English Dub Review: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations “Boruto and Kagura”

Hungry swords don’t make for good friends.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The long-awaited battle between Kagura and Boruto continues. Boruto insists that Kagura doesn’t need to keep fighting, but he isn’t hearing it. He insists that Boruto knows nothing of what he’s been through and that he’s resigned himself to working for the only one he can trust, Shizuma. His strikes start carrying a reckless fury to them as he slashes at Boruto over and over again.

Things look bad, but Mitsuki arrives just in time aid Boruto in his fight. He comes not just with his own power, but with a scroll that reveals some truths that Shizuma has kept hidden from Kagura. The scroll is evidence that connects Shizuma’s revolutionary group to the Land of Waves, making it clear that they weren’t acting in the interest of the village, but trying to aid another nation’s invasion simply to build themselves up. Shizuma, who has been insisting that the Mizukage has been assassinating people behind the scenes that cause trouble for him, is now caught in the truth. Kagura breaks down into tears, having been betrayed by someone he trusted so much, but this isn’t much of a problem for Shizuma. Boruto and Mizuki take Shizuma on but struggle to beat the skilled swordsmen.

The fight continues, and Boruto gets knocked down over and over again but keeps coming back at Shizuma. At the last moment, he’s able to figure out a way to beat Shizuma, by using his shadow clones to outmaneuver him. Amazingly, this works and Shizuma is brought down. However, things aren’t done yet.

Shizuma is still standing but becomes consumed by Samehada, the legendary sword that can eat another person’s chakra. It slowly swallows him whole, reforming him into a shark monster imbued with Samehada. Chojuro then decides to show up, having finished dealing with the others. He offers to help fight Shizuma, but Kagura decides to take up the burden by himself. He picks up his sword and starts to fight with Shizuma, but finds his sword takes an enormous amount of chakra to use. Boruto offers his chakra, however, and with the two of them working together, they’re able to separate Shizuma from Samehada. With the fight over, Boruto’s friends come to take him and Mitsuki away as Kagura looks on with satisfied eyes.

Our Take:

This is something of a mixed bag of an episode to review. There’s some that I like, but a whole lot that reeks of sloppy writing and shoddy characterization. This is supposed to be the big battle, the ending of this arc that puts Boruto and Kagura up for all the marbles. Yet, I can’t help but feel that this whole conflict is forced and a bit groanworthy. Enough time hasn’t been spent to build up to this battle and the time that we have had hasn’t done a good job of establishing the realism of this conflict and the legitimacy of the characters within it.

The characters are the pillars of a show. Without them, the plot will collapse onto itself and whatever entertainment the episode can provide will ultimately come up short because of the black mark of crappy characterization. Boruto has always been the biggest problem of his own show, that’s nothing new, but Kagura isn’t doing too well as a character either. His reasoning for following Shizuma is too weak to be compelling. Shizuma is so obviously evil one has to wonder why anyone would think they could roll with him without eventually ending up with a knife in their back. There’s no complexity to the characters. It’s not like Shizuma is charismatic enough to keep good friends, and Kagura’s connection to him just feels forced. He’s too good of a kid to keep such a terrible company.

One can’t ignore all the forced moments here as well. Mitsuki’s scroll is all too convenient to feel like a good twist, and having Chojuro sit out the fight only to come in at the last minute is just lame. It’s so obvious the writers just needed to keep him out of the battle so that Boruto could take the point, but Chojuro should be the one fighting Kagura, not this upstart young child.

There is something to be said for the animation in this episode, which gets a marked increase in quality. This is a tactic of some shows used to make important episodes feel more dramatic by spending more time animating them. It does make for more entertaining visuals, but I can’t help but feel that it’s wasted here. Without good writing and storytelling to hold the visuals together, they really don’t mean much.