English Dub Review: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations “Bonds Come in All Forms”

Finally, this arc comes to an end.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Sakura is still captured by Shin, who has sent his clones out to fight Naruto, Sasuke, and Sarada, who are charging at Shin’s secret hideout in an icy canyon. Naruto and Sasuke are able to break through but are slowed down by the horde of pale children holding them back. Inside, meanwhile, Sakura starts duking it out with Shin, who can manipulate the movement of his wicked throwing knives with his sharingan. Sakura puts up a good fight but ultimately is brought low by Shin’s power. Sarada, who rushes in to try and save Sakura, is nearly wounded as well, but Sasuke comes and saves her.

Just as Shin is about to deliver the killing blow on Sakura, Sasuke comes to her rescue and joins Sakura in the fight against Shin. Sasuke’s sharingan proves invaluable in protecting his family, but it’s Shin’s clones who suddenly turn on him and stab him through the chest. Believing this to be the next step of their evolution, the Shin clones dispatch with Shin, who they believe to be useless flesh.

The clones then turn their sights on Naruto and friends, but once they see the demon fox within Naruto, they immediately surrender, seeing how outmatched they are. Naruto then offers them a peaceful solution and sends them to go live with Kabuto in a weird creepy orphanage.

Naruto, Sasuke, and the others return home, and Sarada sees Sakura and Sasuke as her parents for the first time. Though the two don’t share a kiss, Sarada’s fears about her lineage are quelled. Which is good, because as it turns out, Suigetsu’s DNA test about Sarada was wrong, and she actually is Sakura’s child, as confirmed by Karin. How nice that all of this started by a stupid coincidence about Sarada and Karin having similar glasses.

Our Take:

What even was this episode? I’m genuinely baffled at the oddity of an anime that Boruto is trying to be here. Just when it seems like it’s going to take itself seriously, it gets bogged down in this nauseating, soporific nonsense. This episode that exists as a combination of stiff, unlikable characters continuing to demonstrate the worst aspects of this franchise over and over again. This episode is tonally confusing, thematically bizarre, and ends on this uplifting, but sappy note that doesn’t fit with the rest of the episode. Boruto is just flirting with taking itself seriously but still feels the need to make with the happy ending instead of telling a story that’s a little bit challenging. The power levels of the show are completely all over the place, Naruto and Sasuke have no presence as adults and are just passive babysitters for Sarada, who has astounded me in making herself even more unlikable as time has gone on. This is the kind of episode that makes people not take anime seriously. I don’t think anyone who has a reasonable metric of quality can look at this episode and think “Yeah, this is good. This is what this anime should be.”

To speak of the good and not just dwell on the bad, this episode decides to pull out the animation budget and actually show us a proper fight between Sakura and Shin, though it’s all style and no substance. The fight doesn’t involve any well-thought ideas or setups, it just has them duke it out at high speed until Sasuke and Naruto show up.

Yet, what progress is made by having a decent few minutes of good animation is ruined by the ending of this whole torrid affair. Shin’s clones killing him is one thing, (Which is already pretty eye-roll worthy) but his clones all heading off to Kabuto’s science experiment orphanage is the most ridiculous asspull I’ve ever heard of. The episode clearly just wants to sweep these clones under the rug in a way that is supposed to make people feel good about this existential horror that these clones exist as.

Boruto doesn’t work as a feel-good happy fun time show and it doesn’t work as a serious shounen because it doesn’t commit to either idea. If you want to be a funny, light-hearted slice-of-life then you actually have to be funny and lighthearted. You can’t send an annoying little girl on a four-episode quest to find out if her dad was cheating on her mom and then expect things to just be business as usual. I don’t have the patience for it, and I can’t imagine people watching this and actually finding joy in it. This quite simply isn’t what anime is supposed to be.