I feel like I should add this.

{slight anti narusaku ahead}

The "fake" confession that I'm going to write an analysis about is when Sakura had confessed her fake feelings to Naruto. However, not exactly the scene itself, but the question "WHAT MADE SAKURA FAKE CONFESS TO NARUTO?"

The anti Sakura are using this to tell everyone that she's manipulative because of it, and arrogantly thinking that she's doing it for her own sake. However, what they keep forgetting is that the reason why Sakura thought of it was because of what Sai told her.

Basically, I noticed how anti extremist writes how Sakura did the "guilt-tripping" in the series, which is rather stupid. If you want to blame someone for guilt tripping, it was Sai towards Sakura. Not that you should blame someone...

Here's the situation:

At their trip to the land of Iron, Sai witnessed Naruto's willingness to get beaten up on Sasuke's behalf, and then he connected it to the promise that Naruto had told him he had made her. After that, he informed Sakura of Naruto's feelings to her:

Sakura recalled Naruto's words of empathy to her, then started to realize how Naruto had pushed himself in harm's way, and due to Sai's words, she thought this was all for the sake of fulfilling his promise to her.

That realization, however, left Sakura in tears, for how much (that's what she thought) she had unknowingly caused Naruto to suffer.

Sai pushed farther. He continued to EMPHASIZE just how seriously Naruto took the promise of a lifetime, and he even went far as to describe it as a CURSE that had been placed on him, and state that Sasuke did indeed cause him pain:

She caused him pain because of the promise between them. And then, Sai's words cut her deep into her heart right here:

And THIS was what caused Sakura to think that Naruto's promise to her was his main incentive to push himself harder, but of course, the anti extremist just can't accept that. They always think it's her "arrogance and manipulative" bitch side.

And it's safe to say that Sai had went too far. The promise between them was not Naruto's sole incentive for pushing himself harder to the extent for Sasuke (which Naruto cleared on later). This is one of the reasons why Sakura gets the hate in this scene; they think she's giving herself importance, but they DON'T acknowledge the fact that it was SAI who made her think so in the first place.

It was Sai's "understanding" that led Sakura to have the same false impression, because she thought that Naruto was only pushing himself hard because of his promise to her, which led to Sakura's ultimate fake confession to Naruto:

Then after that, Naruto looked completely stunned, but he also had the expression of "I ain't having none of this shit":

He then quickly remembered in several instances wherein Sakura had demonstrated how deep her love is to Sasuke, and refused to believe that he can easily discard them at a moment's notice:

Sakura, of course, justified her "change of heart", claiming "They say a woman's heart is as interchangeable as the Autumn's sky,", but Naruto knew her. He knew that when it comes to Sasuke, Sakura was anything but a fickle. And with that, he told her to stop lying to herself:

She explained how concerned she was for his wellbeing, because Sakura knew chasing after Sasuke always resulted in Naruto putting himself in the harm's way:

So then, she sought to free him from his promise to her, in ORDER TO ENSURE HIS SAFETY AND WELLBEING.

That's ALL Sakura's wishes to accomplish by lying to him.

Naruto clarified that his promise of a lifetime didn't have to do with how far he was willing to go in order to save his friend:

He was doing this because he wanted to.

This is why at this point (because previously, I've always thought that NaruSaku would happen) I feel like Naruto was already in the deep process of moving on. Because like it state above, he was surprised by her "confession", quickly realized something isn't right, and during their interaction, he did not give any indication that he still harboured any feelings for her at all. Well, previously, he would've at least displayed a sad smile or a fake smile, or any expression that revealed how Sakura still loved Sasuke.

But he didn't do any of them, and was actually angry that Sakura was lying to herself.

He'd retain some of his crush habits (like that one time about the girlfriend comment during the war), but it wasn't anything serious.

- jeonngi