Himawari is Sakura 2.0...

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]ruining a prominent female character by turning her into a hollow copy of what do I mean by that? Well, chapter 33 of Two Blue Vortex just came out and who for years has been hopefully hyped up.

[00:00:12]NOT ONLY AN IMPORTANT BUT ALSO interesting character in the Boruto story, well, is seemingly being reduced to just another punchy healer. But why?

[00:00:22]And where did this problem come from?

[00:00:24]And more importantly, why is this problem popping up with Heimari, the most offensive case of it yet in the Naruto universe? Well, today we're going to be answering all those questions and more because today we're talking Heimoari has been mishandled by Boruto.

[00:00:38]Before we get to talking about the mishandling of this new generation of female characters in the Naruto universe, guys, please or me like this video, subscribe to the page, and hit that noty bell. And if you're looking for one additional NC Hammer 23 video every single week, guys, you can go ahead and find my Naruto reaction series using the fourth wall link in my description below. We are on to the Konow crush arc. Before we get into all that, today we have to talk about a sponsor for today's video, BetterHelp.

[00:01:02]Listen, over the course of my 20s, I've met and befriended a lot of people. My life has changed to the point of being almost unrecognizable several times over the course of my 20s. And every time one of those major life changes comes my way, I find myself examining my relationships. Are they healing me? Are they helping me or are they draining me?

[00:01:20]Do these people who I befriended at a different part of my life still represent who I am today? Do I want them around me? Do they inspire me? However, even getting to the point where I was able to have these discussions with myself wasn't something I was immediately able to do. In multiple periods of change, I simply found myself hanging out with people and not feeling the same way I used to around them. I thought it was a me problem. I thought I was being weird. With the help of Better Help and my therapist, I realized with time that sometimes you outgrow the people in your life you met when you were objectively a different person. And as I began to realize that, I began to set boundaries with people I no longer really wanted to be around. I didn't find it necessary to show up to events being held by people I didn't really care about. And by shedding that emotional burden, I made my life substantially easier. And I wouldn't have been able to do it without Better Help. You see, because BetterHel makes starting therapy easier. All I had to do was take a quiz. is that I was matched with a therapist tailored to my needs. A therapist I could communicate with over phone, text, or video calls. However, even if the therapist I was connected to wasn't right for me, I could switch at any moment for no additional cost. And thus, I found myself very happily within the confines of the 6 million other people who have found their therapists and help on BetterHel. So, what are you waiting for? It's time to take care of the most important thing in your life, your mental health. Head to betterhelp.com/nhammer to get 10% off your first month of therapy. With Better Help, therapy can be a meaningful space to reflect, grow, and create positive change in your life.

[00:02:44]So, where does this problem with heowari start? What's the root cause? Well, unfortunately, to answer that question, we got to hop into the way, way back machine and talk about the one well-written female character in Naruto insunate. See, is by far and away the gold standard for women in the Naruto universe. And while that is a low bar, it's a low bar that she clears pretty substantially. See, outside of the fact that she created the strong, punchy healer archetype, backstory and the story beats that we see her go through through her connection to Naruto or her time AS HOKAG ARE SOME of the best in Naruto's story. She has a legitimately devastating backstory that surrounds the death of her little brother and her lover and Nawaki and Dan. She is the living embodiment of PTSD in the Naruto universe. As she becomes unable to do her job on account of her hemophobia and her life spirals into disorder, she runs away from her responsibilities and gamles her life away so that she never has to face the stark reality of what she's lost. Not to mention that outside of the story beats that brings as an individual, her tie into the legendary sonning allows for her story and her trauma to bounce off, amplify, or act as a foil to the trauma and backstories of the other two legendary sonnie. In fact, in one of our more recent videos titled the dark truth about the legendary sonning, I talked about at length about how each and every single one of the legendary sonning represents an unhealthy connection to youth. And Tsunady fits within that conversation as somebody who has an abusive relationship to youth as she literally limits her own power. She limits the amount of chakra she can use to needlessly hold on to a fragment of youth that she lost when she lost everyone she loved in the second and third grade Shinobi World Wars. And that's kind of what's beautiful about her story. She's hung up on the past.

