English Dub Review: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations “The Ghost Incident: The Investigation Begins”

It’s an episode about delivering ninja mail. Woo.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Boruto and friends get in trouble after they got caught playing hooky to go and find more chakra spirits. As punishment, Shino sends the boys to a work-study program where they watch hard-working mail people deliver the village’s mail. It’s a bit of community service, but our heroes are not happy about it having to follow a mailman around all day to see what he does. The mailman tries to impart the wisdom of hard work for other people, but Boruto doesn’t want to hear it.

Eventually, they come across Naruto, or rather, one of his shadow clones, taking care of daily business around town. Seeing his dad makes Boruto break the lead out so he can prove to everyone what he’s made of. While they try to deliver the mail as fast as they can, they come across some of the other work studies going on that day as well.

Meanwhile, another incident of chakra spirits draining people of their chakra occurs in the village. Naruto and the other Konoha high command are finally on top of the incidents, tracking the pattern of possessions and trying to find clues. Sai posits that these spirits might come from something called the Hashirama Cell, a research team that once worked for Danzo back in the day. Back at home, Naruto talks with Hinata about the trouble he has connecting with his son.

The next day, Cho-Cho and other Knoha citizens chastise Boruto and his friends for doing a poor job delivering papers. They soon hear about an incident at the water purification plant where their friends were doing a work study, and rush on over to help as much as they can.

Our Take:

This episode of Boruto represents a significant improvement in story quality over the other episodes I’ve seen in so far. While this episode is by no means great, its a lot more watchable and interesting, even developing out Boruto more so that he feels like a troubled child and not a spoiled brat. I’m not still really on board with the show, but I felt like I understood what the creators were trying to do here. They’ve made an episode that’s entertaining and also feels like it pushes our characters and our plot along in a way so that there’s actually some stakes,

There is mundanity to the episode that doesn’t do it well. The concept of having Boruto deliver mail for a day so he can get some more perspective on life sounds like something that would do better in a sitcom, not a shounen anime. Though, that’s not to say that perspective and growth isn’t something that Boruto needed. The kid has been an annoying rugrat since the show has begun, largely because he’s been so un-empathetic. However, we get to see Boruto be more powerless than usual here and actually fail as opposed to solving all his problems with how overpowered his character is. Though, while the story does a better job at characterizing, too much of this episode is focused on the everyday life of a Konoha mailman, which is just boring.

This is also an episode where we get to see more of Naruto living his life as Hokage. It’s a moment that’s underwhelming, but its good to see the old man get out of the office once and a while and be a person. I would love to see more of what he’s up to, what his responsibilities are as Hokage, and how he secures the future of the village, but we don’t get any of that here. If the show would flesh itself out more and develop further, we could really enjoy watching the going-ons of the town’s prodigal son.

Take Boruto with a few grains of salt, it’s very rarely good, but this episode is better than nothing. If the show continues down this path, building out more of its world and characters, then there might be a good series here. For now, though, there’s just not a whole lot to see.