Sarada Uchiha is pretty young when we meet her in Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. She, along with classmates like Boruto, are just starting their ninja training and are doing their best to succeed at it. This naturally means that as they learn and grow, they start to change, to adapt to the new realities of their abilities and to become (mostly) better people.
Sarada’s growing maturity as she learns to understand her peers and her family and becomes better at her ninja skills is clear in the changes she goes through in the series. Here are 10 of Sarada’s biggest changes.
10 Wanting To Become Hokage
Sarada begins to spend time with Naruto, who is the current Hokage. She knows that Naruto is friends with her father, Sasuke, who Sarada has a difficult relationship with since he’s not around much.
Naruto has strong opinions about what makes a family, which really responds to Sarada, and she admires the way Naruto cares about each citizen of Konoha as if they were his own family. This admiration, and the desire to take care of her friends and family, leads her to realize that she has a true goal: to become Hokage herself.
9 Reconciling With Sasuke
Sarada and Sasuke have a nonexistent relationship at the beginning of the series. This isn’t because Sasuke doesn’t care about her or that he isn’t interested in knowing her, but his missions often take him out of Konoha, usually for long periods of time.
He’s been gone for so long that when Sarada comes looking for him, he doesn’t recognize her. Sarada is naturally hurt and angry about his lack of involvement in her life, but her choice to accept his apologies and to have a relationship with him shows a lot of maturity.
8 Awakening The Sharingan
On Sarada’s journey to find Sasuke, a man whom she doesn’t remember at all, she gets really excited at the prospect. A heightened emotional state can trigger the Sharingan, which is an Uchiha family trait, a special kind of sight that can be used during battles.
The Sharingan allows its user to see the jutsus an opponent is using and counter them and also allows the user to copy them for their own use during battle, making it a formidable ability. Sarada’s feelings about seeing Sasuke cause her to awaken her Sharingan without meaning to.
7 Understanding That Sakura Is Really Her Mother
When Sarada is old enough to start asking more specific questions about Sasuke and why he’s not around, Sakura does her best to answer them in a way that Sarada will feel satisfied with.
But because Sasuke has such a difficult past and has done things he’s not proud of, some of which he’s still seeking redemption for, Sakura tries to hide some details about him from his daughter. Sarada feels like her mom is lying to her and becomes worried that she’s not even her real mother. She’s eventually able to overcome these feelings, making her bond with her mother even stronger.
6 Becoming A Medic Ninja
Because of Sarada’s sometimes difficult relationship with her mother, and the fact that she sometimes seems distant and deceitful, Sarada has a lot of negative feelings about medical ninjas in general, since that’s her mother’s profession.
But each genin team needs to have a medical ninja, and after she becomes a member of Team 7, she finds herself in the role. This makes sense since she has the same strong chakra abilities that Sakura has, but her willingness to set aside her feelings for the needs of her team is very grown-up.
5 Learning To Resolve Issues
Sarada is a kid when the series begins, so she’s obviously going to get better at communicating as she gets older. Boruto also makes a point to encourage her to try to find solutions for the problems of her friends and classmates, especially since she wants to be Hokage.
The Hokage is often responsible for resolving issues between people, trying to solve things in a way that leaves everyone satisfied. As Sarada gets older, she becomes better and better at this skill, using it wherever she can to make her friends’ lives a little easier.
4 Encouraging Her Friends
Becoming a ninja is a naturally competitive sort of schooling. The students often compete against each other both for grades and standing and in actual combat to test their skills. It makes sense that it would be difficult for these students to want to feel supportive of each other when they’re so often played against each other.
But Sarada has learned to feel less competitive with her classmates and instead does her best to encourage her friends and cheer on her teammates, even when she hasn’t succeeded at something, which is a sign of real growth.
3 Using Her Super Strength
Sakura trained very hard to achieve the super strength that she’s now known for, and it seems that this ability has passed down to her daughter. Sarada is also capable of incredible amounts of chakra energy, and she can apply it both in medical ninjutsu and in combat.
As she becomes a more capable fighter, she uses this skill more and more. This is a big change from early on when she wasn’t sure she was Sakura’s daughter. Now she’s regularly using a skill she has inherited from her mother.
2 Becoming Close With Boruto
Boruto and Sarada have known each other their whole lives since their parents were also friends when they were children. And while Sarada considers Boruto a childhood friend, she has also in the past been distant from him, viewing him more like he’s an idiot she needs to look after and keep out of trouble.
But as they get older, Sarada realizes how much they have in common, particularly with their difficult relationships with their fathers, and the pair begin to grow closer, encouraging each other in their very different goals and helping each other see the better qualities of their parents.
1 Her Sharingan Becomes More Powerful
Early on, we see Sarada develop her Sharingan ability, but she still has to learn how to use it. It’s a difficult skill, and she does her best to strengthen it. Initially, she could only use it for a short amount of time, since the chakra it takes to use causes her to faint if she has it activated for too long.
This often puts her in danger during missions, if she’s forced to use it. But one of the measures of how much she’s grown and changed, and how much stronger she’s become, is how much longer she can use it as the series progresses, showing she’s been training with her Sharingan throughout the series.