[00:04:28]She's willing to throw her own morals and convictions out the window to work with Orochi Maru to bring her loved ones back. And that kind of character writing, though it does paint her in a not so positive light, is awesome. It gives her emotional depth as a character. Same thing that we get from her by seeing that she really seems to be the only one of the legendary Sonnian who holds on to the trauma of the war she's been through. However, even though from a character writing perspective, Sunady is a fantastic character, from a strength perspective, at least in the beginning of her story, she doesn't necessarily measure up to the mark that she had been described as. See, because, well, yes, when Jeriah and Naruto are talking about, she's actively compared to the other legendary Sanin. And her level of strength seems unobtainable when compared to that of Naruto's.

[00:05:07]Pretty immediately when put into the mix of some serious fights, she loses, best displayed by her loss to Kabuto. And while her loss to Kabuto can be marked up to her hemophobia, something that she gets over, her needing to be saved by a child Naruto isn't necessarily the best look. Not to mention, even though she's talked about as an equal to the other legendary San, she doesn't match up to an armless Orochimaru in strength, who for no reason whatsoever should pose any kind of legitimate threat to Sinade. But the beauty of Sinade's story is that these first couple of losses, well, they're fixed. Yes, she loses to Kabuto because of her hemophobia, but she gets over her hemophobia. She accepts the reality of her position as one of the legendary Sani and assumes the role of Okag. She starts learning medicine again and immediately she throws herself into becoming a better medical ninjutsu practitioner every single day by saving Choji's life by studying thericcolored pills and figuring out how to save somebody who's eaten all three. And immediately kind of becomes a model of how a woman could be written in the Naruto universe. Yeah, she's purposely drawn to look 20 at all times. And yeah, she's got huge bonkers. But when you understand her character a bit more and understand that she holds on to this fragmented idea of youth and male attention as a way to never age from the day that Dan and Noaki were still alive, her character not only becomes deep, but also compelling. And while I can sit here and say, "Oh, but she lost to Moa and Naguto." Measuring the worth of a female character based off her physical strength is inherently a very male ccentric way of deeming a character's worth. It's not her strength that matters. It's how she stands up time and time again for Konoa even in the face of superior enemies. She is the Hokag and therefore she fights for Konoa. The same as Hiroin, the same as Minato, the same as Tobyama, and the same as Hashiama.

[00:06:49]Could she beat Nagato in a fight? No.

[00:06:51]But using her healing jutsu and Lady Katsio, she was able to keep casualties to a minimum. Could she beat Mo in a fight? No. But she's the only reason the five Kag lived to see another day. And therefore, I I truly have very few qualms with how she's written as a character. In fact, a lot of people don't even understand how good of a character that she is because a lot of her best moments come from light novels.

[00:07:10]A lot of Naruto fans don't know that without her, not only would have Kakashi not created Purple Lightning, but he also never probably would have assumed the role as Hokage. Because even though she stepped down as Hokag after the fourth grade Shinobi World War, she had to rule over Konow for two years as a pseudo shadow Hokag because Kakashi wouldn't assume the role of the sixth Hokag. So, does my problem with how Naruto writes women have anything to do with? No, not really. there's a reason I have her tattooed on my tricep. She is my favorite woman from the story. No, my problem with how Kishimoto writes women is the fact that he only ever had one good idea for a female character. And he thought, well, that was good enough. I'm going to go ahead and apply that model to every prominent female character.

[00:07:48]Because, well, I get it. I'm oversimplifying here. There are other well-written female characters in Naruto. Tamari, Conan, Kusha. But when it comes down to Kishimoto writing the most prominent female character in the current iteration of Naruto, whatever it is, that being Naruto part one, Sheputin, or Boruto, women tend to all fall into the same demographic. Strong, punchy healer. Because think for a second, outside of Tsunady, who's the most prominent woman in all of Kona.

