Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

Ignatius Bagussuputra

⭐ 2.25

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Synopsis

Another weekly produced anime to milk the name of the previously successful anime. But, this time its the story about his son who looks exactly the same going through his rebellious teenage phase while having existential crisis. I’m of course talking about Naruto, but his reincarnation with one less whiskers in his cheeks and hair long enough to be a K-pop star.

Having the privilege of being born from the greatest ninja ever that lived in his times, he wants to be recognized for his own achievements rather than be know as the 7th Hokage’s son. With an arrogance high enough to reach the moon and wake Toneri up from his slumber, he denies Naruto’s skills, despite him being the 7th Hokage, and always tries to be that one person who thinks they’re cool to go against the flow and doesn’t acknowledge the Hokage (his dad).

Plot

There’s no plot at this point, just staying relevant is probably a good enough achievement for this anime. Its manga is being written as this anime is produced, what more can I say. An anime with a release format that should just die already, having only one mega-season with a weekly release schedule. You can be sure that it’s quality will never be as good as those prepared in advance and released in seasons.

Highlights

2/10 | Story & Plot

Half-assed written story with no clear plot and 80% fillers. Plot built on the idea of a flashback story, this anime starts of by showing us a village where they used to live, ruined to pieces after what seemed like a huge battle. It then throws all of that out of the window just a couple seconds later and starts off to (what seems like) 5 or more years then, expecting us to just forget that everything that happens from the very first episode until that very first scene is all but a flashback, A FLASHBACK! Just how stupid can this be to deliver a story based on a flashback, what even is a flashback at this point, we will then experience a flashback inception, where we see a flashback inside flashback on an ongoing flashback.

Even if everything went well, can you really deliver the story well enough to fit it together and reuse the very first scene when the story itself is still being made? How confident can you be to already “spoil” the scene from episode… I don’t know, maybe 300 something—judging from the current pace—at episode 1 and set our expectations that high, can Boruto really deliver what they promised. Perhaps they can (being optimistic here), but then the question becomes when.

1/10 | Artwork & Animation

It’s slowly but surely degrading as the episode number increases. Having the 2.5 month hiatus between April and July this year gave me a bit of hope for Boruto to at least try a bit and produce an animation that doesn’t look like it was rushed within 1 week. But, I was too stupid to have (some) hopes for this anime. You see that backdrop on the start of this post, the animation here doesn’t even look half as good as that. Watching 1080p feels like watching a gaming video with all the graphic settings turned off and in 360p quality.

4/10 | Sound

The most decent thing about this anime, nothing spectacular but nothing memorable too. It puts amazing animated OPs and EDs with good soundtracks but absolutely butchered it with the actual show.

2/10 | Characters

Half-assed written characters. The protagonist who’s supposed to be the main focus of this story doesn’t have any appealing traits with the only problem he seems to have is that his dad doesn’t spend any time with his family and only focuses on keeping the whole village safe and sound with improvements to the facilities here and there.

Verdict

The “long-awaited” episode 155 that kept anime-only fans waiting after the hiatus was a total letdown. I still had some hope back then that this anime could at least be my “Sunday Morning” show I look forward to each week. Then, episode 156 came out and that was the last straw for perhaps most of the anime fans, including myself. With the title “I Can’t Stay in My Slim Form”, you can be damn sure it was a ChoCho filler. Reciting from a reddit comment I saw once

I’m fine with character-x filler, or perhaps character-y filler, anything else, anything but ChoCho fillers.

I can’t believe it took me this long to realize this whole show was a train wreck. For all of you with delusional disorder, clinging by your love for Naruto in hopes to see more of that beautiful action here, thinking it might not be that bad. It IS that bad.

You’re better off reading the manga, or heck, you could even catch up with the story here just by watching the movies. Do not waste your time for this absolute disaster and go watch something else better. You could always just watch clips of the best moments on YouTube and you’ll still probably on the same track as those who watched all of the episodes.

This is actually just a “cash-grab” anime milking all of us Naruto fans. Quoting from a MAL user

The Sequel No One Asked For But Still Got

Once again, if you’re actually interested in the story and want to know more, just read the manga.

Reference(s):

• https://myanimelist.net/anime/34566/Boruto__Naruto_Next_Generations
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Boruto/