English Dub Review: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations “Sarada Uchiha”

Sasuke should really come home more often.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Everyone in Konoha is having a good time with their parents, which prompts Sarada to take a good look at her own family life. Sarada has some suspicions about her lineage, which she follows by investigating her family in the local library. She confirms nothing but begins to suspect that Sakura might not be her real mother.

When she gets home, Sarada confronts Sakura and accuses her of not having given birth to her. Sakura reacts about as well as you’d expect, punching the ground in anger violently. The resulting quakes in the earth cause her house to collapse and her to pass out from the stress. Shizune comes and takes her to the hospital, leaving Sarada to deal with the mess.

The next day, Sarada, who is still firmly in the camp that Sakura is not her real mom, runs into Cho Cho and Chouji at the local diner. She asks Cho Cho about her family and if she ever shares her suspicions, which she says she does, but only in a humorous way. It becomes clear to Sarada then that what she needs to do is to find her dad and find out the truth for herself.

Meanwhile, somewhere outside of the village Sasuke comes out a portal, presumably after a mission, looking somewhat beaten up.

Our Take:

Sarada Uchiha, as the title of this episode would imply, is the subject of this episode, and its here we get our first strong look at her character. It’s disappointing then, but not unexpected, that her character is defined by one defining trait: her dislike of her mother. I don’t enjoy one-note characters, and Sarada is no exception, falling into the same trap as Boruto does of coming off like a spoiled child who doesn’t have any real problems. I’m not at all on board with Sarada’s quest to figure out if she is really Sakura’s daughter since I don’t much care for Sarada or find the question of her lineage to be particularly interesting. It’s also a pretty obvious red herring that since she kinda looks like Karin that Karin is her real mother; I wouldn’t be surprised if the similarities to her end up just being a coincidence or some such thing.

On top of that, not a whole lot even happens in this episode aside from a couple of discoveries by Sarada in the library. A good amount of the episode is spent faffing about with Konoha’s various child/parent duos and not advancing the plot. But since this show seems pretty much always to be about wasting time with pointless fanservice, I can’t say I’m surprised that even a “plot heavy” episode such as this wastes as much time as it does, but that’s Boruto for you.

I’m not terribly passionate about the criticism of this episode because there just isn’t a whole lot to be passionate about.  This week’s Boruto just continues its trend of softly peddling forward without getting us anywhere or throwing out something to grab the viewer’s attention. We are nearly twenty episodes in and it’s becoming increasingly clear with each episode that the goal is not to tell a good story, but to apply cameos and ties to the original series to make a viewer just interested enough to keep watching. There are ways to improve this series; there is a great many things the show could do to make Sarada a character actually worth caring about, but giving her a happy, pleasant life that is only bothered by her own suspicions is not it. If the show isn’t willing to put anything out there to advance the story, then there’s nothing that can be gained from each new episode.

Score
4/10