Years ago it was the turn of ONE PIECE, but now it was the turn of another very famous and revered manga around the world. In January the Naruto World Popularity Surveydubbed Narutop99, tasked with finding the 99 most popular characters from Masashi Kishimoto's anime and manga and collecting votes from around the world.
The winner of the Naruto Poll was announced a few days ago, accompanied by a special illustration by Masashi Kishimoto. In addition, Minato will also be the protagonist of a standalone manga that will be released in the next few months. But It was Sakura Haruno's position that caused quite a stir, the girl from Team 7 who passed many characters and took third place in the final standings with 489,619 votes. This has not been well received by many who have raised allegations of fraud and vote-rigging by bots.
This is nothing new as they already were Controversy arose over Naruto's finest fight, elected during the same election. Even then, fans had been negative about Sakura VS Sasori's match win, and according to many, even now there was effective vote-rigging that put the girl on the podium. On the other hand, some fans point out that the flow of voices has been constant and that it is mainly the lovers of Hinata Hyuga, Sakura's love rival for much of the Naruto manga, who are making these allegations defined as non-existent.
Certainly, Sakura's position in both rankings caused a stir, and also risked undermining the second position reserved for Itachi Uchiha, who received about ten thousand other votes. Of course I can't say if that's really me Sakura's voices were manipulated, although poll organizers emphasized that invalid votes were not counted. And who did you choose?
We won a lot even though we didn't get first place because it wasn't even the main goal!!! But look, Sakura is the most popular girl in Naruto practicing social distancing from her darling with 3x more votes 😭😭😂 pic.twitter.com/TEuaixdanK
— Serenity ✨ (@winonashine) April 14, 2023