I'll TL;DR you right now and say that Boruto imo is a mediocre anime that has some good moments and also plenty of bad ones. I am, however, going to try to write an honest as possible review of the anime of Boruto. I don't consider myself a Boruto fan or a hater, so this review will not pass as a fanatic's odyssey (my manga review of Boruto is pretty fanboyish but that review will be changed once the manga ends) but also not as a hater's folly. That also means I'm not going to talk past the events of the anime into the manga exclusive content so far. There will be some spoilers for the anime in this review.
Boruto is a dissappointing follow-up to Naruto. That is not to say that I consider Naruto to be a masterpiece (as much as my profile may lead you to believe that), but I do think Naruto is a lot better than Boruto. I'm not one of those people that immediately dismissed Boruto as a sequel once it started, but I do think it's not the best continuation Naruto could have had. I know a lot of people, even friends of mine, that didn't even give a chance to either the manga or the anime, either because it was "childish", or because it didn't focus on Naruto an co. anymore or for plenty of other reasons. I do think that both the manga and the anime did not do a good job at attracting either Naruto fans or new fans into the series though. That is of course because the manga starts with a 12 or so chapter long recap of the Boruto movie, and the anime starts with around 50 episodes of filler content (I'll get into Boruto filler in a moment so bear with me).
But first I'll get into what I consider to be the good parts of Boruto, so afterwards I can talk about the many bad things.
Firstly, the sakuga moments here and there are really good. It's not that the animation is consistently good, it's a long running anime ofc, but there are a lot of well animated battles throughout the series, many of which rival the best battles in Naruto. Even some filler arcs (again, I will talk about filler more in depth in a sec) have very well done fighting sequences.
One of my favourite things about Boruto, probably my favourite aspect of it, are how the battles are handled. And this is not in an animation perspective, but in a tactical way. Most battles, or at least those in the manga canon, have really interesting tactical insight. This is something that Naruto was known for, especially in Part I, and you can see remnants of that in Boruto, even though Part II of Naruto and ofc Boruto as well has several DBZ levels of combat with big explosions and beams. But there are many battles with interesting outcomes. What Boruto does well in that regard is always making an enemy feel like they're not invincible. They always have a weakness that can be exploited:
- Delta has her eye beams, but overheats after long use;
- Jigen is really strong but has a weak body that doesn't last for long battles;
- Isshiki is almost unbeatable but has a short time limit that expires in a few days;
- Boro regenerates his body but has a small core inside that once destroyed kills him;
- Code is powerful but has limiters implanted on his body;
I think this has actually changed starting with the Code arc, i.e. the last few episodes of the anime, but I'm not going to delve deep into that because that would be getting into manga territory. I will say that I think Kishimoto's return to the writing of Boruto is noticeable, and not exactly in a good way. Like I said, I won't elaborate on manga exclusive content, but I did much prefer the manga during Kodachi's helm. That corresponds to the anime adaptation give or take.
That is mostly what I can praise about the Boruto anime (and the manga really), so now I'll get into what makes Boruto such a mediocre series, that honestly may not even deserve the mediocrity label I assign it.
I'll start with the big elephant in the room: the fillers of course. A lot of different people have vastly different takes on the filler. Boruto fans in particular don't even accept the use of the term filler. They will tell you that Boruto doesn't actually have any filler content at all - it's all canon. I'll tell you this. I will use filler in this review in its original take, which is not to denote what is canon or not, but simply what is taken from the manga. So when I say "this filler arc" or "this filler episode" I'm essentially talking about anime-only content. Because that is what filler truly is. It's not meant to separate canon from non-canon. This means that I'm not going to question the canon aspect of any arc in particular, although there is a certain arc, the Time Slip arc, that if considered canon it actually destroys the continuity of Naruto as a whole.
And let me start exactly by talking about that arc. Like I said, I'm not questioning whether Boruto filler, i.e. Boruto anime-only episodes/arcs, are canon or not. But I need to talk about the Time Slip arc.
The Time Slip arc was an arc that aired in 2019 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Naruto manga (at least that's what I think it meant) and it sees Boruto and adult Sasuke travel back in time to meet 12 year old Naruto alongside many familiar faces like Sakura, Ino, Shikamaru and Choji. The most notable characters that fans were expecting to see were of course the deceased ones, with Neji and Jiraiya, especially Jiraiya, taking a central role in this arc.
This arc was meant to be a huge nostalgia bomb to attract old fans of the series, but it resulted in what is imo the worst arc of Boruto and one of the worst in Naruto history, if not the worst. The reason for that is simple. The plot holes. This arc is filled to the brim with plot holes. Introducing time travel into the Naruto universe was bad as is but what followed was a big mess. Urashiki is killed at the end of this arc, but he doesn't implant a karma into anyone. He could have implanted a karma into Naruto, Jiraiya or Sasuke. We know that because Momoshiki did so to Boruto in his deathbed. So why didn't he do it? Of course the reason is firstly because in 2019 the karma was not introduced fully into the anime yet, but mostly because if that happened it would destroy the continuity of Naruto. What would have happened if 12 year old Naruto had karma, but then adult Naruto in present day doesn't have it? Obviously this creates a huge plot hole. But that is not the only issue. Sakura, Ino, Choji, Shikamaru, Tsunade and others met Boruto as a kid. At the end of the arc Sasuke used genjutsu to delete the memories of Jiraiya and Hinata. Of course, in order to prevent any inconsitencies in the timeline. But so many other characters were not affected, and it is not explained in the slightest how Sakura, Ino, Choji, Shikamaru or any of the other characters that show up in this arc in their younger forms don't recognize Boruto in present day. Because according to this arc, they all met Boruto 20 years before he was born, so why don't they recognize him? So you understand what I mean when I say that fans need to be careful when labeling Boruto filler as canon. But let's move on into other filler arcs.
