should've been a slice-of-life
2.45spoiler warning! this is a deeper look into the story and everything the anime has to offer. if you haven't finished it yet and came here by accident, you might want to go back and finish the story first.
take me back!flashback inception
Boruto opens with a ruined village and the promise of a major battle. then it abandons that hook for a years-long prequel, padding the distance with flashbacks within flashbacks. the structure has no anchor. the anime runs alongside the manga with no firm foundation, and it shows: momentum stalls, continuity bends, and “plot” drifts into improvisation.
filler hell
over half the episodes are filler. by the time i reached episode 156 — a Chocho filler about “slim form,” aired after a two-month hiatus — my patience was gone. the problem isn’t only the volume, but the placement: arcs halt, tension deflates, and the audience is asked to invest in material that doesn’t matter. the filler is sometimes more engaging than the main story, but it only highlights how thin the core material is.
visual degradation
the production cannot sustain a weekly schedule. what begins as acceptable quickly degrades into flat backgrounds, stilted motion, and art that barely matches the promotional stills. action scenes lose impact, everything feels hollow, and the series never recovers the energy it needs. it is the predictable cost of stretching a staff to deliver indefinitely.
characters with no pull
neither plot nor animation carries Boruto, so the burden falls to characters who cannot hold it. the new cast is shallow, often defined by single traits. Boruto himself begins as little more than an echo of his father’s absence — resentment without depth. internal conflict is missing, replaced by recycled tropes. the old cast, meanwhile, is deliberately weakened, undercutting the sense of continuity.
reflections
i wanted this to work. Naruto had its flaws, but even with filler stripped away — as in Naruto Kai — the core story is still strong. Boruto repeats the same mistakes without the same backbone. the promise of succession is wasted, and the flaws are structural. time may eventually redeem it, but nothing so far suggests it will.