**Spoilers** Boruto: Naruto Next Generations and Boruto: Naruto the Movie
The Hiddle Leaf Village is destroyed! Boruto has an eye thing but only in one eye? A cool eye scar? Is that Sasuke’s headband!?!?! There are new tattoos that light up and seals with swords and…wait…did that Kawaki guy say he killed Naruto?
That is the first minute of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. Those 60 seconds are worth a few watches just to think of all the possibilities. For about a minute the show Boruto did not seem like a copy of Naruto but instead a new vision of a beloved world. But that minute was short lived.
Even before those first 60 seconds there was hope that the show would live up to Boruto: Naruto the Movie. The movie Boruto did enough things well that there was genuine reason to be excited about the potential of the show. The movie was supposed to be the bridge between the Naruto: Shippuden finale and the beginning of the spinoff. But it wasn’t.
At the end of the movie Boruto had already taken the Chunin exams, gotten over not appreciating his dad, and seemed ready to graduate from teen angst to a real shinobi. Instead the show Boruto takes you back to the academy days. In a similar fashion to the movie the show’s first 60 or so episodes include all of the ways Boruto needs to “grow up”. There are new characters introduced, old faces revisited and an introduction to different parts of the shinobi world never seen before. That being said the first 60 episodes felt like an extended look at basic background information.
This was most likely done as a way of introducing a new and younger audience to the Naruto Universe. As a marketing strategy the first 60 episodes of Boruto make sense. But for anybody that invested the time into Naruto, Naruto: Shippuden, and all of the movies then Boruto felt like a gigantic step back. After mainly focusing on Boruto chasing cats, learning basic techniques, eating a lot of hamburgers, staring at video game screens, and whining about his father the show is finally starting to pick up.
The main reason the show has new life is because it has finally caught up with the end of the movie. The rest of these episodes should now be leading up to those magical 60 seconds of the first episode. Of course, in true Naruto fashion, the show has immediately gone into a filler arc. The last few episodes have been about Cho-Cho as she’s a bodyguard on a movie set. There is always the danger that after passing the movie the show will just become a filler bonanza before the next great arc. Expect there to be some training/finding a new power episodes as well as other side character mini-arcs. There will always be these filler episodes on a show like Boruto because it airs year round on an almost weekly basis (the same can be said of shows like One Piece and Dragonball Super).
The following episodes, no matter what they are, should be better because Boruto is no longer fighting against his father, there’s a new enemy to be discovered and Boruto has a new power that hasn’t been fully explained yet. The end of the Chunin exams showed two very interesting things: there are more Otsutsuki Clan members out there and Boruto is now a Killer of Gods.
In fact there have been numerous hints and clues that the Otsutsuki Clan is a lot bigger than originally expected and they are now very much interested in what’s going on in the Hidden Leaf Village. In the final Naruto movie a sad Toneri ends the film by vowing to continue his watch on the moon. In episode 53 of Boruto he has a brief but very interesting cameo. (:25-:45 above clip)
There will be more God fights, there will be more God killings, and there is a very good chance that it will no longer involve Sasuke and Naruto. For some, this might be a negative but the possibility for some of the coolest fight scenes in anime history is very real. While the show has not had the most interesting story lines or character development there has been some amazing fight scenes. Now that there is the potential for some new story lines and genuine character growth those fights should be even better. In the meantime while you’re catching up on everything that’s happened so far it is always a good idea to check out some of the best fights in Boruto. The Naruto/Sasuke vs Momoshiki is one of my favorites.
