Boruto: Naruto Next Generations (Boruto: Naruto Next Generation)

Add to My List

Add to Favorites

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Naruto Gaiden: Michita Tsuki ga Terasu Michi, Naruto: The Path Lit by the Full Moon

Japanese: BORUTO-NARUTO NEXT GENERATIONS-

More titles

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: Unknown

Chapters: Unknown

Status: Publishing

Published: May 9, 2016 to ?

Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Theme: Martial Arts

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: V-Jump

Authors: Ikemoto, Mikio (Art), Kodachi, Ukyou (Story)

Statistics

Score: 6.85¹ (scored by 55,863 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #10545²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #106

Members: 108,405

Favorites: 3,457

Available At

Official Site

Resources

Wikipedia

6.85

Ranked #10545Popularity #106Members 108,405

MangaV-JumpIkemoto, Mikio (Art), Kodachi, Ukyou (Story)

Add to List

Volumes: /?

Chapters: /?

* Your list is public by default.

Edit
Synopsis

Naruto Uzumaki has finally achieved his dream of becoming Hokage, the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village that he spent his teenage years fighting to protect. Naruto and his peers now live in a world of peace, working hard to uphold an international truce built on good will and diplomacy.

However, this stasis comes at a personal cost for the aging hero. Naruto and the shinobi he grew up alongside find that working to upkeep the neutral world takes them away from their families, and even the legendary warriors of Naruto's generation must contend with being mediocre parents to their bitter children, including his own son Boruto.

Boruto Uzumaki faces a world completely unlike that of his father, finding unique trouble in the distance between the two. Contending with a society that heaps an unbearable load of pressure on his shoulders over his status as the Hokage's son, Boruto carves his own path through the world, fighting to make a name for himself as evil forces threaten to shatter the peace his father helped create.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Edit
Background

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations has been published in English by VIZ Media under the Shonen Jump imprint since April 4, 2017.

The first arc of the manga is an adaptation of the Boruto film, while the following arcs take place after the current timeline of the Boruto anime series.

Edit
Related Manga

Parent story:	Naruto
Spin-off:	Boruto: Saikyo Dash Generations
Alternative version:	Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Novel
Side story:	Naruto Shinden Series
Adaptation:	Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Part 2, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

More characters
Characters

Uzumaki, Boruto

Main

Uchiha, Sarada

Main

Mitsuki

Main

Kawaki

Main

Sarutobi, Konohamaru

Main

Uzumaki, Naruto

Supporting

Uchiha, Sasuke

Supporting

Nara, Shikamaru

Supporting

Gaara

Supporting

Hyuuga, Hinata

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

May 15, 2018

Yasuhito

Recommended

Preliminary (23/? chp)

I’ve been contemplating writing a review for the Boruto manga for a few days now. Simply because I feel discouraged that it won’t really have an effect on anyone - it seems like the majority of users on MAL are fine with judging the series based on the first 10 chapters - which was the movie recap. It totally isn’t. Imagine judging One Piece or Bleach purely on their first 10 chapters. Unfortunately the harsh scoring system won’t change anytime soon - So I hope it wouldn’t discourage new readers. If you’re interested please continue to read further and I hope I convince you to ...

Open

Gift

Sep 8, 2016

HakuryuNoKou

Recommended

Preliminary (35/? chp)

Okay, I will update this when the story gets into NEW content, whenever that will be. For now, however, I will simply give it a 5/6, because it's nothing but a recap of Boruto: Naruto the Movie, currently.

NEW REVIEW DETAILS BELOW (SPOILERS FOR AFTER THE CHUNIN EXAMS):
So, the series has come a long way since the start. The art is better, the story is great, and fans wait each month for it.

THE STORY:
The story now focuses on Ninja Tech, with the villains utilizing it in various ways. While this may sound blasphemous to the original Naruto, that is the point. It has basically become ... Past VS Future, with the shinobi of "old" stuck in their ways of ninjutsu, and the Akatsuki of the story, "Kara," using the tech which has been fused into their bodies. Many old characters return, some in good ways, and others in ways you would not imagine. The story is somewhat predictable, but also has an element of surprise that will keep you hanging on for another month, waiting to see what happens next. It is like that of social media. You don't want to miss anything, so you keep coming back for more, and more, and more, resulting in you being invested in it without noticing.

