It’s probably safe to say that Sakura Haruno, now Sakura Uchiha, is one of the most polarizing characters in the whole of the Naruto Series.
If you’re a detractor of hers, there’s a good chance that you see her as this grating character that achieved next to nothing in the main series, always getting in the way of her comrades, and generally being unlikable, and pretty easy to hate on.
Her biggest fans however would have a very different story to tell. In her character, they see a young girl who was able to overcome her own insecurities and relatively shallow wants and desires to become one of the strongest ninjas of her generation.
And many other fans will fall in various shades between these two extremes.
Many see her as a character who had a great amount of potential, only for it to fall flat as the series moved away from her being a central character. As Naruto and Sasuke continued to gain character development and new abilities in rapid succession, Sakura always seemed to lag behind a little in comparison.
For others, she is symbolic of an unfortunately common trend of women characters in many Shōnen action series being sidelined.
And then, of course, there are the fans of the series that don’t care much for her.
No matter what you might think of her, it is undeniable that she is a core part of the series, especially going into the Boruto anime and manga, where she is shown to be a highly valued member of Konoha’s best ninja and one of the strongest in the village.
This has prompted a lot of people to start wondering about where Sakura stands, in terms of power. Especially when compared to her former teammates, who have had many showings of incredible power and skill on multiple occasions.
Sakura meanwhile, outside a brief skirmish with the experiment Shin Uchiha, hasn’t had the same chance to show off her current skills.
Well, that’s what we’re here to discuss. With as much information as we can gather an estimate, we are going to ask the question: Just how strong is Sakura in Boruto?
Before we dive deep into the ocean of speculation that surrounds Sakura’s strength at her latest, we should probably establish a little of her history and career as a ninja in Konoha.
Early Life
Sakura is unique amongst her teammates and her teachers because, as far as we know at least, Sakura does not come with a tragic backstory like Naruto and Sasuke. She was raised by both of her parents, without any known serious issues affecting her until she started training at Konoha’s ninja academy.
Because of this, she was afforded an ordinary early childhood when compared to her future teammates, who both suffered serious losses as young children.
By comparison, by the time she reaches graduation age in the ninja academy, Sakura comes off as quite sheltered, where her biggest goal in life at this point is to fall in love with and marry Sasuke.
This worldview quickly starts to shatter as she enters the wider Shinobi world, and she is sent on missions that put her own life and those of her teammates in danger.
Unable to fight and support Naruto and Sasuke in the same way they protect her, she vows to not let herself become a burden on her teammates and seeks to better herself as a ninja, seeking out mentorship from those around her, including the Legendary Sannin Tsunade, who would help her hone her skills to become an incredible medical ninja, and a force of nature on the battlefield.
A Hardened Shinobi
By the time we are introduced to her at the beginning of Part 2 or Naruto Shippuden, Sakura has come a long way from the somewhat self-centred child that she was just a few years before.
As the series progressed, she would take part in some of the most important parts of the series going forward, including multiple fights against the Akatsuki, the organization that was dedicated to retrieving all the tailed beasts from their hosts, including Naruto’s Nine-Tailed demon fox, the invasion and destruction of Konoha at the hands of Pain, the Akatsuki’s leader, would take part as a soldier in the Fourth Shinobi World War, as well as be one of the few Shinobi remaining to fight the newly resurrected Kaguya Otsutsuki, the original wielder of chakra in the Naruto world.
Needless to say, Sakura has been through quite a lot by the time we get to Boruto. And this isn’t even counting the events between the two series that we know she was involved in, such as the rescue of Hanabi and later Hinata Hyūga from Toneri Otsutsuki’s castle on the moon.
Yeah, later Naruto gets crazy.
Power-Scaling After Naruto Shippuden
So, it’s safe to say that, by the time we get to Boruto, Sakura has had a wealth of experience when it comes to fighting and being a ninja, as well as some powerful techniques that put her on equal footing with both Naruto and Sasuke for a good chunk of the series.