[00:08:13]It's Sakura. Obviously, Sakura plays a bigger role in Naruto as a story than Tsunady does, but within the confines of the universe, I'd say that Tsunady is a more prominent character. And this is best displayed by the fact that well Sakura is almost indistinguishable from sununade as a character. But Nick, all of team seven turned out to be like their legendary son teachers. Not really. Sure, Sasuke can summon snakes and was morally ambiguous for the majority of Chipudin. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT HE'S ANYTHING LIKE A ROCHIMARU.

[00:08:40]Sasuke isn't pursuing eternal life. He's not obsessed with snake sage mode. He isn't trying to unlock all of the jutsu.

[00:08:46]He's not even doing research. He's not a scientist. HE ISN'T SWITCHING BODIES.

[00:08:49]THAT HE doesn't even use snakebased jutsus. The literal only connection between Sasuke and Orochimaru is snake summons and well obviously the curse mark but Orochimaru doesn't have a curse mark. They just make them. Sasuke is closer to a copy of Kakashi than he is Orochi Maru. I mean after all they both have the charing gone. They both heavily rely on their chidori. They're both well known for being able to copy the moves of other people and they have no families to speak of. But even then Sasuke is different from Kakashi in a multitude of ways. From a storywriting perspective, Kakashi had every opportunity to turn his back on Konoa.

[00:09:21]Not only when Konoa shunned his father into committing un alive, but also when the Shinobi system forced both Ren and Obito into situations where they had to die. However, instead of scratching out his headband and turning his back on the leaf, Kakashi hardened himself. He was resilient. And sure, he had some bad times in the omboo and the root if you count the filler, but he always stayed loyal. Unlike Sasuke, who broke at the first sign of pressure and sure, Wubble will Sasuke and Kakashi at Mongiko Shaing Gons, their kits couldn't be less similar. Kakashi's kamoi allows him to warp things or people away, while Sasuke's kit allows for him to light things on fire. And even when it comes down to the chidori, the technique that Kakashi taught Sasuke, Sasuke usually tends to use the chidori as either a sword, a spear, or senbong. Kashi usually just tends to use it as well, the good old Chidori or Raichiri in his case. Not to mention, by the end of the story, Sasuke's heavy reliance on the Susano separates him from every iteration of Kakashi. That's not DMS Kakashi who exists for a grand total of like 8 minutes. But the grand takeaway from all of this is that Sasuke is allowed to be his own character with his own story beats. And because of that, you can see where along in his journey, he was influenced by different role models, which results in Sasuke as a character who's a menagerie of everything that's ever happened to him and everyone he's ever met. He is a living testament to the life experiences he's gone through. And that is character building. A clearly defined and understandable personality based off the experiences of that character in world.

[00:10:53]And the same exact thing can be said for Naruto. While sure Naruto learns the Rosen Ganon and Toad Sage mode from Jeriah, it's made exceedingly clear relatively early on into Naruto and Jariah's relationship that the two of them could not be less similar. While yes, they're both lovable knuckleheads who somehow got their hands on more power than anybody ever believed they would. That's kind of where their similarities stop. Naruto represents youth AND OPPORTUNITY WHILE JARIAH REPRESENTS bygone time, trauma, and the perversion of youth. Dia dies alone while Naruto thrives in the company of others. And more than anything, Naruto becomes more than the man that Jeriah left behind. He masters his connection to Kurama through his training with Killer B. And thus, we see Killer B begin to influence the story of Naruto.