THE ART:
Mikio Ikemoto received backlash for his art at the beginning of the serialization, ranging from Sarada's... Uh... Sarada's outfit, to Snapesuke, to characters just looking as if they had been stung by bees before the manga began. Over the past few years, however, the manga has had a gradual shift in style, slowly coming to resemble Kishimoto's own artwork. It is easier on the eyes, and after a while, you won't even seem to notice it.

THE CHARACTERS:
The characters have undergone growth since the Chunin Exams at the start, some in noticeable ways. Take Boruto, the titular character himself. He has come to understand his father, and now trains with him from time-to-time. He has matured slightly, stopping to think things through, before doing something rash. Sasuke has also grown closer to Sarada, and the two occasionally train and have dinner with Sakura, whenever he is home. Seeing the old generation mature, and grow alongside the newer generation is heartwarming, especially to old fans of Naruto.

ENJOYMENT:
As stated before, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations has come a long way since the start, with each chapter released feeling like that of an appetizer, the time-skip being the main course. You keep devouring chapter after chapter, with each plate only making you more and more hungry as time goes on. Kodachi/Kishimoto continue to drop small hints, and teases, relating to things in the future, though not outright saying so (like the multiple instances where you think Boruto will lose his eye, only for something to intervene). I think the series will continue to grow even better, especially with the release of Ch. 35.

OVERALL:
B:NNG is a great continuation of the original series, despite the nostalgia-drowned comments from toxic OG Naruto fans, stating otherwise. If you enjoyed Naruto, and don't want the universe's story to end, check it out. You will not be disappointed.

Open

Gift

Apr 19, 2017

MisterChippy

Not Recommended

Preliminary (8/? chp)

Summary: Boruto has so far been a poor followup to Naruto. The art is low quality and inconsistent and the action lacks flow and power. The story is rushed and contradictory and seems to be forgoing everything good about Naruto in favor of elevating powerlevels even more.

Following up on a story that focused on the maturation of it's characters is always hard, especially when it's one as successful as Naruto. That said, so far Boruto seems to do virtually everything that others stories that tried doing this and failed have done in the past.

I'm gonna begin by talking about the art though, because that's something ... a lot of people have trouble with and isn't really related to the rest of my complaints. I don't actually have a problem with Kishimoto's decision to hand the reigns over to a new artist, in fact I kinda like it given that it both fits thematically with the work and it allows him to work on that new sci-fi thing he talked about in 2015. The problem is that I don't think the art is really good enough.

One of the big issues I think a lot of people have with Ikemoto's art is the characters. He uses much softer looking, more rounded lines which ends up giving all his characters a more feminine look. Now admittedly this was something that Kishimoto actually said he was bad at doing himself so it's possible that the girls suddenly looking like they're from a completely different manga was done on his instruction but in my eyes some of the design changes just go too far and overall don't look very good.

That problem is compounded by the halfhearted attempt to match the style of the original. The reason I say "halfhearted" is because sometimes Ikemoto just plain old doesn't try to draw the character the same way as normal. This is most noticable with Boruto, because sometimes his hair will suddenly get a lot shorter and curly just like the female characters, but frankly the art is just inconsistent all throughout. If Ikemoto was just going to do the manga in his own style then fine, I don't like it that much but I'll accept it, but just stick to one style! Honestly I find it rather shocking that someone who has been working on this series for over 15 years has seemingly regressed in his ability to match Kishimoto's style. If you read back through the series you can find some background characters that match the style of Boruto, but they still look closer to the original series than a lot of what we have now. Also, he seems to by trying to keep the original style more with the men while just doing his own thing almost all the time with the women, which just makes it even more jarring.