So, surely it wouldn’t be difficult to gauge how strong she is now, right?
Well, this is where we run into the problem we mentioned earlier. The fact that Sakura hasn’t taken part in many fights since the end of Naruto Shippuden makes it very hard to say just how strong she is now.
This means that we have to get into the muddy and murky waters that every anime fan both fears, and can’t live without:
Power-Scaling.
What Is Power Scaling?
To cut an entire subject down to its barest essentials, power scaling refers to the method of determining a fictional character’s strength by comparing them to other characters within their respective series.
Often, when it comes to fictional characters, it becomes very difficult to judge just how strong they are based on just their own shown actions.
So, when trying to see how strong a character is by a certain metric, it is popular to compare that character to another that we know they are stronger than and to estimate their strength from that using estimations and educated guesses.
This is a difficult topic to explain, so let’s use an example from the series to give you a better idea.
From an earlier part of Naruto, around the first Chūnin exams we are shown in the series. At this point, we know that Kakashi and Zabuza from the previous arc were roughly equal in terms of strength, chakra, and skill.
We also know that, during the events of the Chūnin exam, Kakashi does not believe that he compares in any way to the strength and skill of the Sannin ninja Orochimaru. So, from these exchanges and beliefs, we can say with some confidence that Orochimaru is likely stronger than Zabauza was.
This is a popular way of measuring how strong characters are in plenty of fictional series, from Naruto to Dragon Ball, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to even Lord of the Rings!
However, there are a few issues when it comes to using power scaling for a series such as Naruto.
For starters, the way that combat plays out in the series does not simply rely on pure strength or strategy, especially earlier in the series. There are a whole range of factors in many fights that determine if a character has the means to beat another character that is outside their control.
Secondly, it can lead to some wild predictions that do not accurately reflect characters as they appear later in the series. As an example of this flawed logic, we can safely say that at the beginning of the series, Naruto was weaker than Sasuke was at the same time.
Naruto would eventually be able to beat Pain, the leader of the Akatsuki. Using this logic, this would imply that, because Sasuke was stronger than Naruto at one point, then early teenager, fresh out of the ninja academy Sasuke could defeat Pain.
You see the issue with this logic. It simply doesn’t work enough of the time to totally rely on it.
This isn’t usually an issue for major characters in the series, who have enough fights as their skills progress to show their level of strength throughout the series, such as Naruto and Sasuke.
However, when you have characters that do not get into as many fights, such as Hinata or Sakura, it becomes difficult to see where they are at strength-wise.
So, all this is to say that whilst we will be using power-scaling to help us determine how strong Sakura is, it is by no means a perfect system.
Overall Strength
At the beginning of Boruto, it is implied that most of the cast that appears from the original Naruto series are stronger than when we last saw them, although to what extent is a little hard to judge for each character.
From this, we can assume that Sakura’s abilities are at least as strong as they were when we saw them in Shippuden, if not stronger.
Ninjutsu
Many of Sakura’s greatest ninjutsu are tied to her skill as a medical ninja. As such, her application of those medical techniques to her other ninjutsu, such as using her summoned creatures to communicate and share chakra with others.
Not only that, but she had wide access to many of the normal nature element chakras in the Naruto world, able to use Earth, Water, Fire Yang, and Yin release by the time of the Boruto story.
Being the pupil of one of the Legendary Sannin, Sakura is also able to summon the slugs that can assist her both in battle and in treating wounds.
Considering that she was able to summon the Boss Slug Summon Katsuyu during the Fourth Shinobi World War, she can almost certainly summon just as well some 14 years later.
Medical Jutsu
Outside her sheer strength and chakra control, Sakura’s greatest accomplishments have been in the field of medical ninjutsu. Not only is she a trained medic using ordinary means, but thanks to her training under Tsunade, she can heal wounds that would almost otherwise be fatal to a person.
