English Dub Review: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations “Boruto Uzumaki!”

Boruto has arrived!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations opens with the titular character, “Boruto”, fighting a mysterious ninja
named Kawaki in the destroyed remains of the Leaf Village. Things then flash back to the past, where
the episode begins properly with Boruto as a young man hanging out with the presumed son of
Shikamaru, Shikadai. The two dash across the rooftops of the Leaf Village, and manage to secure two
limited edition chili burgers before they’re sold out. Boruto’s dad and Seventh Hokage Naruto,
meanwhile, is stuck at the office doing paperwork, not giving him enough time for his son.

After Shikadai departs from Boruto, reminding the young ninja that tomorrow is the first day of ninja
academy, Boruto comes across a young boy named Denki being shaken down by some bullies. Boruto
uses his shadow clones to fend off the bullies and escapes with Denki. Boruto tells Denki that he should
stand up to himself, and Denki explains that he is the son of his wealthy father who owns a successful
company in town. Boruto soon realizes he’s late for supper at home and rushes back to meet his
mother, Hinata, and sister for dinner. Denki goes home as well and tries to confront his father about
being able to pursue his goals. He gets bitten by a strange purple spirit snake and seems to be possessed
with evil ninja.

The next day, Denki, under the influence of the purple snake, enacts a plot to get revenge on his bullies
by tricking them onto a runaway train on a crash course for another train car going at high speed.
Things look bad, but Boruto stops in at the last moment and saves the day, managing to expel the spirit
snake from Denki and switching the train to a different rail so it doesn’t collide with the other car.
Boruto and Denki ride the train all the way to the academy, where the car derails and flies into Naruto’s
stone face on the cliff face above Konoha. With a triumphant pose, Boruto stands tall and announces his
arrival.

Our Take:

At long last for “Naruto” fans everywhere, Boruto has landed on American shores, premiering its English
dub on Adult Swim for all to see. The series comes after having existed as a successful manga and anime
to the tune of about eighty episodes. But does it match up the high expectations set by its brother series
that swept the world of anime so many years ago?

Sort of, but it’s still too early to tell.

At this point, its hard to tell what kind of show Boruto is going to be and if it can capture the same sense
of drama and emotion that pulled people into the “Naruto” series in the first place. What can be said,
however, is that this episode is only so-so, especially for a show with such big shoes to fill. While it can’t
be said that the show is bad, its quality settles on middling, telling a small opening story without leaving
a strong enough impression to keep the viewer interested.

Boruto introduces quite a bit for its viewer to take in, most importantly in the setting. Konoha is no
longer set in the quasi-feudal head-scratching period of technology it once was. Now, it is very clearly a
modern city, complete with trains, electricity, televisions and presumably computers as well.

Artistically, the new design of the city is quite pretty, but the episode fails to really go into the changes that have
occurred in Konoha since the end of the original series. Its possible things will be better explained later,
but in a familiar setting like this, it would have been nice to get some attention paid to the many societal
differences at play here.

Unfortunately, this lack of detail and attention paid is the same problem which permeates throughout
the entire episode. So much is left undone and unsaid, with the biggest flaw here being Boruto’s
characterization. From the get-go, he strikes me as a Mary Sue. He’s charming, acrobatic, relatively
powerful for a ninja his age, and relentless. Similar to his father, for sure, but lacking the same sadness
which followed Naruto’s story and endeared us to him from the beginning of the series. Boruto feels just
a bit bland. In fact, most everything in this episode feels that way as well.

As I said, I can’t pin this opening episode into “So bad its insulting” territory. It’s just mediocre. It doesn’t
feel like it tries very hard story-wise, even though the animation quality and artistic design are of high
quality and budget. The elements for a good anime are present here, it’s just the story that needs work.
Hopefully, as things go on, Boruto will come into its own and develop itself to the level of quality
“Naruto” once had.

Score
5/10