At Jump Festa 2024, Yui Itō, a Japanese actress best known for playing Sakura Haruno in Live Spectacle Naruto: Song of the Akatsuki, reportedly came dangerously close to an unsettling meeting with a person.
Yui Itō shared her Jump Festa 2024 incidents on social media:
Shared by @/uchihassasusaku, a social media X (formerly Twitter) user, Itō posted an Instagram story in which she discussed being pursued during this year’s Jump Festa conference. Masaki Nakao, who played Naruto Uzumaki in the live-action Naruto stage play, and Yui Itō attended a talk session about it. According to the translation, the incident was not captured on the surveillance camera, which is why Itō went to sleep sobbing and feeling depressed and frustrated. She posted the picture of the bamboo grove on Instagram to help her relax.
Sakura’s live actress, @itoyui0426, posted on her insta story that a man chased her at Jump Festa yesterday. Unfortunately the CCTV footage didn’t capture the incident. The amount of harassment Sakura’s voice and live actresses receive is terrifying. I’m glad she’s safe now. pic.twitter.com/QaAU8kkylR
— 𝓜 ❀ ◓ (@uchihassasusaku) December 17, 2023
Itō has only revealed her tale of being stalked on Instagram thus far on social media. It’s unclear what the person in question intended to accomplish. Given Sakura’s divisive reception in the Naruto series, it’s possible that the individual intended to harass Itō only for embodying the character. Alternatively, they could have been Itō fans and overindulged in their feelings for her. Both scenarios would have been tragic if Itō hadn’t escaped, and neither one explains what transpired.
Online, Naruto fans are expressing their condolences to Itō and criticizing the poisonous and misogynistic views of those harboring resentment towards a fictitious figure such as Sakura. The women who have portrayed Sakura across the world have regularly faced harassment in one way or another, as was described in uchihassasusaku’s thread. During meet-and-greet events, Japanese voice actor Chie Nakamura received feedback from her fans stating that Sakura was ineffective and feeble. Sakura’s Korean voice actor, Yeo Min-jeong, expressed how distressing it was to hear so many fans disparage Sakura with foul language. Even the German voice actress for Sakura, Katharina von Keller, faced abuse for portraying the character on TikTok.
Chie Nakamura(Sakura’s VA) talks about meet & greets-for years “fans” called HER weak & useless; which made her depressed. Seeing Sakura place top 3 world wide made her emotional. They’re both finally receiving the support they deserve 20 yrs later🥹🫶🏽
🔗 https://t.co/B3Z5x4luJ8 pic.twitter.com/RrKAsFsJVw
— 𝓜 ❀ ◓ (@uchihassasusaku) April 14, 2023
Let’s not forget the harassment and hatred Yui Ito, 🌸 actress in Narusute, has received.
Like Chie, Yui has shown her love for Sakura and sick people have gone to insult and harass her for the simple fact of being her actress and loving her.BUT WE ARE THE TOXIC ONES, RIGHT? pic.twitter.com/Ka00Pu6JZB
— 𓈒 ݁ ⟡ ݁ ♡ リシ－✨🩷 (@lissyeun) April 14, 2023
Yeo Min-jeong, the Korean Voice Actor for Sakura, speaks up about how much hate she recieved just for doing her job. She loves Sakura was so upset at the backlash that at times she didn’t even want to record her lines.
🔗 https://t.co/r8dJci55Ti pic.twitter.com/6pooS9cOaM
— 𝓜 ❀ ◓ (@uchihassasusaku) April 14, 2023
Online abuse linked to the character also targets people working on official Naruto productions, including series creator Masashi Kishimoto. Sakura’s part in the tale has caused controversy since the first animated series, but it doesn’t excuse bad behavior toward people who helped create her. Regrettably, terrible incidents such as this are happening more frequently among fans of popular culture.
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