She is also skilled enough in these more esoteric techniques to create antidotes to fast-acting poisons in an astonishing amount of time, a skill noted by many other medical ninjas in the world of Naruto.
Not only that, but the mastery of her medical ninjutsu, enhanced strength, and high intelligence allows her to combine these skills to decimate her opponents with terrifying precision.
Chakra
Even from the start of the series, Sakura’s skill with chakra control is noted as above average amongst her peers. With this, she can efficiently use the correct amount of chakra for virtually any technique she uses, without expending too much and draining her reserves.
This skill was only improved during her training with Tsunade, as medical ninjutsu and her monster strength both drew on her ability to control her chakra precisely enough to release it at the right time.
By the time we reach Boruto, she can use her chakra to map out the structure of the area around her by sending her chakra through inorganic material and receiving a rough map in her mind.
The only other widely recorded people with similar skills were usually either dedicated sensory ninja or had some unique bloodline ability to boost their perception. For a non-specialist to be able to perform this ability is a testament to their wide range o skills.
Intelligence
Even from before her training with Tsunade, intelligence was likely Sakura’s strongest trait, with her expansive knowledge and intelligence being one of the skills that helped her excel early on in her ninja career.
This sharpness was only improved thanks to training under Tsunade, which gave her an almost encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy, and how to treat wounds and other afflictions. This would be a skill that she would improve on further as she continued her journey as a medical ninja.
(As a side piece of trivia, Sakura and her longtime friend and rival Ino were the founders of some of the first noted psychological health wards after the Fourth Shinobi World War, as they understood the impact that losing loved ones would have on the younger generation who grew up during the conflict.)
Speed
Whilst Sakura isn’t exactly known for her blistering speed, she is certainly no slouch either. She can avoid being killed by Kaguya whilst her, Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke were trying to steal her away as they were hopping through dimensions.
Considering how powerful her comrades were during this part of the series, that is no small feat.
The Queen Of Taijutsu & Strength
By the time that Boruto takes place, Sakura has been using chakra to focus and increase her strength for so long, that it is almost second nature to her.
Because of this, it isn’t a stretch to assume that any feat that she could accomplish as a 16-17-year-old, she could at least match as an adult, if not outright surpass.
Which makes some of her greatest feats towards the end of Shippuden almost terrifying. By the end of the Fourth Shinobi World War, she was able to disorientate the incredibly powerful Kaguya in a single punch, if not outright stun and injure her.
If we are to assume that she continued to practice this technique later into her adult life, this would likely put her amongst the strongest ninjas of all time, comparing even to Naruto and Sasuke in some regards.
Considering the vast amounts of power they wield at this point, that is an incredible feat of strength on her part.
Conclusion: Sakura – The Strongest Kunoichi In Ninja History?
So, where does that leave Sakura in terms of strength?
Well, from what we have already discussed and established so far, it is safe to say that Sakura is VERY strong by the time of Boruto, putting her high in the terms of strength when compared to her peers. The only question is, exactly how high she ranks.
The problem that many people run into when gauging how strong she is, is the fact that she is often compared to both Naruto and Sasuke. Two characters who are effectively living gods when it comes to sheer power. In that respect, almost no one would be able to compare to that.
If we are comparing Sakura to the rest of the Shinobi, based on the fact that she has some of the greatest medical skills of any ninja in history, is almost certainly one of the physically strongest, can summon one of the most powerful summon animals that can be found in the Naruto world, and is highly intelligent, Sakura could be compared to almost all the most powerful Shinobi that came before her.
She could almost certainly beat her former mentor, Tsunade, as well as likely the other Sannin. She likely even compares to some of the greatest Kage that ever lived.
So, when we want to rank Sakura in terms of how she ranks compared to other ninjas, not characters of extraterrestrial origins, Sakura might be amongst the top 5 strongest ninjas alive in the world! And she is almost definitely in amongst the top 10.
