Sakura Haruno is a divisive character within the Naruto fandom and the broader anime community. On the one hand, she’s a prominent and sympathetic female protagonist in a genre almost wholly dominated by male characters. On the other hand, she’s sidelined pretty quickly so the story can focus more on its other protagonists and she’s defined by her attraction to Sasuke for the majority of the story. However, many fans of the series still love her for her heart-wrenching story arc, and all of her incredible and bizarre abilities.
Like a lot of characters in Naruto, Sakura is capable of inhuman feats and can perform both incredibly destructive and lifesaving actions with relative ease. While her superhuman anatomy grants her several amazing abilities at the start of the series, these skills are further honed as the story goes on and she completes extensive medical training. By the end of Naruto and in her appearances in the sequel series, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Sakura is able to perform techniques that are unknown to the vast majority of the other characters.
Sakura’s anatomy is pretty incredible and multifaceted even by Naruto standards, and she has plenty of tricks up her sleeve when it comes to combat, medical work, or getting through her daily life. It’s hard to say how much more of them we will see now that the series is now focusing on the exploits of the next generation of ninjas, but what fans did witness was nothing short of incredible. These 20 physical abilities and traits help Sakura stand out in a world filled with a huge variety of bizarre characters.
Here are 20 Crazy Secrets About Sakura’s Anatomy.
20 Her Genetics Allow Her To Use Chakra
While it’s a pretty commonly known that ninjas in Naruto use chakra – a spiritual energy present in real-world martial arts and mythologies – to perform superhuman acts and mystical attacks, few people in the Naruto universe are actually able to use these abilities.
Everyone in the world of Naruto possesses a chakra network in their body and it acts similarly to a nervous system, but few characters have one advanced enough to learn these incredible techniques. Sakura is one of the few people in the world who has a large enough chakra reserve and a developed enough chakra network to use the energy to enhance her physical strength, command the elements, and heal others and herself with ninjutsu.
19 She Resists different Poisons
Continuing the oddly prevalent trend of heroes having an extremely high metabolic tolerance to intoxicants, Sakura is almost totally immune to poisons and alcohol. According to trivia notes from Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, drugs have little effect on the pink-haired kunoichi.
Similar to Marvel Comics’ Captain America and Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, inebriating substances are extremely ineffective against her. This component of her anatomy is extremely useful as many assailants in Naruto dip their weapons in venom, or utilize poison smog to surprise and damage unsuspecting enemies in battle. Sure, it might make it a little harder to have a fun night out, but the immunity to lethal substances is totally worth it.
18 She Looks Nothing Like Her Parents
Many longtime fans of Naruto were shocked by the character designs of Sakura’s parents when they finally appeared in the film Road To Ninja: Naruto The Movie. Their designs aren’t particularly appealing or interesting, and they look absolutely nothing like their daughter.
Neither of them have pink hair, turquoise colored eyes, or her eye shape. Sure, it’s totally possible that as Sakura gets older she’ll start to look more like one or both of her parents, but that’s not likely as she’s currently in her early to mid-thirties and still has her own distinct look. Who knows, though, maybe looks skip a generation and Sakura’s daughter Sandara will look more like her maternal grandparents as time goes on.
17 She’s More Comfortable In A Baby Heel
In the official animation notes for Naruto Shippuden, Studio Pierrot – the animation studio behind the entirety of the series – the animators describe how Sakura is usually depicted a centimeter taller than her actual, because of the heels she wears.
This means that during the entire second half of the Naruto anime, Sakura is beating up ridiculously powerful enemies and performing superhuman acts while wearing baby heels. Granted, this bit of information is a bit trivial and might just be the animation team pandering to fans curious about Sakura’s design, but it’s also a lot of fun to imagine Sakura kicking but while dressed her best and wearing the footwear she’s most comfortable in.
16 Her Chakra Enhances Her Strength
Throughout Naruto, other characters describe Sakura as having a level of physical strength that few others in this world possess. That’s because she possesses the rather uncommon ability to directly enhance her physical attacks by enhancing her muscles with her chakra.
While most ninjas in Naruto need to transform their body create blasts of energy to destroy something, Sakura can do it with just her fists. This ability was immensely useful in her fight against Sasori at the beginning of Naruto Shippuden, as the puppet master was caught completely off guard by the young woman’s monstrous strength. Her unique and hidden ability to rapidly increase her physical prowess is a cornerstone of her fighting style and a visual treat when she participates in a battle.
