I, from what I have seen, I believe Naruto is even closer in personality to his mother than Sakura is, I wouldn't call her a dead ringer. But let's say we go with your theorie.Couldn't that mean that Sakura is filling in as a mother figure for Naruto, rather than a love interest?
Naruto rejected Sakura because he knew she did not love him that way. But she does love him, she cares for him, she beats him up when he misbehaves, she is condescending, bossy... like a mom.
Seriously I made a joke thread about this, Kushina, the thief, as you see, I noticed both sides.
Kushina and Sakura do share a lot of similarities but, really, without the hair color, you could say exactly the same thing about all the tsundere like Anko, Tsunade, Temari, etc.
The way MinatoXKushina was told did have similarities with Hinata's confession but, really, apart from the "Minato/Naruto changed me" part, you could say the same of about any love story.
Point being, the only pairing we really learned about this week was MinaKushi...
And anyway, Hinata already won by starting the whole pairing shitstorm by being the first person to ever tell Naruto "I love you", before Sakura killed NaruSaku with her own "confession", and even before Naruto's own mother. There's a reason Kishi had her call DIBS at that exact moment, BEFORE Naruto was welcomed back as a hero and a savior by everyone else.
MinaKush IMO resemble a FemNaruto x Sasuke pairing to me. A female Naruto would be more of a carbon copy of Kushina. Sasuke is like Minato in that both are the "cool type" and were the pretty boys.
Or better yet, SakuIno, because Ino was the first person to acknowledge Sakura's big ol forehead and helped her feel good about herself with her forehead and now she displays it with pride. 😆
Or SasuSaku, But we are NOT in that specific scheme. In this manga, the pretty boy (Sasuke), went batshit crazy. The Tsundere (Sakura) had to pick, on one side the criminal Sasuke (the one she loves, according to manga canon), that everyone now wanted to stop/kill, who joined the Akatsuki, the organisation hunting her second choice, Naruto, the village hero, a great guy, her best friend. She is put in a tight spot. In reality, not matter her feelings, she is pretty much forced to pick Naruto in this case, else she would be acting as a villain herself, and Sakura is not a villain. So what does she do?
She attemps to manipulate Naruto by using his feelings for her as a tool. And the main character rejected her confession. (rightfully, as the encounter with Sasuke later proved) No matter the intent, this raises serious trust issues. Even if I do think her intentions were good, that Sakura, in a twisted, bitchy way, was trying to do the "right" thing.
The next part of her plan was to go on a suicide solo mission to try to stop Sasuke. Sakura isn't dumb, she knew there was very likely only 2 way out of this, and considering the skill difference, she was likely to end up dead. Lucky for her, option 3, Naruto comming in to save her butt happened.
But really, what was the key moment? When Sakura, on her SECOND try, had a half-blind, weakened Sasuke at her mercy. Even though we learned about Sasuke's magical poison resistance, Sakura did not when she was standing behind Sasuke, a poisoned kunai in her hand.
At that point, she had a SECOND chance to stand for her really chosing Naruto. She could have, with one strike, spent a happy life with Naruto, at the cost of Sasuke's life. Let me tell you one thing, Hinata, in the same situation, would have slit Sasuke's throath, pierced his heart, cut off his liver, all with the poisoned kunai, just to be sure the poison got a real chance to act.
Sakura ultimately picked "not killing Sasuke" (and letting herself be killed in the process without Kakashi and Naruto's interventions) over spending a "happy" life with Naruto. We are far from the scenario you cited above, not to mention that Naruto and Sakura already seem to have put the whole "confession" thing behind, and their solution appears to be to just pretend the whole thing never happened and go back to being friends.
NaruSaku pretty much died in the last arc. Kishimoto is a softie, and he has shown before (Sakura's confession to Sasuke, Hinata's to Naruto, MinatoXKushina story) that he can write a decent (nothing special, just decent) love story. Chapter 469 is definately not part of a decent love story.
NaruHina, on the other hand, does have room to evolve into a decent love story, and all that is really needed is for Naruto to warm up to her. And, by looking at 437 and the Kushina chapters, I think Kishi can manage it just fine. 💃
