truebond:

I love NaruGaa. It’s my second favorite ship next to SNS, as I’ve mentioned before. They’re both precious cinnamon rolls that need to be hugged and would probably love hugging each other and comforting each other whenever possible. They’re both protective of each other, they both care about each other, they relate to each other, they admire each other, etc etc etc. Their ship has the development and the grounds for what would arguably the healthiest of all the Naruto ships. Their friendship may have started out with them fighting, but it ended with Naruto getting through to Gaara in a way he never really did with any future villains. This is mainly because, unlike the other villains he tried to project himself onto, Gaara actually did completely relate to Naruto. So yeah, I adore NaruGaa.

And as I’ve mentioned before I think the only reason I don’t ship it more and why it’s not considered a major ship is because of the lack of interaction compared to other ships coupled with the distance between them, seeing as they come from two separate villages, and it’s that latter reason that likely has the most impact on the ship’s popularity. If Gaara were in the same village as Naruto or didn’t get the Kazekage position that tied him to his village career-wise, leaving him available to move to Konoha much in the same way Temari did for Shikamaru, I have no doubt it’d be a much more popular ship.

SakuIno is the only fem-slash couple I ship in Naruto…mostly because it’s one of the only ones where two female characters interacted frequently. But ship-wise I like it because of its past. If it weren’t for the backstory that showed Ino boosting Sakura’s confidence and giving her the hair ribbon I might not have shipped it. But that scene and the rest of the flashback showing their friendship as children endeared the ship to me because it showed that Ino brought out the best in Sakura. Sakura generally has a low self-esteem and is constantly downing herself or looking for acknowledgement, and Ino singlehandedly helped Sakura overcome her anxiety over the size of her forehead and gave her the confidence to become a more outgoing person.

What ruins the ship for me is Sakura’s treatment of Ino, spurning Ino’s friendship over Sasuke. It was made very clear that Sakura was the one to end the friendship and Ino reciprocated the feelings back once it happened, and Sakura’s constant possessiveness over Sasuke is what fuels their rivalry in part 1 of the manga/anime. But even with them calling each other names that hit at their insecurities (Ino’s name meaning boar and Sakura calling her “Ino-pig”, Sakura’s big forehead and Ino calling her “billboard brow”) they didn’t bat an eye because they’d built each other up in the past and those words didn’t hit hard at each other. It was very reminiscent of Sasuke calling Naruto “usuratonkachi” or “dobe”, almost endearing despite the supposed malice behind the words themselves. And then in the Chunin Exams when Ino showed up and helped out Sakura, particularly the scene where Ino helps fix Sakura’s hair, that probably sealed the deal for me liking the ship.

Overall SakuIno feels like a less-developed fem version of SNS, where their bond has a backstory of friendship mixed with rivalry and the two understand each other on a level no one else does. I really do wish we saw more interaction between them that wasn’t Sasuke-related, and the scenes of them eating together in The Last are some of the only decent scenes in that movie (plus Ino looks gorgeous in that movie). There aren’t very many Naruto ships I like, but SakuIno/InoSaku is definitely one of my exceptions.