You Psycho!: Exploring the Psychological Origins of Chapter 21

In chapter 21 of Boruto: Two Blue Vortex (TBV), Sarada stops suppressing the complicated interconnected emotions she's been experiencing throughout the series, accepting that she must acknowledge her own true feelings to access her full powers. During her awakening, we get flashbacks from the past and a monologue about her current psychological state, but neither fully explain what led her to come to the conclusion that she has to forgo romance in order to achieve her dreams.

Let's review what's in the chapter so we can understand what's missing.

Flashbacks

Chapter 21 opens with a series of flashbacks, starting with Sarada declaring her intent to be Hokage to ChoCho and calling her friend carefree for privatizing her goal for romance over planning for the future. Given the context, it's reasonable to assume this conversation occurred after the events of Naruto: The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring in which she and ChoCho went on a journey to find their fathers, and Sarada discovered her goal of becoming Hokage along the way.

Immediately after that, we transition into the scene on Hokage Rock in which Boruto declares he'll support her to be Hokage and he'll be her right-hand man. This is the first time we see her literally averting her eyes after realizing his words caused her to see him in a romantic light.

The next scene we see is from the Ao arc in which Sumire asks Sarada if it bothers her that other girls might like Boruto. When Sarada replies that it doesn't, Sumire tells her that she is bothered by it, essentially declaring her feelings for Boruto after checking in with his teammate to make sure the coast is clear. From Sarada's facial expressions as she runs away, we can see she's uncomfortable with the exchange that just occurred while Sumire happily waves goodbye.

Sarada's memory of this moment is juxtaposed with a flashback of Naruto from The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring saying that to a Hokage, all members of the village are family. This is the internal struggle that Yodo points out after being fatally wounded, that Sarada aspires to treat the whole village as a family, protecting them all equally rather than allowing her heart to focus on a single individual.

In the flashback, Sarada runs, a determined look on her face, thinking that she's not an extraordinary Shinobi like Naruto or Sasuke, thus she's unable to focus on things other than her future goals and her desire to protect everyone. What we see next is a series of panels depicting her inability to protect Boruto. He loses his eye to save her, is blamed for Naruto's murder, Mitsuki turns on him, and then the realization that Eida cast Omnipotence, robbing Boruto from his place in people's memories. We see this trauma as the genesis of her MS awakening, which convinced Sasuke to trust her over his own memories.

Monologue

In the process of feeding Ryu into the wood chipper, Sarada also tells us what embracing her MS means to her, a rejection the times she's metaphorically averted her gaze, both from her own perceived deficiencies and her emotions. She begins by addressing her goal of being Hokage, her fear that she'd never be able to achieve her dream due to her powerlessness, a fear that was compounded when she was unable to stop a string of tragedies leading up to Omnipotence from happening.

Just as her flashbacks transitioned from her goal of being Hokage to her personal feelings, she does the same thing, admitting she ignored her discomfort with Sumire feelings as well as her own feelings for Boruto, starting the moment she first felt them on Hokage Rock. However, as an Uchiha, we know her power is tied to the strength of her love, both for her village, her friends, and Boruto. Thus, in suppressing her own emotions, she was also suppressing the power inside of her.

She concludes that in order to achieve her dream of being Hokage, she needs to accept herself first because if she's running from reality, she won't be able to save a single person, not Yodo, who she hardly knew, not Boruto, and not anyone else. To achieve her goal of protecting everyone, she has to acknowledge her own heart first.

What Remains Unsaid

While Sarada clearly articulates her feelings of powerlessness and rejecting her emotions regarding Boruto, the story fails to provide us with an origin as to how she developed these ideas. While her feelings of inadequacy can be connected to the string of horrible tragedies leading to Omnipotence (Sarada's heartbroken, "Why can't Boruto ever get a break?"), her flashbacks tell us that these emotions started before Momoshiki entered the chat. Similarly, she began rejecting her feelings for Boruto the moment she started to experience them. No one ever told Sarada that she won't be powerful enough to one day be Hokage. If we take the anime content into account, everyone, her father included, is supportive of her goal. Likewise, no one explicitly says she can't have both romance and her goals... Well, except maybe one person. But we'll get to that at the end.

Let's review some possible theories as to why Sarada might reject her emotions and feel incapable of being Hokage.

It's Always Naruto's Fault

The way Sarada's flashbacks are framed presents a compelling argument that her idolization of Naruto is what leads her to rejecting her romantic feelings. We see Sumire asking her if it bothers her that other girls might like Boruto, putting her in opposition with other members of the village. Immediately after, we see her perception of Naruto's ideology, stating that a Hokage treats all people in the village like family, thus not favoring one person over others.