The final problem I have with the art is the action sequences. I mean, overall the art in the series is pretty mediocre but the action sequences are the worst. At around page 32 of chapter 3 (page number might change depending on how you read it) you can see a clear example. You see Lee's kid in a really awkward pose fighting a poorly shaded enemy. If you look at his hair and pose it seems like he's lunging forward and down. Only the lower half of his leg has any speed lines and they seem to be implying that his leg is going straight up. Also his foot is missing. In the next panel you see that he's completed a roundhouse kick that doesn't really match the direction his leg was coming from at all, the speedlines are still only on the lower half of his leg despite his whole leg moving (they also look really weird and I'm not sure what kind of motion they're meant to show), and he's jumped in the air for some reason despite not really having been in any position to do that. The biggest sin though is how the enemy is just flying away from him with NO indication that he actually kicked him. If you're going to have a fight that consists of a single hit, not actually showing that hit is just awful, especially considering how much Kishimoto used showing the moment of impact to great effect. There are plenty of other instances of awkward poses that don't have any impact and just plain old look weird, so I'm not gonna bother pointing them all out, but I would recommend checking out 5/12, just because Sakura's pose is so stupid it's honestly hilarious.

I do want to criticize one major problem with the fight sequences specifically though, and that's the speed lines. They're worthless, and this is weird because apparently one of Ikemoto's jobs was adding white to the speedlines, so how he managed to do that for over a decade without noticing how Kishimoto used them is a complete mystery to me. Kishimoto's speedlines were excellent. They gave a sense of power and speed to his action sequences, but more than that they tied the flow of the actions together. Just look back at Lee Vs. Garaa. You can see exactly where Lee has been in the trail he leaves behind. You can see how badly he's been hit by the intensity and length of them. That is completely lacking in Boruto, and I think Ikemoto's failure to use speedlines properly is one of the major contributors to this. He draws them far to short, makes awkward angles with perspective, and rarely seems to consider how the rest of the body is moving aside from whatever limb is the focus of the movement. Because of this, it often just looks like characters are teleporting around the battlefield trading awkward blows that do no damage. It just lacks any sense of continuity, power, or speed.

Now I'm not just here to bash Boruto so I want to point out something that I feel he's done fairly well with the art, and that's the shading. Naruto has always been a very well shaded series. Kishimoto eschewed overusing screentones and preferred to do the majority of his shading by hand, which is one of the things that gives Naruto it's distinctive, sometimes downright grimy look. Ikemoto has continued this, and while I do think it's not quite as good as it used to be it still looks good and is a refreshing departure from how much screentone you see in other manga.

Now that I've gotten the artwork out of the way, onto the story.

To begin with, I'm just not even gonna talk about the opening. Yes, it is the main character narrating over a suspenseful scene, only to tell you that the story starts a while back and you need to learn more to get up to this point and jumping back into the past to actually begin the story. There is just so much I could say about that that I'm not even gonna bother touching it. Who knows, maybe down the line we'll find out that Kodachi actually had some brilliant reason for doing that. Speaking of which, why on earth was he even picked for this? If I was picking a writer for the followup to one of the most popular manga since DBZ I wouldn't go with a guy who wrote part of the script for a few anime that honestly weren't that amazing. He's never even worked on a manga before for goodness sakes!

Anyways, the story has been super underwhelming so far. Despite being called "Next Generation" the enemies they fight start up exactly where Naruto left off. Yup that's right, it's taken less chapters than the number of YEARS Naruto was in print for fight scenes against overpowered, mysterious god enemies who control the power of the final boss of the series to start happening. And yes, that remains true even if you account for the fact that Boruto's chapters are twice as long as Naruto's.

Don't forget your jutsus though! Naturally, a generation of children who grew up in peacetime are able to use techniques their parents trained years for with no problems. No, having their techniques be slightly smaller than their parents doesn't make things better. Choji had to take drugs and almost kill himself to do partial expansion yet somehow his daughter can do it effortlessly while younger than him? One of the best parts of the original series was how it showed the characters growth. There were entire arcs dedicated to characters training to learn moves, which worked so well with the series themes of growth. In this though? Characters can learn techniques which took multiple arcs to learn in the length of a single chapter. This is incredibly infuriating because a major theme of this new series appears to be that the characters have to learn not to take shortcuts and learn techniques with their own power, but apparently Kodachi doesn't actually want to bother writing training arcs so he just gives characters powers after a few pages with some implied training.