[00:11:36]And thus, Naruto gains power that Jiah couldn't even dream of. And while he manifests a lot of it through his rasen gun, he also creates the rasen shuriken, which further separates him from the pervy sage. As it wasn't Jeriah who taught him how to make the rasen shuriken, it was Kakashi and Asima. And therefore, while maybe Naruto was copying Jeriah's answers on the test, he changed enough of them so the teacher will not notice. And thus, once again, like Sasuke, with time and experience, Naruto is able to separate himself from the legendary Sani who trained him. But what about Sakura? Well, she didn't get the same treatment. See, Sakura didn't separate herself from her training with Tsunady because unfortunately when it comes down to it, training with Tsunady is kind of the most important thing Sakura ever did. Well, yes, Naruto and Sasuke had reasons to move on from their legendary Sani. Sasuke killed his and Naruto's died while fighting one of his other students. I guess if anything, that's a lesson and don't train people.

[00:12:27]But Sakura never had a meaningful reason to move on from her legendary son.

[00:12:30]Tunady is alive and well, present in Konowan seemingly always has time for Sakura. And thus, because Sakura never had the opportunity to unclamp from gigantic, why would that be the comparison your brain chose, Nick?

[00:12:42]Because Sakura was never able to essentially step out of the shadow of she, she was never able to experience other people and other key events to build her personality out from under.

[00:12:54]And thus by the time that the war arc shows up and everybody's frozen is the character they entered into the war arc as Sakura and are unfortunately interchangeable characters. Osunat's too busy being cut in half to help Naruto stay alive after Kroma was ripped out of him. It's okay. Sakura's here. She can manually pump his heart. Oh, what's that? Somebody needs to summon Lady Kasio. Well, it's a good thing we built it into the only summoning animal usable by the women of the group. And even at their full strength, they can't summon the entirety of this animal. That way, Sakura andsunade have to work together to summon Lady Katio. Isn't that fun?

[00:13:24]And what's their summon do?

[00:13:26]The the exact same thing as them. Oh, okay. That's not redundant. You don't you don't care. Okay, good, good, good.

[00:13:31]Yeah. No, I mean I don't either. So now Sakura and Tsunady are around. They can be replaced by a slug. What do you mean we don't even need the slug? Who's Naruto is healing people? The chakra he granted the entire Shinobi alliance not only buffs their chakra pool, their speed, and their strength, but also their regeneration, but only FOR LIKE BUMPS AND SCRATCHES, RIGHT? LIKE WE STILL need Sakura and and the big slug, right? He just saved Mike Guy from death. Well, I mean, at least he can't regrow. He regrrew Kakashi's eyeball.

[00:14:00]Yeah. Okay. U I'll go ahead and tell Sakura andsunat they can go home early.

[00:14:04]Wait, wait. I got I got to call him back.

[00:14:07]But like surely he's been training for years, right? No, he just he just got it. I don't How do you even break that information to Sakura? Think about that for just one second. Put the shoe on the OTHER FOOT. WHAT IF IN THE FINAL MOMENTS AS NARUTO WAS about to rosen Kaga, Sakura flew in with one of her own and for some reason it was stronger than any Rosen Naruto had ever created and then just proceeded to take out Kaga with it.

[00:14:33]That is effectively what happened to Sakura. ISHIMANO HAD THE CHANCE TO GIVE Sakura a healing based powerup. He could have written that in every generation that Oscar and Indra reincarnate in, there's a woman who tries to tie them back together as a peacemaker of sorts.

[00:14:48]And he could have drawn that character who reincarnates in every single generation back to characters like Mito Usuzamaki WHO EXISTED AS A CENTRAL member of Moa and Tashiama's clash. And he could have said that this reincarnated female character in every single generation uses her healing abilities to ensure that Indra and Asha don't kill each other before they're able to make amends. And he could have tied this into the conversational point surrounding the cycle of violence. Sure, she's keeping both Assura and Indra alive, but by not choosing a side, she's also just ensuring that these two reincarnations are able to battle forever. It's It's that easy. And then boom, Sakura gets an equal slice of the pie. Doesn't even have to be a reincarnation of Haguramu's children.

[00:15:27]Just a reincarnation of a woman who tends to be involved in their stories.

[00:15:30]AND IT WOULD MAKE A TON OF SENSE. She marries Sasuke, Indra's reincarnation.

