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Began on: March 9th, 2007
First Draft Completed on: March 11, 2007
Updated: March 14th, 2007

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At first glance, it is almost obvious that Ino is perhaps the character in Naruto who has the most care for her appearance, or at least ties with Sakura for that role. It is easy to hate her, she is loud, bossy, and tends to make fun of her team mates. She is hated for being so mean to Sakura, and being just so damn snobby all the time. I have even heard her being the stereo-typical ‘dumb blonde’. She is perhaps the worst kunoichi in all of Naruto to add to that.

No. Not even close.

Now, I will tackle these entire reasons one paragraph at the time. It was your fault for clicking the link, because now, I’m going to get going into a whole rant that could possibly take up three Microsoft Word pages…or close to it.

First off, I want to get the whole Sakura thing out of the picture. Now, if you don’t recall, Ino made Sakura into who she was. If Ino hadn’t stepped in, Sakura would have no confidence what so ever. When Sakura had been picked on because of her forehead, Ino came to her rescue and became her best friend. Ino gave Sakura the courage, as well as a role model when they were younger. Even when they got older, as seen in their fight against each other in the Chuunin Exam preliminaries and when Sakura had cut her hair, Ino still had a soft spot for Sakura. Even when Ino was so ready to punch Sakura, she had a memory from their younger days and turned it into a slap unwillingly. She didn’t want to lose her friend, but Sakura had broken their friendship and Ino was obviously hurt by it. Losing your best friend is not something that you would want to do. Ino is not mean to Sakura entirely; it is even shown that Ino looks up to Sakura. Although she puts up an act of having a rivalry with Sakura, Ino is undoubtedly still trapped in the past, wishing that she still had her friend instead of a rival.

Speaking of that match she had against Sakura that is a perfect example of how Ino is NOT a ‘dumb blonde’. Sakura graduated as one of the top females in her class, having smarts and even better chakra control than Sasuke. As stated by Asuma, Ino also graduated with better skills than most of the kunoichi in her class. Now, supposedly, Sakura is smarter than Ino, considering she managed to answer all of the questions in the first part of the exam (and Ino used her jutsu to copy her answers strategically). So, if Ino is a dumb blonde, how did she manage to trick Sakura so she could get her to not move for her jutsu? Ino is quite a smart person; otherwise, she would have really gotten angry at Sakura’s comments, instead of just faking it wisely. By throwing her hair across the field, and using that to make a track for her chakra to Sakura, she managed to trap Sakura. Quite a smart move, even Shikamaru didn’t now that Ino was faking it until last minute. And to strategically outsmart Shikamaru, a genius, is quite an accomplishment.

Moving on to her team mates… Ino cares for her team mates, when she talks to Shikamaru and Chouji, do you ever notice that it’s never just ‘Haha! You’re so unpopular!’ or ‘You’re too fat!’? Because, she always adds a bit of advice at the end. She says to Shikamaru (this is not completely accurate, but it’s close), “You’re not popular, Shika because you don’t have a girlfriend. I’d never want to be in your team.” Notice that she added a tad bit of advice in that statement. It was cold, yes, very true, but it wasn’t a complete insult. She says to Chouji in one episode, “You’re so lucky, Chouji. Not caring about your appearance so much, I wish I could do that.” She looks up to Chouji for his kindness, but does care about his health when she states, “You should care more though. Or else you’ll never get anyone to like you!” She wants Chouji to be happy with someone, to get someone to be in love with. To put it simply, despite her criticisms about the way they live, Ino does really and truly care about her team mates.

Now, all you’ve heard from me are these defensive things to points that are bad about Ino. But don’t you think for even a moment, that she has some good points? If you don’t, then you really are close minded. Ino is sympathetic when she wants to be. When she informed Sakura about Lee’s injuries, her face seemed to be depressed for a few moments. She does care about others, even if she never knew much about Lee. Ino may or may not have lost her friendship with Sakura, but as I stated before, Ino was a big influence in Sakura’s life. Ino was a big help to Sakura when she was little. She explained to Sakura, that she was still a bud, not even a flower yet. But when she bloomed, she would be more beautiful than the cosmos. Ino stayed true to that belief up to their match against each other. Ino is fairly wise for her age, and tends to know what to say to make someone feel good and lift someone’s spirits. Now, if she’s the b***h that some people say she is, would she be so kind to Sakura?

Yes, I know that Ino is now quite a bit older now, in the original she was 13, in Shippuden, she’s 15-16. But think for a moment, at Ino as a child. The age when she met Sakura, she had already had a crush on Sasuke Uchiha for a while now. She was bitter when she heard that Sakura liked him too, but kept her mouth shut. I would say that’s a pretty good friend, she didn’t want to risk their friendship for him back them. Ino was also very kind and a deep thinker when she was young. She would know a lot about flowers as well, claiming that cosmos were to symbolize harmony. Ino was just another happy-go-lucky kid for her age, right? Well, not quite. She was very skilled back then, and was very good with flower arranging, as well as having good kunai throwing skills. She was social and knew a lot about the daily things back then as well. She was something of a role model for Sakura back then. But when Sakura asked her one day when they were talking about flower arranging, if Ino was the cosmos, the main flower in the bunch, would Sakura be one of the flowers that was merely an extra? Ino claimed that Sakura was not a flower, but she could one day become more beautiful than the cosmos. It was almost guaranteed that Ino was a confident, social, young child back then with wisdom that surpassed her age.

