Yes! Sasuke and Naruto can actually be gay and still punch each other a lot. From early internet fanart to professional erotica, Bella Prodan looks at how one artist redraws what queerness in Naruto fanarts can look like.
The first encounter with malexmale intimacy does not often arrive through canon, but through the fan-drawn panels of anonymous artists on old Twitter who dared cross boundaries the original story could not.
Often called the founding fathers of yaoi, NaruSasu are unarguably one of the most globalised yaoi ships in all anime and manga. The two great rivals of the early 21st century have been queerbaiting an entire generation of geek kids turned adults since their first accidental kiss in 2002.
“You don’t expect people to have an opinion on Naruto’s sexuality, because the show isn’t about that,” says Misty, 24, the Argentinian NaruSasu artist engaging an audience of 24 thousand followers on X.
“But Naruto Shippuden was the anime that reinvented yaoi as we know it.
“When it first came out, I saw people increasingly talking about a relationship between Naruto and Sasuke. I had to read fanfiction to understand that, until I realised it had brought ‘normal’ people to question queerness in media that is not supposed to be gay, including me.”
Misty, who started his @themidnights0ng Tumblr and X accounts in 2024, has been publishing his art for over seven years. Today, he is a professional artist making cover illustrations for erotic books.
“When I read my first NaruSasu doujinshi on YouTube, I immediately thought it was wrong. This artist is deranged. Why is Sasuke with another man? Why Naruto? But the fandom encouraged the artist to keep going, the comments said it made a lot of sense.
“Then at the same time, the second opening of Naruto Shippuden came out… and that was extremely gay. Slowly I realised, hey, it is possible to be a fucking homosexual!”
From the Sun/Moon symbolism to a literal god declaring them reincarnations destined to break a cycle of hatred, the series does little to discourage the fandom’s NaruSasu interpretation.
“There were very gay connotations, especially in the manga. Sasuke’s pain was Naruto’s, as he often said. Sasuke literally called him ‘his one and only’. SasuNaru conspiracy theories were not that crazy. It was not just us being shippers, we were looking at the facts!
“In fact, now I think their relationship was very intentional. Maybe Kishimoto didn’t expect people to see it, but I think he meant it and it was just impossible back then to actually commit to it, to have Naruto and Sasuke actually get together.”
Fanfiction and doujinshis opened up space for yaoi shipping in an era of widespread homophobia, but as a result often did so through familiar narrative structures.
“When I came to make art for this fandom in 2024, I saw that a lot of artists people glorified were very straight-coded. From a NaruSasu point of view, they would very nearly turn Sasuke into a girl. He would be very feminine, cute and submissive, wearing lingerie, not knowing what sex is, with a very round shape of his face and cute, poppy eyes.
“From a NaruSasu view, then it would be Naruto who would be the girly one. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter with which ship dynamic they stood, because everyone was just portraying them as straight people. One of them was a man, and the other, a girl.”
This contradiction at the heart of fan-drawn yaoi and, in particular, of some Naruto smut fancomics, shows intimacy following the logic of the very heterosexual roles and gender norms fanfiction and fanart exist to avoid.
“This was their reality, so I made mine. I started drawing them to portray them as two men with their own personalities that don’t just necessarily surround their sexuality, and I received a lot of common feedback saying, ‘thank you for making them actually gay!’
“A lot of people come to me with all these stereotypes of gay people, but I portray what I believe queerness is. If people hate me for it, then I’m doing something good! I’m showing them how gay can be, showing them that yes, it can look like this. I stand by my reality.”
Inside the mind of the artist, Misty follows a very technical process when making art.
Although he describes his art as loosely defined, much attention is paid to eyes, hands and colouring. Anatomy or background are much less detailed, with “a stronger focus on how they touch.”
“In real life, sex is very telling. Where do you touch? How do you do it? How delicate are you? It all tells a story. I want to portray that in the art I make, which is why hands placements are very important.
“Then, even in canon, Naruto and Sasuke constantly have this dynamic about not having to talk, that they just understand each other.
“I believe that comes from really knowing that person through their eyes.”
It seems what Misty draws is not just SasuNaru, but the terms of queerness itself and its place in fanfiction and fanart.