Jun 23, 2019
TL;DR version: 3/10, the story goes nowhere in 90 episodes.
To properly explain the rating I'm about to give, lets start at the beginning, and by that I mean the beginning for me. It was sometime around the early 2000s, I was still in elementary school, sitting at home, watching our old CRT TV that was made around 1990. It was already night, but not too late, so as I was watching TV, changing channels, I stumbled upon a channel which had an anime running at the moment. I stopped there, turns out that this anime was Naruto. THE Naruto, the original one. The airing was
...
around at the chuunin exam arc, and I enjoyed watching it, so I kept returning to that channel around that time, and I watched a bunch of episodes, had fun, then for some reason this habit got broken.
Fast forward a few years, the era of internet access reached me as well, and I stumbled upon Naruto again. This time I watched it from the very beginning, all the way until I caught up with the show. But lets stick to the beginning for the moment. It featured ninjas, who could use techniques (ninjutsu) using their chakra, and the stronger the ninjutsu was, the sequence of hand signs were longer and more complex. But the ninjas still were human, and even famous ninjas (like Zabuza) had to do these to pull off something big.
Then the show progressed, and after hundreds of episodes this trait pretty much vanished, and just pointing their index and middle fingers at the sky in front of their chest did pretty much anything they wanted. But there was one thing that remained: there was a direction where the story was going, so you accepted this.
Now lets see Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. I watched about 90 episodes, and even though I liked Naruto (the lore and all), this show simply didn't grab my interest. Somehow it lacks... the soul. After watching 90 episodes, I still didn't know where this show is going. I watched the new episodes each week, but I wasn't really waiting for the new episodes to see what happens next, because somehow it "didn't matter".
For reference, in 90 episodes the original Naruto covered the chuuning exam (with a good bunch of fights between various characters with different fighting styles), Orochimaru showed up and the third Hokage died, they met with Akatsuki members (so the group that ends up as the main enemy for the following hundreds of episodes), they meet with the people who will be the mentor of the main characters.
Meanwhile in Boruto that 90 episodes recycled the story of a movie, and featured episodes that didn't really contribute to the progress toward a main story. There is pretty much no progress when it comes to the characters either. The characters themselves are decent, and they were fairly strong right from the beginning (compared to the previous generation when they were the same age), but it felt like they simply stayed there through these 90 episodes, both in the terms of strength and personality. I can guess where the story will go, but the pace is simply too slow, there are some interesting things that are shown briefly, you get excited, then there is no mention of it at all in the following episodes.
Due to this I dropped Boruto after a generous chance of 90 episodes to prove itself as a rightful successor Naruto, but it couldn't live up to the predecessor, and I can't give it a better score than a 3/10.
I wonder if I got too old for this, or the show isn't as good as the "old one". Maybe both.
PS: If that review was bad, then that's because it's my first review, maybe the next one will be better. Or not. Anyway, thanks for reading :)
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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