One of the more prominent criticisms of Naruto is its female characters. The criticisms vary depending on the person. There are those that hate them and deem them useless or annoying. Others like them but feel they were neglected by the author and denied their full potential. This combined with the infamous quotes from Kishimoto like, “I’m not good with female characters…” gives the impression that the female characters are badly written. I would like to offer a different perspective. The female characters of Naruto are not poorly written but constructed within the bounds of traditional feminine behavior, roles, and actions. They are compelling characters with interesting personalities and conflicts but all of these aspects are within a feminine sphere of traits. This is also true of the majority of male characters as well. They also behave within a traditionally masculine sphere of traits with the exception of Naruto but I’ll get to that later. The reason I want to bring this up