[00:15:35]Mito marries Hashiama. Acura's reincarnation. There are seemingly always women central to the struggle between Indra and Ashra throughout the generations. Important powerful women who are ignored. BUT NO, FOR SOME REASON, NARUTO gets healing abilities with his sun seal. And then to top it all off, he loses them. Healing abilities that very easily could have gone TO SAKURA.

[00:15:59]BUT INSTEAD OF DOING THAT, DARTO GETS A temporary ninja Jesus powerup that everyone hates, steals Sakura's spotlight, and robs her of an opportunity to step out of shadow, which leads to Sakura unfortunately just being a hollow, less interesting copy of. She has the same straightforward, unflashy fighting style, relying on the same physical strength and healing that relies on, but with none of the intriguing backstory.

[00:16:26]She doesn't have the trauma, the hard-hitting emotional themes, or the character arc of sununade. And that's when Naruto and Sasuke were given opportunity after opportunity to strive past their predecessors. Sakura was lost in the shadow of hers, destined to become a baby factory for a man who's hardly in the story anymore. and Sasuke as she fades away into obscurity in the Koda hospital. The strongest woman in the universe and undoubtedly one of the top three strongest people in Konawa right now who has an immunity to Genjutsu that could absolutely reintroduce her into the story in a meaningful and canonical way isn't being used in any way outside of an occasional hey everybody remember this nurse cameo.

[00:17:05]WAS HOKAG. She led Cotto through the bloodiest war in ninja history. And Sakura doesn't even get considered for the role of Hokage after Naruto disappears. And what's worse is that chapter 33 of Two Blue Vortex has made it apparent that this cycle is going to continue. But now, in a way that's objectively even more heartbreaking because it seems as though Heari is heading down a path similar to that of Sakuras. See, hopes for Himoari have always been astoundingly high, which makes a lot of sense considering the fact that the first time we ever see her, she activates her Byakugan, something we had never seen previously, and uses gentle fist to not only knock out Naruto, but also Kurama in just one strike. Yeah, it's a meme and yeah, he didn't expect it coming, but still, it was a fun moment with a potentially powerful character. And thus people began to speculate that as the daughter of somebody with both Hagur Romo and Tamura chakra and Naruto and Hinata and as somebody who's able to flip their blue eyes into Byakugan at will, there's a possibility that maybe she has enough Osutki lineage to activate something like the Tense Seeon. And more than that, when she was shown to be close to Shukaku in the anime only arc where Konawa has to protect Shukaku from Kinshiki, I in the very earliest days of this channel hypothesized that maybe she could become a ginger. And while I speculated she could be the gingerki for Shukaku, she reached to even HIGHER HEIGHTS AND IS NOW THE GINGERKI of Kurama. And this moment only added to the hype surrounding Himoari. NOT ONLY DID DON, THE STRONGEST person in the village, want to fight her when he sensed Kurama's chakra inside of her, but Kurama himself said that he and Himari were more compatible than he has ever been with any Gin Jerky ever.

[00:18:42]That's more compatible than Mito, more compatible than Kusha, more compatible than her father, Naruto. Himari was more compatible with Kurama than Narut, who is a perfect ginurki. She is beyond the level of perfect gentury. And we're still NOT ENTIRELY SURE WHAT that means.

[00:18:59]But this level of strength that exists beyond the boundary of a perfect ginger was put on full display as we saw Himari tap into her power for the first ever time in her battle against Jura.

[00:19:09]However, with this raw and unpolished version of a ginger transformation, she really stood no chance. And while this fight was hardly that, we saw some things from Himaru we had never seen before. Her ginurki transformation was closer to that of Kushinos than it was of Naruto's. Her hair stood up in nine tails. She grew tailed beast bombs from the tips of her hair just like a tail beast. She had claws like the earliest iterations of Naruto tapping into Kurama's chakra. And while she wasn't victorious in her battle against Shura, she stood a much better chance than a lot of the other people we had seen fight him. And losing a jur in a 1 v one is hardly something we can hold against anybody. Borto in the strongest iteration of Kawaki we ever saw barely stood a chance in a 2v one. So Himoari's leg getting turned into wet spaghetti.

