To be fair, when they were building up to Sakura's character you felt her development would justify everything. I honestly think she was supposed to be unlikable. Considering she legit made fun of Naruto for being an orphan and had no respect for him at all.
I don't think Kishi is sexist at all...I just think he really has problems just writing characters in general. I mean, Kiba and Shino get even less character motivation than Hinata and Sakura. I mean, Shino JUST likes bugs, I don't think his character actually ever goes past that.
No, it's more than that.
For example, in the first meeting of Team Seven, he asked what they're goals are. Sakura indicated she wanted to become Sasuke's wife, and Kakashi notes to himself "Yes, of course, girls are more worried about romance than actual careers" or something to that affect. He just openly generalized ALL female ninja's into being ditzy love obsessed idiots, while he believes that equally inexperienced and stupid boy ninja's have more varied and sophisticated motives and ambitions. And the narrative proves him correct.
This characterization of female characters holds up strongly throughout the cast. Ino is obsessed with being Sasuke's girlfriend. They made a big show in their fight to be not concerned about anything but their grudge against each other, but their grudge was over sasuke. Temari's one of the few capable ninja, but her interaction is mostly centered around her becoming Shikimaru's boo. Nothing is ever stated about her own personal goals and ambitions.
And even when we encounter female characters with goals, just about all of them are motivated by some kind of love for a male, usually romantic. Tsunade became Hokage because Naruto asked her and he reminded her of her fiance and brother. Konan was in love with whatshisface. Tenten never got characterized.
When you come to a few instances where that isn't the case, they're motivations aren't really delved into. That girl from the sound 4 and in the chunin forest were just generically loyal to orochimaru, Anko had a cool personality, but the most characterization we got for her was that she used to be Orochimaru's old plaything (something that never got revisited).
I'm not saying Kishimoto is sexist himself except in the sense that all of us have sexist tendencies without realizing it. Because sexism is a pervasive, entrenched idea that we all are susceptible to whether we like it or not. Feminists like me even fall into it occasionally. What we can probably say for sure is that he isn't misogynistic. But sexist? Well, I don't know the guy, I just know his work, and Naruto portrays an extremely sexist culture within it's world that is unchallenged and uncommentated on both by both by the characters within the world or the narrative itself.
Well the details you're listing are sounding like interesting topics. Kishi handled the female characters terribly for sure. We don't need to go over that, of course, that's blatant.
I'd like to hear more specifically our thoughts on the world building. Just from what i'm thinking of, we didn't know much about the other nations (part 2 naruto was better in that regard though) but I'd say that it wasn't really too relevant to the plot that it really got in the way of my enjoyment much.
I'd also like to hear more of your thoughts on the thing about poorly defined powers. It's something that I know is true, but I can't really recall all of the details of it. Although I still disagree about Izanagi thing. I don't think that discussion of ours had a proper ending.
Apparently, no, given 360pages thought the sexism extented only to Sakura. Sakura as a ditzy love obsessed idiot would be fine if whoever female characters fall in love with wasn't the central pillar of characterization for just about every female character or relevance.
But as far as worldbuilding, I mean more of the structure of Shinobi's and Konoha. This is more of a Part 2 problem, since the first part doesn't deal with too much of that. For the most part, I just think 3 ranks of ninja is way too shallow a ranking and there should be diverse ranks and catergories within those ranks. But what I am talking about is where the hell is Danzo at the time the 3rd Hokage died? Because there was never a better time to snatch that shit up. But Kishimoto just hadn't thought of him yet, so he was no where to be found in the moment that would grant him his most sought after opportunity with greatest ease. Basic stuff like that, which I could probably go into more detail if I had a reread of it. I remember having serious issues with how the Anbu and Root were portrayed. When you get into deep espionage of your deep espionage unit, which is even more espionage-r than the rest of your army of ninja's, then I want some answers as to how it all works, how he kept hidden, recruited his members. Kind of like the same problem how would you convince anyone in the modern age to join Hydra in the MCU?
As far powers go, I just wanted to get an explanation of how certain things worked. Like, okay, so creating fire and moving earth and water are understandable, that's just applying energy. But how the hell do you bend shadows to paralyze another person? Naruto came off as a very grounded series, so such an physics breaking power was odd. But more than that, it wasn't exploited enough. With this, Shikimaru was the PERFECT support unit for any fighter. He should have never been the one leading in any fight, but just paralyze the enemy using a power very few would see coming, and just have your partner nail him with some Jutsu. But it was never used like this. A lot of techniques were not used like this, or just didn't make much sense. Again, this was taken to it's extreme in Part 2 where Kishi tried to explain powers, but that only raised more questions.