Diving back into Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, we see Sarada echoing this sentiment when talking to Kawaki, explaining to him that Naruto treats everyone as family. However, at the same time, we see her struggling when Naruto is giving Kawaki one-on-one attention during his shinobi training, something he's never given to her.

A careful examination of Naruto's behavior shows that he does favor the life of his own son over the safety of the village, refusing to deal with the threat Boruto presents. However, Sarada, who has yet to see the full threat Momoshiki presents inside of her teammate's body, also misses out on seeing a fuller picture of Naruto, struggling with his need to protect his son and his responsibility to protect the village.

This theory also continues the parallels between Sarada's character and Kawaki's, both of them seeing different aspects of Naruto and being negatively affected by them. To the older generation, Naruto is a guiding light. However, for the younger generation his influence affects each of them differently: Boruto, Sarada, Kawaki. They all embody aspects of Naruto without understanding that he's also a flawed human.

Because Sarada sees that Naruto's strength comes from his ideology, because she witnesses his tremendous ability to protect the entire village during Momoshiki's invasion, she believes her favoritism makes her weaker than him. Thus, she rejects her own feelings, believing the way to power is to treat every member of the village equally.

Daddy Issues

When Sarada claims that she's not an exceptional shinobi, the two people she compares herself to are her father and Naruto. In Naruto: The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring, she witnessed them in action, seeing their tremendous power firsthand (along with her mother's abilities as well). While she realized that her future goal is to be Hokage in that story, she also learned that the two most powerful shinobi in the world are absent fathers, prioritizing their work over their families. In other words, Sarada doesn't see the older generation choosing love. In fact, she learns that love is a connection that ties people together whether they are actively present in each other's lives or not.

While Naruto and Sasuke grow as fathers over the course of the Boruto series, they are both often pulled away for work, and their children are the ones that have to find peace with their father's lives. If Sarada sees herself as deficient compared to the two men she idolizes, both of whom already sacrifice time with their partners and families to fulfill their roles, it makes sense that the conclusion she'd come to is that she needs to eschew family life entirely in order to excel.

Part of Sarada coming to terms with her father's absence is learning that he's such a strong shinobi, he needs to be away from his family. Similarly, Sarada idolizes Naruto despite the pain his career and ideology toward the village causes Boruto. She comes to view these behaviors as noble things and, thus, seeks to emulate them in her own life.

All the Things He Said

As I said, there is one person who tells Sarada she can't have both love and her future career: Boruto himself. In the opening chapter of the series, Boruto tells Sarada that if she's going to become Hokage, she should stay single because getting into a relationship will inconvenience everyone around her. Even in Ikemoto's early art, we can see the pain this statement causes her, the quiet moment of reflection that takes place afterward.

By the end of the Momoshiki arc, Boruto has found peace with his father and the office of Hokage, going as far as to tell Sarada that he will support her as Hokage and work hard to protect her, but at no point does he revise his previous statement as to what effect her goal should have on her personal life. In fact, the moment Sarada starts to experience feelings for Boruto is the moment he agrees she should become Hokage, tying their dreams together. However, he's also stated that their dream precludes a romance. In other words, by pursing the goal of Hokage, she's also accepting that, according to Boruto, a relationship between them will be impossible.

It's striking that this interaction occurs in the first chapter, as it's setting up the stakes for the direction of the plot for the rest of the series. Also, even though Boruto's pain comes from how Naruto treats his kids, he tells Sarada to stay single, not to opt out of having children. Hinata defends Naruto's dedication to the office of Hokage, and yet what Boruto focuses to attack is the potential for romantic relationships. While Sarada may have told ChoCho that she doesn't have time to think about boys before, their interaction of Hokage Rock is the first time she experiences feelings for a certain boy, one who has already told her it'd inconvenience everyone around her if she gets into a relationship.

We can see the throughline of this plot throughout the story, Sarada either denying her feelings for Boruto or connecting her desire to help him with her larger goal, denying to both herself and him that her attachment to him extends beyond that of a close teammate and her future right-hand man.

Conclusions

Sarada has been unconscious for the past two chapters since chapter 21 was released. As such, we've yet to get a deeper exploration of what led her to assume she's powerless and reject her feelings as something that is incompatible with her goal of being Hokage. After she wakes up and interacts with more characters, whether it be Boruto, Sumire, or Mitsuki, I anticipate getting more clarity on what led her to these conclusions and what it now means for her to no longer avert her gaze.