15 Her Tattoo Magnifies Her Powers
The diamond shaped tattoo that appears on Sakura’s forehead at the end of Naruto and all throughout Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is both a homage to her teacher, Tsunade, and a hidden means to drastically enhance her abilities. This tattoo is actually a seal that contains an immense amount of chakra, as she donated a tiny amount of the energy to the seal every day until she chooses to release it all at once.
This allows her to heal her own wounds instantaneously, rapidly treat other people’s injuries, and further enhance her strength and ninjutsu. This ability temporarily elevates Sakura to one of the strongest characters in the series, and this secret feature of her anatomy can quickly turn certain defeat into likely victory.
14 She’s Proficient in Both Earth and Water Techniques
Ninjas in Naruto are able to manipulate their chakra into different elements through rigorous training. While anyone can use a technique that corresponds to any of the five basic elements, not everyone can utilize an element to its fullest potential. Most characters can only fully utilize a single element, but Sakura is capable of using both earth and water based techniques to their fullest potential.
It’s rather uncommon for a single character to have an affinity for multiple elements in Naruto, and Sakura’s mastery of two elements is a terrific boon to her combat abilities. Even if she can’t combine the elements like a few other characters in the franchise, this hidden facet of her anatomy is still pretty useful in battle.
13 Her Forehead is Legendary
Sakura has an unusually big forehead for a character drawn in Naruto’s rather distinctive art style. When she was a kind she was pretty self-conscious of this feature of her’s until her friend Ino helped her overcome this insecurity.
Although, once the two became rivals, Ino would tease Sakura about her larger forehead and call her things like billboard brow. Even if her large forehead is mentioned less and less as the series goes on, she still one of, if not the biggest, forehead in the entire series. This low-key holding of this status is pretty fun and a nice reminder of the series’ goofier origins as the story gets progressively more serious and grandiose.
12 She’s Makes For a Great Puppet
Towards the beginning of Naruto Shippuden, Sakura and the elderly ninja Chiyo battle against the evil puppet master Sasori. Sakura is initially taken aback by the evil ninja’s horrific and deadly puppets until Chiyo – a puppet master herself – attaches chakra threads to Sakura and uses her as a human puppet to combat their adversary.
Sakura is a great puppet because of her incredible strength, immense durability, and chakra sensitivity that allows her to react immediately to any command. While she does eventually stand alone against the puppet master, her combination attacks with Chiyo are extremely powerful. This early fight in Naruto Shippuden does a great job setting up the growing power scale of the series and showcases one of Sakura’s many hidden talents.
11 She Can Turn Her Hands Into Scalpels
No, Sakura cannot literally turn her hands into surgical instruments, but she can make them fill a similar function as medical scalpels. Sakura can essentially emit her chakra from her hands and fingers while refining her energy into an impossibly sharp blade.
This chakra scalpel is both precise enough operate on someone in the middle of a battlefield without other tools and versatile enough to use as a weapon during a confrontation with an enemy ninja. On top of being exceptional practical, this ninjutsu is outright deadly and can easily catch a foe by surprise. It could turn a narrowly avoided karate chop into a massive blow and Sakura’s possession of this ability makes her all the more dangerous.
10 She’s a Genius
Though this becomes less of a focus as the series goes on, Sakura is a certifiable genius. She graduated from the ninja academy with the highest test scores in her class by a wide margin, and she mastered medical ninjutsu in only a few short years. Moreover, she passed written exam in the Chunin Exams without having to resort to cheating.
This is particularly noteworthy, as the test was actually designed to force participants to cheat as the questions were almost impossible for the average young ninja to answer. She’s far and away one of the smartest characters on the show, and while book smarts aren’t everything in Naruto, they certainly help Sakura get ahead her competition and protect her friends.
9 Her Endurance Isn’t the Best
Everyone has a weakness, and for Sakura, that’s her rather limited stamina. As the series goes on, most of here official stats improve by leaps and bounds, but her stamina remains one of her weakest attributes. This weakness is partly alleviated by the chakra seal tattoo on her forehead, but without it, she can’t fight for very long without running out of energy.
Sakura’s less sturdy constitution requires her to finish off her fights quickly, which explains why most of her attacks are quick and powerful blows. Her limited amount of chakra is definitely a shortcoming of her’s, but it did lead to one of the most unique and visually appealing fighting styles in all of the Naruto series.
8 She Has An Affinity for Sweet Foods
Somewhat surprising considering her extensive medical and health-related background, Sakura really likes super sweet, syrupy food. Her favorite foods include syrup coated red bean dumplings, umeboshi – a kind of sweet pickled plum, and anmitsu – a fruit, jelly dessert.
