Forest of Death. The Sound ninja grab her by her long hair, which she grew out because Sasuke liked it, and Sakura cuts it off with a kunai to fight.

In the preliminaries she faces Ino. They trade punches, Ino tries to take over her mind and fails, and the match ends in a draw with both knocked out. Sakura decides she won't depend on others anymore.

The night Sasuke leaves the village, Sakura waits for him at the gate, confesses her love and begs him to take her along or stay. He thanks her, appears behind her and leaves her unconscious on a bench. Earlier, during the Sand and Sound invasion, Gaara's sand had pinned her to a tree, and Naruto was the one who saved her. The morning after Sasuke leaves, she tearfully asks Naruto to bring Sasuke back, and he promises.

The mission fails and Naruto comes back hurt. Sakura realizes she can't just wait and goes to Tsunade to ask to become her apprentice.

Two and a half years later, Sakura is a medical ninja with Tsunade's monstrous strength. When Naruto comes back, the two retake the bell test against Kakashi and win this time; one of her punches splits the training ground. On the mission to rescue Gaara, she reaches the Sand in time to draw Sasori's poison out of Kankuro and make an antidote. Then she teams up with old Chiyo against Sasori of the Akatsuki, the puppet master who is Chiyo's grandson. Sakura counters the poison, dodges blades guided by Chiyo's threads and smashes the puppets with her fists.

Sasori dies, and before he goes he reveals he has a spy inside Orochimaru's camp, a lead toward Sasuke. In the end, Chiyo gives her life to revive Gaara.

Sasuke attacks Killer Bee and storms the Kage summit, and the Leaf starts treating him as a criminal. Sakura finds Naruto in the Land of Iron and tells him she loves him now, to free him from his promise. Naruto sees through the lie and turns her down.

Sakura then goes after Sasuke with a poisoned kunai, set on settling it herself. When the moment comes, she hesitates. Sasuke turns his Chidori on her, and Kakashi is the one who saves her.

In the war, Sakura works at the Alliance's medical post until she heads to the front line against the Ten-Tails. There she reveals what she's been storing up for years: the Byakugō seal, the Strength of a Hundred Seal, the same as Tsunade's, built by gathering chakra in her forehead every day. With it she heals and hits at the same time.

When Sasuke reaches the battlefield, the three fight together again and Kakashi sees Team 7 reunited.

Sakura keeps Naruto alive with her own hands when Madara rips the beasts' chakra out of him, while a remorseful Obito helps give him back half of Kurama. Against Kaguya, her punch, landed at the right moment, helps open the way for the sealing.

Before that last fight, Sakura tells Sasuke how she feels once more, and he traps her in a genjutsu to get her out of the way. Afterward, she reaches the Valley of the End and heals them both. Sasuke apologizes to her. When he leaves the village to atone, she asks to come along. He says no, but their goodbye gives her more hope than ever.

Kishimoto has said he struggled to draw girls and that Sakura and Sasuke were the hardest characters in the series. Her big forehead, which Ino loves to mock, started as a drawing accident and became her trademark. For her outfits, he went for practical clothes with shorts underneath so she could move in fights. Chie Nakamura voices her in Japanese and Kate Higgins in English.