English Dub Review: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations “A Shinobi Bout of Friendship”

This is what friendship is all about.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Boruto’s friend Denki has been kidnapped by some goons from the Hidden Mist Village who didn’t like getting shown up by them earlier. Boruto and friends are down to save him, even though Kagura wants to try and get help. After all, if they were to tell the adults what happened, their trip would be over and done with.

With everyone together, they’re able to find the group Tsurushi, the head punk, has gathered to fight with Boruto’s crew. An obscuring mist is deployed that prevents the fight from being seen from the outside, but this only works in Boruto’s favor, since he doesn’t want to be seen. The fight begins, and Tsurushi begins taunting Kagura at every turn. He verbally assaults him while slashing at Kagura with this sword, and starts bringing up Kagura’s bloody past. Apparently, Kagura was in one of the classes that gave the “Bloody Mist Village” it’s name, and has blood on his hands. It becomes clear why Kagura is hesitating to violence; he’s guilty over his past actions and doesn’t want to hurt any more people.

Despite learning this, Boruto and the others aren’t afraid to help Kaguya, and Iwabee saves Kaguya from Tsurushi. Once everyone’s back on their fight and working together, the fight is won, and Denki is saved. Meanwhile, negotiations are going on between the Mist Village and the Leaf Village through Shino and Anko. They discuss the political situation in the area, and explain to us that there is some civil strife going on in the sea nation.

Back at Boruto’s room, Kagura explains his difficult past, that he participated in the bloody practices of the old Mist Village and that he is the grandson of the fourth Mizukage, who was responsible for those practices. However, this doesn’t put off Boruto and friends, who are immediately accepting of Kagura.

As their friendship is assured, in another part of town, Tsurushi is being held at swordpoint by the leader of his gang, Shizuma. The episode ends as we see Shizuma apparently pull his blade across Tsurushi, leaving a stain on the ground.

Our Take:

This was an episode of Boruto that was no doubt lacking. There were things that I enjoyed about it, namely the sensibility of it’s plot and the logical sequence of events it follows without losing it’s head. Yet, despite that, this episode feels really played out and not really original. It goes exactly how you would expect, and fails to capture the emotional element of Kagura’s backstory. Everything is told too simply, too matter-of-fact to keep interest, and it’s resolved so neatly by the end that you’d swear this was a Saturday morning cartoon.

There’s also some major issues with drag in this episode as well. So little actually happens here but the scenes explaining what’s going on just last forever. Shino’s political discussion with the former Mizukage isn’t terribly interesting to watch and not too important to what’s going on at hand. It could have been completely skipped and I don’t think we would have lost anything that couldn’t be explained with a quick line or two. Kagura’s little pow wow with the Boruto gang is just a good five minutes of Boruto and his friends just reaffirm things that we, the audience, already know. It’s as if the show isn’t confident in it’s own story and doesn’t think it’s done a good enough job explaining what’s been going on. However, the audience will catch on pretty quick to what’s going on, and then it’s all downhill from there.

This is one of those episodes that could have been told in half the time and been way more interesting in the process. If there isn’t enough content to warrant 22 minutes of story, then an episode should just find another way to keep interest beside filler. The amount of filler and boring animation in this episode is non-stop and really off-putting. The only thing that keeps it together is that there is actually a story holding it together. There’s an element of functionality that makes this much more watchable than if it had some ridiculous plot that didn’t make any sense. The character motivations are sound, the pace consistent, and it does advance the story a little bit.

I still wouldn’t recommend watching Boruto, but it seems to be hitting something of a swing in trying to do these smaller episodic stories as opposed to the big shounen arcs that defined its parent show. Hopefully, it can be better, but I’m not holding my breath.