First and foremost let's get this out of the way, I love shōnen a lot. The original Naruto series along with Shippūden, Hunter x Hunter, Bleach, etc, I'm a fan of all of them so this review comes from a point of bias in favour of shōnen anime.
I'm going to split this up into several parts, covering basic information about the show, some thoughts on its main cast of characters, its plot (thus far), animation quality, sound and its overall quality.
BASIC INFORMATION
Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is the continuation (NOT spin-off) of the Naruto franchise created by manga writer Masashi Kishimoto and brought to life
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by anime studio Studio Pierrot. The storyline follows the son of Naruto, unfortunately named Boruto (a play on the word 'bolt', referencing Naruto's father known as the Yellow Flash, lightning, etc) and his journey towards becoming a shinobi, or a ninja. Its source material is scattered between a manga written by Ukyō Kodachi and illustrated by Mikio Ikemoto, a film adaption called Boruto: Naruto The Movie and a couple of one-shots. At the current rate, the anime will adapt all of these and then continue its own original path judging by the pace at which the manga is being produced. Think of it as the split that happened in Game of Thrones where the show caught up to the novels and went its own way.
PLOT (6/10)
So far the show is up to its sixteenth episode and has wrapped up one story arc, an original one written for the anime which does not draw from any source material. The plot delivery of the show has been a little shaky, with questionable pacing and some very jarring power levels for the early days of a shōnen. It's your run of the mill stuff with the main characters being introduced and given their own identity little by little while an overarching obstacle presents itself, in this far arc as the form of a 'ghost' possessing villagers, students and teachers alike, forcing Boruto & friends to figure out the who's, what's and why's. It's nothing super engaging, but as far as shōnen goes, it's perfectly adequate and it does its job well. It's slower and less action packed than the start of Naruto, but it doesn't suffer from that at all. My main aggravations with the plot come in the form of inexplicable power levels of the main cast before they've even become shinobi. You could attribute it to the majority of them being the offspring of powerful shinobi, but I don't buy it.
CHARACTERS (6/10)
The primary cast thus far consists of Boruto, the son of the current Hokage and the titular character of the original series, Naruto. Sarada, the daughter of Naruto's two teammates in the original series, Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno. Mitsuki, a recently transferred mysterious boy who appears to be stronger than the rest of his classmates and a host of other shinobi-in-training, many of which are the children of cast members from Naruto. It's a very standard shōnen line-up and it certainly is guilty of relying a little too much on the familiarity of the Naruto cast lending strength and whatnot to this new cast, they are, for the most part, far from carbon copies however. They're written in ways that differentiate or flat out go against the traits of their parents so for the most part they shouldn't feel like their parent 2.0, the only one really guilty of this is Shikamaru Nara's son, Shikadai.
The show also introduces a handful of new characters completely unrelated to the Naruto cast, and they help round things off nicely and prevent it from feeling too familiar. So far a lot of characters have received a good bit of character development, while the show has left a few of them in the cold but again, it's only up to its sixteenth episode and in a shōnen with this many characters it's not surprising that not everyone have gotten their moment of development by now.
ANIMATION & ART (8/10)
There's not too much to say here, Studio Pierrot are a very talented studio, certainly not the best in the biz but they know their stuff. They made the conscious decision to revert back to Kishimoto's art style, choosing it over the art style of Boruto illustrator Mikio Ikemoto which I can only say was a good decision. The animations are fluid, most of the art is crisp and the world design lends itself very well to looking great in animation. Character designs look fantastic.
VOICE ACTING, SOUND & MUSIC (7/10)
Again there's not too much to say, the voice acting is very strong, the characters have voices that suit them, the characters who are the children of Naruto's cast have voices that sound similar yet different enough from their parents and the performances are generally good all round.
The sound design for more or less everything besides voices and the soundtrack is fine, nothing that stands out as spectacular or less than good. Not much to say on it, it does its job and you won't notice it going either way.
The music used is quite similar to that of Naruto and I see no problem with that, it's music that suits the world, the characters and the themes. While I haven't noticed any tracks outright reused, they do use the same instruments and tones in a lot of them. It's good, no tracks have stood out so far but it does its job very well.
OVERALL (7/10)
This show is, in its current stage at episode 16, a decent to good shōnen anime that is building towards becoming a new long-running show just like its predecessor with a large cast of characters with a very well built world and a host of already fleshed out characters to rely on giving it depth. It has some issues like the previously mentioned power levels, or relying a little too heavily on things from Naruto, but again it's *continuation*, not a spin-off or anything of the sort. It's to be expected. I can see this show reaching the heights of its predecessor in terms of quality, and I can see it going the opposite way, too, but the way its currently going, it's going up and showing no signs of stopping.
Thanks for reading, I've never written a review this extensive before and I'm sure it shows, it's definitely amateuristic but this was a very important thing to me that I had to tackle.
I've seen this show get BLASTED by "fans" of Naruto who were so happy that it was finally over, finally Naruto had been put to bed and then this show comes along and they now feel like the closure they got wasn't REAL closure. What they fail to realise is Naruto, the anime, when it finished was fifteen years old. Seven year old kids who began watching it in 2002 were twenty-two years old when it finished, and if they watched it from then until the end, they grew up with the show. Boruto is aiming to do just that with a new generation of kids. As much as it may be for fans of the Naruto series, it's also for a new generation of kids to grow up alongside. Because of this I think Boruto is a very important show, one that should be welcomed and encouraged by those of us who grew up with the Naruto show or grew to love it later in life.
Again, I apologise for the very low quality writing, but seeing elitists and people who just wanted Naruto to be over slamming this show in such an early stage is very disheartening and I felt like I had to add my voice to the mix as a fan of the original series. The quality is there, trashing the show just because you wanted Naruto to be over isn't fair and is probably a more biased review than this one. Thanks!
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Jul 19, 2017
Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
(Anime)
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First and foremost let's get this out of the way, I love shōnen a lot. The original Naruto series along with Shippūden, Hunter x Hunter, Bleach, etc, I'm a fan of all of them so this review comes from a point of bias in favour of shōnen anime.
I'm going to split this up into several parts, covering basic information about the show, some thoughts on its main cast of characters, its plot (thus far), animation quality, sound and its overall quality. BASIC INFORMATION Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is the continuation (NOT spin-off) of the Naruto franchise created by manga writer Masashi Kishimoto and brought to life ... |