I also want to point out that he chooses Konohamaru to introduce and recommend the shortcut to training in the first place, as well as him doing some of the miracle montage training. While not something that's necessarily wrong plotwise I just think it shows how deep some of the problems with the writing go when the character who represented the idea that "there are no shortcuts to hard work" is recommending a shortcut to hard work in the story and being used as one by the author.

The final complaint I have is sort of a followup to the previous issue. So far, a great many things that got their own, sometimes very long, arcs in the original series have been skimmed over in a couple of pages, I think mainly to speed up the appearance of super powered DBZ fight scenes against literal gods. I know I said I wasn't going to talk about this but seriously, the series is so impatient to show off that characters are gonna have super high powerlevels that it wastes the first pages to show you the MC fighting Notsuke over the rubble of Konoha. It's like the series is in a mad dash to quickly distance itself form everything good about the original in favor of raising the powerlevel even higher.

Just stop. The characters literally defeated god. Recently we've had successful series like Boku no Hero or Assasination Classroom that show that people still love stories about the process of learning instead of just wanting to see how OP the main character can get next. We even have One Punch Man which is purely devoted to making fun of outrageous powerlevel escalation. I know Naruto got full of overpowered nonsense toward the end but honestly that was the weakest part of the whole series for me. Boruto feels like a completely wasted chance to restart with what made the series so popular to being with.

Open

Gift

More stacks

Interest Stacks

Sequel Series: Series with over 100 chapters available on the official Shonen Jump Website

by SteamedPlague

11 Entries · 7 Restacks

Manga that were published on Argentina - Part VII

by LambdaG2

50 Entries · 4 Restacks

Jump Force

by sammybam88

17 Entries · 5 Restacks

More recommendations
Recommendations

View All

More news
Recent News

North American Anime & Manga Releases for February

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for February. Week 1: February 7 - 13 Anime Releases Horimiya Complete Season Blu-ray & DVD Co...read more

Feb 14, 4:00 PM by Aiimee | Discuss (0 comments)

North American Anime & Manga Releases for October

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for October. Week 1: October 4 - 10 Anime Releases Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya Movie: Licht - N...read more

Oct 3, 2022 11:16 AM by Aiimee | Discuss (0 comments)

More discussions
Recent Forum Discussion

Poll: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Chapter 80 Discussion Cruicruise - Apr 18	46 replies	by RedCat_cher »» May 23, 4:06 AM
Poll: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Chapter 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - May 2, 2016	106 replies	by xS1non »» May 4, 8:30 AM
Boruto & Chidori gents - Apr 21	5 replies	by Shidoteki »» Apr 25, 8:15 PM
Poll: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Chapter 79 Discussion ( 1 2 ) 28012001 - Mar 17	51 replies	by Klad »» Apr 22, 4:31 PM
Poll: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Chapter 78 Discussion TheDeadmanII - Feb 20	27 replies	by silent_lurker »» Apr 6, 7:23 PM

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Boruto: Naruto Next Generation
Edit

What would you like to edit?

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Edit
Synopsis

Edit
Background

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Edit
Related Manga

More characters
Characters

More reviewsReviews

Interest Stacks

More recommendations
Recommendations

More news
Recent News

More discussions
Recent Forum Discussion

More featured articles
Recent Featured Articles

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Boruto: Naruto Next GenerationsBoruto: Naruto Next Generation Edit What would you like to edit? SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

EditSynopsis

EditBackground

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

EditRelated Manga

More charactersCharacters

More reviewsReviews

Interest Stacks

More recommendations Recommendations

More newsRecent News

More discussionsRecent Forum Discussion

More featured articlesRecent Featured Articles

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Boruto: Naruto Next Generation
Edit

What would you like to edit?

Edit
Synopsis

Edit
Background

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Edit
Related Manga

More characters
Characters

More recommendations
Recommendations

More news
Recent News

More discussions
Recent Forum Discussion

More featured articles
Recent Featured Articles