Now, to get on to some negative things about her. We all know that Ino is far from perfect, most people are. But I’ve heard some people say that Ino is NOT shallow… Now, being an Ino fan, I understand that Ino had good and bad things about her. However, I can see more good than bad. So the thing about Ino NOT being shallow is a complete lie. Ino is shallow, she cares about her appearance. She does it all for people to like her, especially Sasuke. Her main belief is that guys like girls who are not chubby, but rather, that they like girls who are skinny. However, this is NOT a completely bad thing, Ino may believe that guys care a lot about a girls’ appearance, but is that really not true? Everyone cares about their appearance, even if it’s just a little bit. So Ino may have something right there, however she may indeed take it a bit too far. Ino is just simply, HUMAN in that way. Ino symbolizes, in my opinion that even ninjas in the world of Naruto, do care about their appearance. Whether she takes it too far shows that ninjas aren’t completely heartless and willing to do anything. In the words of Zabuza Momochi, “But we’re still human.”

Thanks to Chris Nemo for pointing out my lack of evidence for this concept. To list the main kunoichi, it would be Sakura, Hinata, Ino, Tenten, and Temari. Out of all those girls, Ino’s probably the weakest when it comes to brute force. But when it comes to actually gathering information for her village, Ino would probably be the best choice for that sort of mission. Sakura could also do this, but is better fit for medical needs and loses her temper so easily that she’ll thrash anyone into oblivion. Hinata would feel too guilty and too shy to dare to try to sneak into an organization to get some information from the enemy. Tenten wouldn’t even bother, she’s a combat kunoichi. As for Temari, I don’t think that she’d be interested in that sort of thing; she seems more like the type of girl who is interested in strategic thinking when preparing for battle and would actually go into battle herself. Now, that leaves Ino. The pretty blonde, who has high standards for her looks, and has a technique that could be used to get into someone else’s body. That seems quite useful for a mission to retrieve information. As previously stated in the series, the technique that the Yamanaka family uses was initially designed for spying purposes. Now, think of this. In a war, anyone can fight, but who can actually get into the enemy territory and gain the upper hand by retrieving information such as battle plans and formation strategies? Although in direct battle without her team mates, Ino may or may not be doomed (a good example would be her fight against Sakura), she can certainly do a great job when collecting valuable information. And collecting information is important, as Ibiki had mentioned in his test.

Moving on, Ino is not a slut. Caring about her appearance, yes, but not a slut. Hell, if someone cared about her appearance, how can they be a slut? Ino cut her hair, something that she had been working on because she heard from Sakura that Sasuke liked girls with long hair. It was not out of jealousy, it was out of strategy to get Sakura to stay still for a chance to use her jutsu. So it is shown once again in that fight, Ino would rather win against Sakura than keep her long hair and lose. Now, Ino did try to seduce Neji in the Forest of Death, true. But she had indeed tried running away at first, or rather, hiding. But seeing as she had rather high arrogance for her looks, she tried to seduce Neji. However, Neji did not seem affected by it, thus causing Ino to get angry. However, can you really blame her? She had thought that she could really get anyone with her looks if she tried, however, Neji proved her wrong. Ino, being Ino, was obviously angry at this.

One more thing, Ino is not arrogant. If you look at the last filler arc, when she sees Shikamaru and Temari working together so well, she felt out of place. She felt like she didn’t belong and wasn’t good enough. That means she doesn’t have much confidence in her skills, therefore, she is no where even close to arrogant. And because she wanted to help others, she asked Sakura to help her train and become better. So, the last filler arc actually explains quite a key part of Ino’s feelings on the area of team work.

All in all, Ino is not a bad character. She’d loud, bossy, and semi-obnoxious, but in that way, how is she any different from Naruto? And everybody seems to at least like the Uzumaki boy, save for some people. If Ino is such a bad ninja, then why does she excel in kunai throwing skills especially when she was younger? I believe that in a complete way, Ino Yamanaka is perhaps one of the best characters in Naruto, not in the rate of power, but in the rate of actual personality and development.

Now, for those of you who actually notice, I did use the Sakura vs. Ino fight in a lot of these examples. Why? Simply because that was a big part of Ino’s development and character. If I missed anything and you have any examples I can use, it would be great if you could PM them to me.

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3-11-07: Holy crab, took me about 1 hour and a half in total to right this so far. I’ll probably add to it later when I get more arguments about Ino. She is a truly misunderstood character in my opinion. D=

3-14-07: Updated the ‘Slut’ paragraph. Thank you Nae for pointing out the Forest of Death scene with Neji. I had forgotten. =3

5-27-07: Added another paragraph to explain why Ino is a valuable kunoichi in her own way compared to the main females in the series. I’d also like to say, thank you all so much for all the feedback. I’m glad that this essay actually attracted some attention.

Thank you for taking the time to read this however. =3
(And if you have any other misunderstood characters that need some love, mail me and I’ll probably write a rant for them. =3)