I won't delve too deep into other arcs, but I'll highlight some that I think are really bad and others that I think are good:
- The Lemon arc, Chocho arc, Steam Ninja Scrolls and Great Sea Battle of Kirigakure are really bad imo;
- Labyrinth game, which is the second to last filler arc in the anime is one of my favourite arcs in the anime, including manga content. The villain is legitimately the best written villain in all of Boruto and the death games are really endearing;
- Hozuki Castle, Mitsuki arc, One-tail escort mission and Juugo arcs are some of the highlights of filler arcs that I really enjoyed.
The last thing I want to talk about when it comes to fillers is the pacing. Ignoring the actual quality of the filler, there is a big problem when it comes to the pacing. The fact that you have batches of 50+ episodes where the plot doesn't progress any further is bad. That needs to be addressed. From summer 2018 until spring 2020, almost two years of constant filler, we had no story progression between the vs Momoshiki arc and the Mujina Bandits. And it's not like the Mujina Bandits did much. We had to wait another full year for the Vessel arc to start, where things finally started to move smoothly.
To finalize this review I'll talk about the general problems of the anime. Those that are shared with the manga.
The villains are really bad. Shojoji and Ao are harldy villains, they're just the introductory punching bags, especially Shojoji. Ao's motivation was expanded a bit in the anime but I still feel like it's lackluster that a literal war hero, that was regarded highly by not just Kirigakure but all villages, decided to work for a random organization that he doesn't even know what the heck he's doing there. He said something like he wanted to feel useful again, so he decided to work for them in exchange for powerful ninja tools. But as far as I understood it, Katasuke was the one that actually fixed him and made him go through rehab, so what did he actually receive from Kara? Nothing but guns pretty much. So he decides to ruin the image and reputation he built for several decades of a war hero only to handle a mini gun, ok.
But the big problem are the main villains. The Otsutsuki are just really poorly written. Both Momoshiki and Isshiki are just really bad. They have no backstory at all. People complained about how Kaguya was a bad villain compared to the likes of Madara, Obito, Pain, etc., but Isshiki and Momoshiki are much worse. At least Kaguya received a backstory in the anime, explaining what she went through after arriving on earth. But Isshiki and Momoshiki are literally just "I want to kill people because it's fun brrr", they're the most generic and boring villains in Naruto history. They have no motivations, goals or backstory other than that the Otsutsuki destroy planets because it's "part of their parasitic nature?". How boring is that? We've seen Otsutsuki like Toneri, Hagoromo and Hamura that have showed us that the Otsutsuki clan can't be reduced to simply a parasitic group of killing machines, so I think the writing is just bad. Code is literally just a copy of Isshiki, but even worse because it makes no sense whatsoever for why he actually likes Isshiki. It's like, he was tortured as a kid, but hey he received powers so he's thankful. Boro is also bad, just like Delta and everyone else.
Another big problem that Boruto has is one that is shared with Naruto Shippuden, or the Part II of the Naruto manga - lack of side characters. It's really unfortunate but there are a lot of interesting side characters in Boruto and none of them actually show up when it really matters. Yes they do show up in filler arcs, and even then only seldomly, but where it really matters are the manga arcs, because those are the ones that have an impact on the plot. So when side characters are relegated to just filler episodes it feels bad. I want to see Shikadai, Inojin and Chocho be useful. Even Tsubaki, Iwabe or Metal Lee and especially characters like Shinki do something, anything at all, but they barely show up even in filler. The truth is you have a couple of side characters, like Sumire and Shikamaru but they don't even do that much in the first place. Sumire is just there to question the decisions of Amado. Sarada and Mitsuki have pretty much been relegated to side characters as well. And Konohamaru, he was supposed to be a main character lol. He hasn't shown up in so long.
The last thing I want to mention is how stupid it is that the kids that are Boruto's age, or at least those that show up in the Boruto manga, i.e. the ones whose parents were Naruto characters, are mostly just carbon copies of their parents. Shikadai looks exactly like his father. Yes, he can use wind style which is cool but he has the same hair style and he's also super lazy. Metal Lee is just Rock Lee 2.0 and the others aren't much better. I mean, it's stupid in the first place that all of the kids happen to be the same age. I never thought about it until recently, but what are the chances that every single one of the Konoha 11 that had kids happen to have them in the exact same year? Did they talk about it? "Let's all procriate in the same year"? It's stupid.
This is my review of Boruto. It's a bit too long but I think I ultimately managed to get the message through. I think Boruto is a mediocre anime with a lot of flaws and a few good things and is a poor follow-up to Naruto. I only recommend watching all of the anime if you're a big diehard Naruto fan, and even then you'll probably not like all of it. My recommendation is to try watching the first couple of arcs and see if you like it or not. If not, try at least watching the manga canon arcs to see if you like it.
