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What characteristic of Sakura makes Naruto like her? She was very useless in the original Naruto, and she is in love with Sasuke. Not to mention, she did not have anything traumatic in her childhood, unlike Hinata, who actually liked Naruto from the beginning.
Also Naruto nearly unleashed the nine tails for Hinata, but still said Sakura was sort of his girlfriend.
Did I miss something here? What did Sakura do to get Naruto to like her? I am only looking for canon answers.
Naruto loves and desires Sakura because she is an average ninja girl. Naruto wants all the leaf village to look up to him and select him as Hokage one day for one reason--- so that he will be accepted and respected by the leaf village. Everyone must accept the Hokage, and most will respect the Hokage.
Therefore, a goal/milestone along that path of becoming Hokage is to get the most average ninja in his grade to "believe in him". If he can convince the average leaf ninja to accept him, he will have achieved his life long goal of being accepted by the leaf village, rather than ostracised. This is the original drive behind his crush on Sakura and his desire for her to love him.
Afterward, there is all the mutual experiences and mutual bonding from being in the same teams together through so much stress and trying times.
I don't think there can be a canon answer to this because it is not something shown/talked about in either the manga or anime. However, when you were young what did your crushes do to get you to have a crush on them? I know in my case, almost nothing. They just had to be attractive. My guess that is true for Naruto as well.
He liked Sakura for years, she wasn't a bad girl or anything and she'd be willing to die for Naruto as well. How many people fall for others just because they liked you? While Hinata liked him, she really wasn't that close to him. She was willing to die for him, but so were most of the Leaf. He really seemed to love Sakura even though she might not like him, so if he really cared for her, then it'd make no sense for him to quickly get over her. Naruto isn't fickle, and Hinata wasn't really his type (he seems to like the tsundere and girl with back bone; if Hinata did have that back bone in the beginning, then she wouldn't have fallen for Naruto because the only reason she fell for Naruto was cause he was a fellow loser, except unlike her, he never gave up).
Also as a child, Sakura was ostracized (like Naruto but not to nearly the same extent) for something outside of her power and then was rescued by one person showing kindness to her and befriending her.
Another reason for Naruto to still like Sakura is because she will try almost anything to protect him. While her fake confession was mean, she did it to protect him, and she was willing to try and kill Sasuke when he joined Akatsuki (an organization that wanted to kill Naruto).
While she couldn't kill Sasuke, it didn't exactly have to mean that she still liked him; it could just be because she liked him for 5 years and then he became a part of her family (Team 7) so she couldn't kill him because of who he used to be (before Itachi mind raped him a 2nd time, he was actually a pretty good kid, though he was anti-social). So Naruto might feel that he still has a chance.
There could be a lot of reasons for Naruto to like Sakura and pick her over Hinata. These are a few I could think of. It's not like anything I'm shipping is possible anyways.
she did not have anything traumatic in her childhood, unlike Hinata, who actually liked Naruto from the beginning.The structure of this sentence seems to suggest that liking Naruto was a "trauma" for Hinata. :D