Sharingan Lore

30. Sarada Didn't Awaken Her Sharingan From Happiness

I often see fans pushing the narrative that Sarada awakened her Sharingan from happiness. I disagree. Sarada didn't awaken her Sharingan from happiness; it was emotional trauma that triggered her Sharingan's awakening.

The anime explains that Sarada didn't even awaken her Sharingan when she was going to see Sasuke. Sarada's sorrow over her father's absence was so great that the emotional distress of not knowing her father as well as being distressed that maybe Sasuke had completely forgotten about her and Sakura was painful enough to awaken her Phase I Sharingan. As I've mentioned before, Phase I Sharingan can be awakened purely out of emotional distress without any need for an immediate battle response, which means that so long as an Uchiha is suffering enough emotional pain (as Sarada was, since her dad's absence hurt deeply), those feelings can be strong enough to awaken the Sharingan.

Shizune even directly explained that "emotional trauma triggers the awakening of the Sharingan." Not happiness, trauma. The Sharingan is a genetic ability that has always been awakened in response to negative, traumatic emotions. While the nature of the trauma can vary (for the regular Sharingan, not the Mangekyou Sharingan), it does have to be negative, and that's the way it has always been (until Sarada's Mangekyou awakening, which shamelessly destroyed the canon rules of Sharingan lore, but I'll get to explaining why in a moment).

I should clarify that the anime doesn't contradict the manga; it expands upon it. Reading the manga first, readers assumed that Sarada awakened her Sharingan right before reuniting with Sasuke. But the anime expands on that by revealing that such an assumption was incorrect, as Sarada actually awakened her Sharingan at a very young age, and she is merely activating it again in the Shin arc, not awakening it. Of course, readers can stick to whichever version they prefer, whether manga or anime; I'm just saying that the anime doesn't contradict the manga, it just adds information that reshuffles the audience's assumption of the order of events.

Even if you believe that "filler doesn't count", the point stands either way: Sarada did unlock her Sharingan from emotional trauma. Her awakening of her Sharingan was caused by the intense sorrow and pain she'd suffered because of her father's constant absence from her life. Despite not knowing Sasuke, Sarada has an unusually strong attachment and special connection to her dad. She has a deep love for her father, and thus was deeply and negatively affected by his absence.

Sasuke's extended absence from the great majority of her childhood put her through long, drawn-out suffering that became a constant source of heartache and left a gaping hole in Sarada's life. When she awakened her Sharingan right before meeting her dad, it's a response to the culmination of all her sorrow and grief caused by Sasuke's absence from her life. At best it's a bittersweet mixture of regret and grief over how deeply Sasuke's absence affected her blended with happiness and excitement at the chance of finally meeting her dad. The Sharingan reflects its user's emotions, and Sarada's activation of the Sharingan right before she met Sasuke reflected the depth of just how much she had been missing her dad and the sorrow that longing had brought her and just how badly she wanted to see him.

It's true that initially Sarada looks gleeful as she bounds towards her dad's location, but as her thoughts mull on her finally getting to meet Sasuke, her eyes fill with tears, and those don't look like tears of joy to me. Her expression shifts from joy to one of distress and sadness, looking upset and distraught. She's not really smiling in the panel showing her awakened Sharingan is shown; she looks distressed to me.

Whether one prefers the anime or manga version, it's the same either way: Sarada activated her Sharingan because of negative emotions. It was a complex blend of emotions, true, and happiness was thrown in the mix somewhere, but the happy, positive stuff wasn't what triggered her Sharingan to awaken. Her Sharingan awakened in response to her intense feelings of sadness, probably mixed with other intense emotions like nervousness and anxiety at meeting her father for the first time and fear of being rejected or ignored by her dad and finding out that maybe he didn't care about her after all. After all, the soundtrack that plays during the part when Sarada activates her Sharingan is tellingly titled, "Sarada's Heartache", and her theme has a definite mournful edge to it. Her Sharingan was awakened by heartache, not happiness. It's the feeling of loss of not having her father around that awakened Sarada's Sharingan. So once again a Sharingan is awakened by the negative response to loss, not by positive emotions as many fans have erroneously claimed.

So no, Sarada's Sharingan awakening/activation didn't "break the Curse of Hatred" or bizarrely go against the established lore of the Naruto-verse, nor does it change anything about the conditions for awakening the Sharingan. Rather, Sarada's Sharingan awakening conforms to the established rules: a strong negative and traumatic emotional response triggers the Phase I Sharingan to awaken.