[00:19:51]Well, that was kind of an inevitability.

[00:19:53]But in this fight, not only did she show the ability to turn her leg from wet spaghetti into I guess you wouldn't want it to be dry spaghetti al dente spaghetti, lightly cooked spaghetti. She also displayed the ability to heal enigen from a seemingly fatal wound. And unfortunately, that probably should have been our first red flag because since that moment where she saved Enigen's life, well, healing is about all that she's done. Sure, in Mamushi's invasion of Konow, we see her kill a couple of Mushi, but we also see Cho Cho kill a couple of Mamushi, so it doesn't really matter. Truly, when you get down to the brass tax of it all, the most important things we've seen Hoari do as a ginurk are heal other people.

[00:20:33]She heals Enigen, she heals Zara, she heals Boruto. And in chapter 33, WHEN SHE WAS PRIMED TO SAVE TEAM Borto from their impending doom as a ginuriki with almost limitless stamina, she's able to tap into Kurama's vast amount of chakra.

[00:20:47]Instead of backing up Boruto and Don or blowing away legions of Mushi's with her tailed beast balls, something she should have been able to do on account of the fact that they led Mamushi outside of the village, what does she get written to do? Well, heal Sora and Enigen's eyes. And well, yes, all of those HEALING FEATS ARE IMPRESSIVE. PROBABLY THE most impressive we've seen since Jubidara. This isn't what I wanted for Heawari. SURE, I UNDERSTAND THIS GENERATION needs a healer. And Heari, assuming that role does technically save Zara from having to fill it, so there is a little bit of a silver lining. If you have two prominent female characters, you only have to write one to be like Sununade. But why can't Himoari be like her father? WHY DOES SHE HAVE TO BE CHECKED BY SHIKADAI IN TEAM 10? WHY CAN'T she be a loose cannon OF UNSTOPPABLE POWER? NARUTO BROUGHT untold destruction to not only his environments but also the people around him constantly. He almost killed Jeriah. He almost killed Sakura. And he would have destroyed a vast amount of Konoa if Pain hadn't beaten him to it. Why now that a girl is in charge of Kurama's power does she need to be reserved and cognizant about how she uses it? Why is the UNIVERSE SO MUCH MORE unforgiving for her fuckups than it is for Naruto's?

[00:21:55]Naruto caves in Jeriah's chest and it's treated LIKE A FOOTNOTE. I understand that an important aspect of Hea's kit is going to be her connection to how abundance of chakra is able to heal people's bodies like we saw with Corine and Naruto when he got his ninja Jesus mark. But I can't help but see the writing on the wall that this is going to be all she does. And that that sucks.

[00:22:15]A girl with more connection to the strongest tailed beast on earth than anybody in previous history reduced to a healer. She should have her OWN FORM OF BARRIER MODE THAT DOESN'T KILL KURAMA.

[00:22:26]SHE SHOULD EMBODY THE IDEA OF EITHER DESTRUCTION or precision. She's three generations of Kurama Cherokees rolled into one person. And I do not want to see her fall down the punchy healer with no backstory pipeline. And the worst part about all of this, if Kishimoto had truly written a role for a woman to reincarnate with Oca and Indra reincarnations to try and make these two waring brothers love each other once again, Kimari would have been perfect for it. But no, a character written with seemingly more potential than maybe even our main two characters in Kawaki and Boruto is getting to sit on the sidelines and heal apparently all of the more important people who get to do the real fighting. I personally am not happy about it. But I'm curious to hear from you guys. Do you like the direction that Himoari story is going or are you as pissed as I am? Let me know in the comments below and what goes down there.

[00:23:12]Please for me like this video, subscribe to the page and hit that noty bell. Now it's Friday and I have no plans. So, I'm going to go do a chess day and then play Expedition 33 for anywhere between 8 to 11 hours.