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ashmacg · 16 days ago

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Checking All the Angles: Once More Unto the Pair of Queer-Pairs Sexy Jutsu, Or: How I Looked Closer and Learned that Sakura is Very-Subtly Written as a WLW (~Bi)

There is a great analysis here about the manga pages depicting Konohamaru showing Naruto his new Sexy Jutsu variants, Girl-on-Girl and Boy-on-Boy. These are the pages in question:

What user sasukekys points out in these is the fact that Sakura has a nosebleed from seeing Sasuke and Sai's likenesses being intimate, whereas when seeing the likenesses of two girls being intimate, Naruto has no nosebleed. In the Naruto universe, nosebleeds signify perviness by way of sexual arousal by way of sexual attraction...or something like that. In the Shinobiverse, nosebleed == 😍🥵.

Aside from this minor difference in detail, Sakura's and Naruto's excited faces look virtually identical in expression, with only the the hair, eyebrow, eyelash, and whisker differences to distinguish the characters. Everything else is the same—the round white voids for eyes, the spots of blush, the crease between the inner cheeks and eye area caused by the big, crazy smile, right down to the single bead of sweat on the outside of the left cheek/sideburns area. Why the different number of visible upper teeth, I can't say...maybe Naruto's luck was low that day. It could be a visual reference I'd have to be Japanese to fully understand.

What I'm certain of is that Kishi had to be looking at whichever he drew first for reference when he was drawing the second, so the one significant difference, the nosebleed missing from Naruto, must be intentional. I even have ADHD and I can't imagine I'd let something like that get past me in a published OC work if it were a mistake. We can assume from this that Naruto doesn't feel all of the same things seeing unclothed women that Sakura feels seeing unclothed men.

Q.E.D., Naruto is not sexually attracted to women. Sakura is sexually attracted to men.

Both appear to have raging aesthetic attraction to the opposite binary sex, although with Sasuke and Sai there remains something to be said for male femininity. But recall also that Sakura nosebled to this helluva show that Naruto had worked harder on to perfect than he did the Rasengan:

Naruto certainly has a peculiar relationship with the male gaze, seeing as he transforms himself into a buxom unclothed woman for gags, especially to flummox straight & pervy men; and certainly has a peculiar relationship with the sort of male gaze he possesses, seeing as he flummoxed an Outsutsuki Ten-Tails Jinchuuriki with at least eleven very attractive men of varying appearance (heh, this jutsu goes to eleven...). He has a number of other issues with his sexuality; and one such indication in the subtext happens in this scene:

Now, let's look at another pair of cells from the Konohamaru scene:

The panel on the left is Sakura's reaction to the Girl-on-Girl version.

The panel on the right is Naruto's reaction to the Boy-on-Boy.

There are only slight differences between the panels; specifically, the images are different to show who is who, of course—and Sakura's mouth contorts a bit differently, but the theme is the same.

As is the sweating...down to the number and general placement of sweat beads on the face. Flop sweat re: performative hetero? Stress? Anxiety? Shame? Fear? Arousal? All of the above?

With only the evidence presented thus far, we can conclude that either of the following two pairs of statements is true:

Naruto is homosexual, w/ internalized homophobia. Sakura is bisexual or similar (WLM + WLW at least), also w/ internalized homophobia.

Naruto is asexual, with socialized homophobia. Sakura is straight, with socialized homophobia.

Now, if we delve into Naruto's sexuality a bit more...

These images come from here and here, respectively:

The first of those two links immediately above is incredibly comprehensive upon the subject of Naruto's sexuality, and considering that Naruto's homoromantic affection for Sasuke is as obvious as it is, we can apply in addition to these details the fact that the reported percentage of humans who are not straight (as defined by sexual attraction) is on the order of 10-20% while the reported percentage of humans who are asexual is on the order of 1%. Naruto is a lot more likely to be homosexual on top of being homoromantic than being asexual and homoromantic, from a strictly statistical standpoint.