While each of these foods are delicious in moderation, it’s hard to imagine someone eating this kind of sugary food very often without getting sick of it. People say that variety is the spice of life, although Sakura does not care for spicy food whatsoever. While her natural preference for sweet food may seem a bit trivial, it’s kind of interesting that this battle-hardened, child soldier still prefers desserts to any other kind of food.
7 She Might Have a Split Personality
Over the course of Naruto, and especially in the earlier parts of the series, the show will cut to ‘inner Sakura’ whenever Sakura expresses an opinion that doesn’t totally line up with her actual beliefs. Sakura lies a lot at the start of the series about how she’s feeling and what she thinks of something, so that she can make a good impression on others and keep up her more polite appearance.
However, her inner Sakura persona is so well developed that it as able to beat up Ino when the young woman possessed Sakura’s body during the Chunin Exams. While inner Sakura probably won’t show up again in the anime anytime soon, the juxtaposition between what she expresses and her actual views is always a fun treat.
6 She Can Memorize Information and Patterns Easily
As a hobby, Sakura enjoys playing trivia games and memorizing medical information that’s useful to her position as a medical ninja – which is functionally the equivalent of an army medic in actual military organizations. These more unusual hobbies further establish Sakura’s natural ability to learn and retain information as well as patterns.
It also shows how hardworking she is, as even in her free time she is studying potentially life-saving material that could make a world of difference in an emergency situation. With these hobbies, Sakura is making the most of her natural talent for memorization and enhancing her general knowledge as well as further preparing to treat any harm that might befall her teammates.
5 SHE CAN PULL POISON OUT OF SOMEONE
Towards the beginning of Naruto Shippuden, the puppet ninja Kankuro is poisoned by the evil puppet master Sasori. His passing is all but assured, until Sakura makes an incision on his abdomen and then sucks a large amount of the poison out of his body through the cut and into her hand by manipulating her chakra.
Not only does this allow her to analyze the poison more easily, it also drastically increases a patient’s chance of survival by slowing the effects of the poison. This ability of Sakura’s is incredibly useful for her medical practice, as well as a great way for the anime to demonstrate how much she’s grown during the time skip between Naruto and Naruto Shippuden.
4 SHE CAN INCREASE HER CELL DIVISION
By releasing the chakra seal on her forehead, Sakura is able to further magnify her body’s natural abilities in a similar way to how she uses her chakra to temporarily boost her physical strength. While using this ability, Sakura is able to use chakra to manipulate every cell in her body and force them to divide at a rapidly increased speed. This allows her to heal from otherwise fatal wounds instantaneously and continue to fight or aid her teammates.
However, similar to her teacher Tsunade, this technique shortens the life of her cells and will cause her to age rapidly if overused. This ability is almost certainly one of Sakura’s most powerful techniques, but the tradeoff for using it is also more severe than nearly any jutsu in Naruto.
3 HER HAND SIGNS
Over the course of the Naruto series, Sakura improves in nearly every aspect used to measure a ninja’s abilities. However, her ability to form hand signs quickly and accurately – which is necessary to perform a ninja technique – stays at a ranking of four in each evaluation.
Considering nimble and precise hand motions are necessary to perform surgeries and other procedures in the medical field, it’s odd that her ability in this field doesn’t rise as time goes on. However, considering her four out of five score is already higher than most other characters in the series, it seems like she may have just reached her peak proficiency in this field at a young age.
2 SHE CAN HEAL THROUGH SLUGS
Many characters in Naruto can summon a variety of different and bizarre animals to aid them in battle or their daily lives. After training with Tsunade, Sakura can summon a massive slug to fight by her side or aid her with healing her allies.
The giant slug’s name is Katsuyu and she is able to divide herself into many smaller versions of herself to form a hive mind of thousands of slugs. These slugs can then attach themselves to wounded ninjas and Sakura can send her healing energy through them to the wounded fighters. It might be a slimy and gross way to recover from injuries, but Sakura uses this technique towards the end of Naruto to save countless lives during the Fourth Shinobi War.
1 She’s in Great Shape even in boruto
Sakura and Sasuke married – or at least began a long-term relationship – when the two of them were in their early twenties. Their daughter is currently twelve years old in Boruto, meaning that Sakura is at least in her early to mid-thirties. However, she doesn’t look like she’s much older than her mid-twenties.
After enduring countless injuries, having a child, and coping with the emotional stress of living through multiple near-passing situations; it’s incredible that she doesn’t look the least bit haggard or worn down. It seems like her incredible genes allow her to take all of these events in stride and retain her youthful appearance while entering this stage of her life.
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Are there any strange things about Sakura’s body we missed from Naruto? Let us know in the comments down below!