Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Set 1 Review

Boruto is a hard thing to track, when you talk about its origins. Boruto himself appeared in the last chapter of the Naruto manga, then a movie with Boruto as the lead was released, before a manga and an anime both started near enough at the same time, though the manga seems to have taken a different path than the anime (or visa versa), with the anime starting off earlier than the period of the Boruto movie and working its way towards a retelling of it (and then going beyond), with the manga beginning with a re-telling of the film and quickly ploughing ahead…

Confused? Well, let’s just ignore all that and focus on the anime releases, shall we? Boruto, or Boruto: Naruto Next Generations to give it its full title, starts here with Set 1 containing Episodes 1 – 13. The opening few minutes are actually a flash-forward to a few years from the beginning of this series, with an older, battle-scarred Boruto facing a man known as Kawaki. From what I know about the series (which isn’t as much as with its predecessor) this flash-forward period hasn’t been reached in the manga, and the anime is way behind the manga in terms of time period, so… we’re in for a long run before we find out what that was all about!

We then get to the meat of the series as it begins, and that’s a bit of a rehash of the original Naruto series. Boruto is mischievous much like his father (and he has his Shadow Clone powers as well!)  though this time it’s due to being spoilt and having a father so famous and busy running the place that he never gets to see him, so there is a difference in motivation, though it still seems odd to see Naruto’s son so like him, given he grew up in the exact reverse situation that he did! A lot of Boruto’s friends and classmates are the sons and daughters of classmates of Naruto, including one of Boruto’s closer friends being Shikadai, the son of Shikamaru who has the same shadow manipulation powers as his father (although at least that was always presented as a bloodline thing…) We also have sons and daughters of Choji and Ino to make up the same Ino-Shika-Cho trio in a new age, and the daughter of Sakura and Sasuke also appears, though doesn’t play a big role at this specific stage of the story.

Ignoring the coincidence that Naruto and all his classmates had children within the same calendar year so they could all be in school together, and also ignoring the weird fact that Naruto and Hinata are the only couple to have more than one child (and that was clearly only so there could be a new child version of Hinata) there are a couple of new characters. Boruto befriends a nerdy computer type called Denki in Episode 1, and early episodes focus on a rival-turned-ally story between Boruto and an older classmate Iwabe, which is at least a bit fresher. We’re also soon introduced to Mitsuki, a mysterious boy who’s transferred into Boruto’s class who seems to be oddly fascinated by him. Now, I’ve previously watched (and reviewed on this site!) the Boruto movie, so I know his backstory a bit, but I won’t spoil it in case you’re coming into this blind. He’s not brilliantly interesting, but he’s something different, anyway…

Thanks to times of peace, technology has moved on in the Narutoverse, complete with trains, lots and lots of tall buildings with plenty of windows lit up by electronics, and even handheld computer games. Ninja arts are seen as old hat and thanks to the lasting peace, are beginning to be seen as unnecessary by some. It’s an interesting idea, though I will say I share the fears of the now-adult versions of previous Naruto characters that this is extremely short-sighted, given that they still live in a world where people can use ninjitsu to cause massive damage with little effort! You’d still think it would be mandatory to have a set of ninja on hand, really…

I will say that these first 13 episodes definitely lack focus. A few of them resemble some of the early Naruto stories, including some fights between students at the same training grounds, but a lot of them are stand-alone comedic stories that accomplish very little. There is an over-arcing plot to do with an odd ability in Boruto’s eye (that he later thinks is him awakening the Byakugan eye powers from his mother’s side of the family, but given he’s the mini-Naruto and his sister is the mini-Hinata, that turns out not to be the case…) and a ‘weird shadow possessing things’ storyline, but that seems like it will be tied up at the start of the next set…

Much like Dragon Ball Super, Boruto isn’t based on an on-going manga, and while the anime will be adapting stories seen in the written version later on, I can’t really use the phrase “filler” in the same sense as most shonen shows, but there are a few episodes that really feel like it.

The Opening theme in these first episodes is “Baton Road” by KANA-BOON, while the ending is “Dreamy Journey” by The Peggies. The extras are a clean opening and ending, a storyboard sequence, an art gallery and the usual trailers, so… a little bit more than usual, though one less extra than the original print run of the Blu-ray case claimed! (for more information on that mini-controversy, take a look at Josh A. Stevens’ report by Clicking Here.)

The start to Boruto: Naruto Next Generations feels less like a next generation and more like an excuse to tell stories like the original Naruto series, before it got more serious. It reminds me of Dragon Ball GT, which opened up with Goku being wished back to being a child and embarking on a fun journey across space harking back to the original Dragon Ball series; this seems like an excuse to get as close to the original Naruto as possible without doing a reboot. That being said, the flash-forward does imply a slow tonal shift like most shonen stories tend to go through, so I guess we’ll see how the story progresses over the coming… years. Strap yourselves in; my coverage of this ninja world isn’t done yet, so let’s hope things pick up soon!