English Dub Review: Boruto “Boruto’s Birthday”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Team 7 is on a pretty good streak with missions lately, but that doesn’t stop bystanders from teasing him for being the Hokage’s son. At least he’ll get to celebrate his birthday with his friends and family…except for Naruto, who can’t make it in time due to his Hokage duties. Boruto says he expected this, but is secretly saddened by his dad failing to show up. He goes to whine to Katasuke, who reassures him that his skill is his own and not a product of him being related to the Hokage. He then gives him a Scientific Ninja Tool as a present to use on missions. Himawari’s birthday is already coming up as well, so she’s understandably worried that Naruto won’t show up for that either, but Boruto promises that he’ll be there and makes his dad promise too. However, Naruto’s also been informed of new ruins related to Kaguya Otsusuki, the final enemy they faced in the Fourth Great Ninja War.

Team 7’s next mission is to find train thieves that have held up in an abandoned mine nearby. Only once they arrive, they find one of the thieves already out and in village custody, talking about a white monster in the mine that attacked and killed the rest of the group. The team enters the mine and quickly find the remains of the thieves. Eventually they find the white monster, a multi-headed White Zetsu, one of the enemy foot soldiers from the war.

OUR TAKE
We begin the end of the lead up to the adaptation of the Boruto movie with a blast from the past. This comes in the form of a surviving White Zetsu soldier that has survived the ten-to-fifteen year gap since the war. I guess you could call this a way of showing how the current Team 7 is just as strong as the old Team 7 because they’re able to take on threats that they could at that age! Which I suppose I could see, but the upcoming arc/movie is probably going to show a better way of handling that than this does. Plus, there were probably a lot of other options for an old series enemy that they could fight. It kind of reminds me of how Star Wars Rebels brought back Darth Maul for a season to help its protagonist Ezra develop as a Jedi.

White Zetsu, meanwhile, is just a giant mindless monster that will probably be a considerable PHYSICAL threat, but likely not one that will leave an impact. The reason for this is that they’re basically buying time before they can get to the padded out version of Boruto movie, so nothing this close can be very important. But then it’s just padding in and of itself to get to more padding. And if you didn’t already know that this is made by the same production studio that makes Black Clover, you probably aren’t too surprised by learning that fact now. Heck, the whole reason this series exists is because of the movie it’s about to adapt, which really makes you look back on the past year’s worth of story and seriously wonder what the heck the whole point of it was.

But in the end, it’s not a big deal. At the very least, this means we’ll be reaching a new stage in the series which will hopefully have more energetic and creative developments instead of having the plot equivalent of watching paint dry. However, then the worry comes in whether or not the newer generation won’t be overshadowed by threats that escalate to match end of the old show but are way too much for the ones who should be holding the torch. With that in mind, I suppose it’s no wonder that Toonami might want to take a break from Boruto for awhile, so hopefully next week’s episode will keep interest alive until the show is able to come back.