Fuck Yes

[redbrunja]

From tv.tropes:

"Tsunade in Naruto can not only deliver an armour piercing slap but an earth shattering kick. Such is her incredible strength that the beat the titular character with one finger. Her student, Sakura, is following in her footsteps and Tsunade herself has commented that she could become stronger then her.
What's scary? Is that her Armor Piercing Slap is tied to her ability to increase her NORMAL attack strength."

I have no idea where they got this fact, but I just want to say: Fuck, yes. If you watch Sakura, when she is breaking down walls and punching through mountains, her posture is fucking excellent. You get hit by someone with form like that, it's going to fucking hurt.

I have no doubt, that in a straight hand to hand fight, she could beat just about anyone sans Lee or Gai, without using a smidge of chakra.

Pay attention, fanfic writers.

(Okay, it was just that fanfic that one time, but it bugged me then, and it retroactively bugs me a hella lot having seen Sakura post-timeskip.)

Also, I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I will love tvtropes.com forever for having the header quote for both "Badass Normal" and "Action Girl" be this fabulous quote by the fabulous Karrin Murphey:

"I put on the boots and kicked some monster ass. I dropped the ghoul, and I'm the one who rammed a chainsaw through the head of that plant monster thing. Crippled the ogre too. What did you do? You threw a can of Sterno at him. That's barely an assist."

-Detective Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, The Dresden Files.

....Except some jerk totally changed the quote on badass normal to something someone I don't care about said. *annoyed face*

Comments

[solace-adrift.livejournal.com]

True, but Sakura is not particularly large or tall, and matched up against up the afore mentioned Konoha twelve, who have mostly been training in their fighting styles before Sakura even heard of hers, making a punch hurt is really just the very basics. Look at their fighting styles. They’re pretty dangerous already.

And besides the three already mentioned (Shikamaru, Ino, Shino) how many of the Konoha twelve actually depend on close rang techniques? If you took Akamaru out (which I usually don’t. He’s mostly like a weapon.) I could see her taking Kiba, but that’s about it.

Naruto’s clones? He can conjure like what, two hundred, easy? Without super strength she’s only just a step ahead of Naruto (who really is no slouch in close combat) and each of those two hundred clones has Naruto’s experience. They disappear with one hit, but at least a few will land blows, and Sakura cannot afford to trade punch for punch two hundred times. Not to mention that Naruto could then just go first level Kyuubi, where he gains claws, speed, utter disregard for injury, and inhuman endurance; all things Sakura can’t match.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Okay, I don't think my point was clear.

What I was saying was, in a fight without chakra Sakura is still pretty damn dangerous, because her fighting style translates well to that arena. Most of the characters need chakra to fight (The Hyuuga clan, possibly Ten Ten, although I imagine Gai trained her pretty well in hand to hand, the characters you mentioned, Naruto) would be a significant disadvanage, in a way that she wouldn't.

And in a fight where chakra is being used, she's able to punch through mountains. Basically, I was harping on the 'fights well without chakra' because I read a fic where she had to go undercover as a fighter and couldn't use her monsterous strength, and the author has a number of training sequences where she gets pwned by Anko, and I honestly can't buy it.

[solace-adrift.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought you were saying in a fight where just she was the only one who didn’t have chakra. My bad.

In that case I’m fairly sure it’s anyone’s call, since it’s hard to say what their unchakra jujutsu skill is. Lee, Tenten, and Kiba would probably rise to the top (because one is Lee, one knows how to wield around a hundred different weapons, and one has a dog the size of a horse on his side) but yeah, Sakura would probably be up there. She’s got a lot more skill than someone like Hinata.

And, addressing that fic you read, why didn’t she just use Kunai or the stuff she learned before super strength? You’re right, it doesn’t make much sense.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Basically, the set up was that she was going to be doing cage fighting, so no weapons, and Gai and Anko were training her; what pissed me off because I couldn't believe that she was getting beaten as badly as she was by Anko when Tsunade, quotably, taught her hand to hand.