Naruto could never escape the curse of wasted potential, and its vast world is the reason why

The all-time classic and popular anime and manga series Naruto has some of the most iconic characters. With one of the most well-written narratives filled with action, the series has some of the strongest characters who are not shy of showing off their powers and strength.

While the series is overall enjoyed by the fandom, one of the most glaring issues the series has had ever since the beginning was its poor and lack of representation of some of the characters. This article mainly focuses on some of the notable wasted potential characters from the Naruto series, which could have been given more light, giving justice to their character.

Disclaimer: This article reflects the author's opinions and contains potential spoilers from the Naruto anime and manga.

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Naruto has some of the most wasted potential with its characters

While the fans have thoroughly enjoyed the Naruto series ever since it aired back in 2002, the series has always been critically derided for all the wasted potential with its characters. Things also didn't get any better with the sequel, the Shippuden series. While the ratio of female characters having more wasted potential than male characters, Kishimoto did a poor job of writing several characters overall.

Let's start with one of the main characters from the series, Sakura Haruno. Sakura started as a scared girl who was head over heels for Sasuke. After Sasuke left the village, Sakura started training herself and turned a full circle with her personality. By the end of the series, Sakura became one of the strongest medical ninja and possessed inhuman strength.

The series did a very unfair job portraying Sakura's character and mostly left out some of her feats or dampened them down in comparison to others like Naruto and Sasuke. Yes, Sakura may not have been in the same league as them, but the narrative wanted her to be, but failed at that. A similar occurrence can be called out for Hinata as well.

Hinata, having one of the strongest visual prowess in the series, the Byakugan, had tremendous potential to be portrayed as a more proactive character in the series. However, she was given a limited screentime in Naruto, essentially cutting off segments where she could have shown off her Byakugan, or even her Gentle Fist technique more extensively.

Another notable character who was a wasted potential from the series was the Fifth Mizukage, Mei Terumi. During the Fourth Shinobi World War arc, all the Kage were shown putting in significant contributions, while Mei was sidelined into just one brief fight with Sasuke. Furthermore, her narrative of being the Mizukage for the once-known "Blood Mist" village could have also been a great story point.

In terms of the male characters from the series, several characters like Shino Aburame, Kiba Inuzuka, Neji Hyuga, Rock Lee, and even Orochimaru had so much potential that could have been focused on in the series. Instead, all they got was little to nothing screentime, and pushed over for other main narrative building characters.

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Final thoughts

Despite the massive popularity and a huge fandom to back it, the Naruto series greatly suffered from Kishimoto not developing or pushing some character narratives further. With a plethora of unique characters at his disposal, Kishimoto could have easily dialed down a little from the main characters, given the others a little more screen time, and not let them turn out as wasted potentials.

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