As Long As We Live Under The Same Sky

Do you really believe that Sakura caught up to the boys when she said that?

I don’t understand what the ‘really’ and the ‘believe’ are about tbh. Kishi made it pretty damn clear that she did. I mean they did form a new three way deadlock, they were paralleled to the sannin and Sakura and Databook 4 both stated that she did and that her goal was to catch up to them since they were always ahead of her since part 1. It’s not about what I believe or what I think. The author literally stated it, had Sakura state it and used symbolism to indicate this… like???

A New Three-Way Deadlock (新たなる三竦み, Aratanaru Sansukumi) , Volume 66 cover:

And I see people trying to twist the English phrase ‘caught up to’ to prove that Sakura wasn’t talking about being equal to the boys but just being able to help them etc. which is BS even if we only look at English for this Japanese series. I even asked a translator about the literal Japanese text used and this is what I was told:

The verb is 追いつく, ‘to catch up with’ or ‘to overtake’, and it’s conjugated at the past potential form (‘was able to’). The ‘looks like’ part is expressed by that mitai at the end.

Caught up to is precisely what oitsuku means if you look up in a Japanese-English dictionary.

According to Japanese dictionary, regarding oitsuku, its definitions are:

1 – when a person who was behind is lined up with a person who was ahead.

2 – when you get at the same level with someone who had superior skills ”