Additionally interesting is that nowhere in this scene in Chapter 347 (Comiko.net) does Sakura explicitly call out Konohamaru and Naruto for degrading women, and her facial reaction to the Girl-on-Girl conveys more disgust than anger—and Naruto has no reason to feel anger at his gender being objectified (that's not something men are concerned about as women are), yet his face is the same and he even says the Boy-on-Boy is "disgusting". Sakura calls what K and N are doing perverted, but she does not mention it to be misogynistic. She does not look at Konohamaru's pair of bare naked ladies and think of misogyny and objectification of women, but rather of the same type of concept as whatever Naruto is thinking about the gay boys.

That is to say, the fact that Sakura's face of disgust at the lesbian scene is virtually verbatim of gay boy Naruto's face of disgust at the gay scene rather indicates that Sakura feels precisely the same way about sapphic homosexuality that Naruto feels about achillic homosexuality (that is, gay panic from internalized homophobia).

We can thus eliminate the second pair of statements above from our consideration.

If Naruto doesn't make sense as ace, then Sakura cannot make sense as straight.

From the aforementioned reasoning we may deduce, my dear Watsons, that:

Naruto is full gay (duh) and Sakura is attracted to women and not comfortable with it.

Q.E.D., Sakura is a wlw. and also attracted to men/she's also a wlm but that's not the point of this post

Other Thoughts:

Kakashi:

Left, GoG. Right, BoB. Discuss (cuz honestly I'm not sure where to start). Probs straight, but...hmm....

Sai:

No physiological response whatsoever. Ace.

#naruto #naruto analysis #sakura #sakura haruno #lgbtq+#bisexual #lesbian #gay #wlw #kakashi hatake #queer #sai yamanaka #asexual #NONE of this was EVER accidental #Checking All the Angles

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ashmacg · 11 hours ago

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Real Talk Time:

Let's collectively stop believing in this idea that Kishimoto wrote Naruto and Sasuke romantically by accident or even that he simply did not.

He did.

He could only have done so, and intentionally.

I honestly have no clue why this "Accidentally Gay Narusasu" idea is still so persistent after the entire manga run of Naruto is complete and more romantic tropes are being set up for those two in Boruto….

The word you need to know is Shinjuu, and mainly the late-Edo connotation of "lovers' suicide". Look up the blogs badgalsasuke, sasukekys, narutouzumakiarchive, and youweremygoal on here. They discuss the application of the Shinjuu tropes, especially in the Gokage Summit Arc, and the themes and even characters' lines of Monzaemon's The Love Suicides at Amijima are heavily used as inspiration, right down to having a physical bridge present in the scene. It cannot by any rational stretch of the imagination be unintentional. Such specific themes and text-to-text references cannot be accidents.

What we need to understand as people of the English-speaking world is that the Japanese media establishment is very backwards-thinking at the decision-making levels. They generally don’t half-sincerely include token minority characters like the guilt-ridden West does in Hollywood. Queer-coded characters have often been played for laughs and the likes of Shounen JUMP will not publish works with explicitly queer characters, and if they are starting to, they sure as heck didn't when the Naruto manga was in full swing in the aughts. To get around this, mangaka will heavily imply queerness using themes that the SJ editors won't readily pick up on or don't think will cause a stir in the mainstream fandom. That's what Kishi did. He wrote a shounen just queer enough for people to notice that the implied gay romance is too heavily implied to be accidental or illusory when it was completed—and in the first quarter of the 21st century it has become the sort of global hit that a BL could never be until…maybe the second or third quarter of the century, assuming Japan doesn't backslide the way the Imperial Core countries currently are.

Furthermore and finally—to deny that SNS was intentionally written romantically is to fail to recognize the unique barriers Japanese queer folk face to affirming queer rep in media and what creators will do to circumvent those barriers. It is important that we understand the gravity of Kishi's work, rather than insult the work he put into it by insinuating that he was writing it w/o a care in the world.

It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know for sure that just [cannot possibly be] so.

Knowledge is knowing that Kishimoto did not, and will never, have any romantic intentions for Naruto and Sasuke. But wisdom is knowing that there is not a single heterosexual explanation for Naruto and Sasuke’s dynamic.

#naruto #narusasu #naruto analysis #sasunaru #gay #queer media #happy pride 🌈#lgbtq+#japanese literature

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