Why Does Sarada Look Like Karin in Naruto?

The start of the Boruto series brought us many new features and aspects of to already rich Naruto World. Especially after the end of the main series left us with questions about the characters we followed for years. The epilogue confirmed that members of Team Seven found their happy endings with their significant others. However, Sasuke’s and Sakura’s daughter Sarada’s appearance raised some questions, and fans started to wonder – why does Sarada look like Karin?

Sarada looks like Karin because young Uchiha wears glasses. Masashi Kishimoto and the manga and anime artists decided to confuse their fans and create a whole story arc out of it. Consequently, when Sakura was traveling during her pregnancy, she fell into labor, and Karin helped her with the birth. As a gift, Karin gave baby Sarada special glasses. Karin isn’t the biological mother of Sarada, despite still having feelings for Sasuke. 

We will analyze this topic by mentioning the circumstances around Sarada’s birth, the story arc when Sarada started looking for answers, and conclude this article. If you are interested in this topic, stay with us until the end.

Why Sarada left her home in Boruto?

Before we indulge in the main topic, we must mention the circumstances around this confusion. We know that Karin was part of the Team Taka that Sasuke formed during his missing-nin days. Their main objective was to locate Uchiha Itachi and prevent other forces from interrupting the fateful Uchiha encounter. During their journey around Ninja World, one of the members, Karin, falls in love with Sasuke and is obsessed with him.

In typical Sasuke fashion, he ignored her and used her for his own goals. The escalation happened during the Five Kage Summit arc when Sasuke fought Danzo Shimura – to kill Danzo; Sasuke struck him through Karin’s body.

Even after she saw that Sasuke ordered Sakura to kill Karin, the redhead Uzumaki forgave Sasuke once again. Most fans will agree that the relationship between Sasuke and Karin was extremely toxic and just flat-out awful.

Fast-forward to Fourth Shinobi World War, where Sasuke reunited with his Team Seven teammates and helped them defeat Madara Uchiha and Kaguya. After the Battle in the Valley of the End, where Naruto finally put some sense into Sasuke, young Uchiha returned to Konohagakure.

After paying for his crimes and being released, Sasuke showed affection towards Sakura and decided to travel the world and “fix” his mistakes.

Eventually, Sasuke and Sakura got married and had a baby named Sarada. Karin was out of the picture, but as we saw in Boruto, Team Taka is still somewhat close to the Uchiha family. Of course, Sasuke wanted to “heal” the world from his past demise, which meant that he would be away from his family.

However, no one expected Sasuke to be so long away from his family, which bothered his daughter. Sarada questioned Sakura for years about her father and his whereabouts, and the questions were either dismissed or vaguely answered.

After seeing that her mother is evading answering her questions about Sasuke, Sarada noticed photos of Team Taka in her home, and one member stood out from the rest – Karin. When the young Uchiha noticed that she looked similar to her, Sarada decided to find her father outside the village and look for the answers.

Her best friend, Chōchō, didn’t help Sarada’s worries because she decided that Chōji wasn’t her birth father and that thin and fit fella was. What she didn’t notice is that her father came from the mission thin because he used the Akimichi clan jutsu called Butterfly Chōji Mode, which uses his body fat, and makes him thin.

Best friends started their journey and were later joined by Naruto himself, who discovered that two young pre-genin went outside the village. The trio continued their journey to find Sasuke, and they eventually did after being attacked by Shin Uchiha and his little minions.

Sasuke didn’t recognize his daughter, which greatly hurt Sarada and prompted her Sharingan’s awakening. Of course, Shin returns to finish the job, but Sakura saves the day by knocking him out. However, she gets sucked into the portal, which brings her to Shin’s hideout, while Naruto and Sasuke decide to find Orochimaru and learn more about Shin.

This next moment is when everything gets more complicated, and Sarada leaves Konoha to find Sasuke in the first place.

Why does Sarada look like Karin?

When they get there, the group encounters Team Taka. Suigetsu makes everything worse by telling Sarada that she looks just like his teammate Karin.

Sarada asks for help, and Suigetsu uses Karin’s DNA sample to test who is Sarada’s mother. Sarada is devastated when a test matches Karin’s DNA and decides to run off. Of course, Naruto is enraged, and Suigetsu realizes he has made a mistake.

In the aftermath of the fight against Shin Uchiha, Sakura and Sasuke told Sarada the truth about why her father was always absent and that Sakura was truly her mother.

When Karin returned from her mission, she heard about everything. She berated Suigetsu, who mistakenly took Sakura’s DNA sample (umbilical cord) and compared it with Sarada’s, only confirming that Sakura was the young girl’s biological mother.

Karin even said that she still has feelings for Sasuke, but in the end, she wants him to be happy. Moreover, Suigetsu got his piece of mind from Karin, who told him he was an idiot and that she would need to send another pair of glasses to Sarada since she’s grown so much.

This whole saga stemmed from the fact that Sarada resembles Karin but in the end, the member of Team Taka gifted baby Sarada glasses for the girl to see properly.

The creators and artists of the Boruto Series wanted to confuse the fans, which procured a whole story arc. Similar character designs are at fault in this case, which was used for Sasuke to finally reunite with his family.

In the end, it was a fun confusion that also saw the Uchiha family in action, Sarada awakening her Sharingan, and Chōchō, whose dilemma was answered or wasn’t – the answer was always there.