Boruto: Naruto Next Generations – Set 2 Review

Boruto Set 2 contains Episodes 14 – 26 of the anime series and opens with the final episode of the mysterious shadow possession storyline that filled up a lot of the original set. The shadow in question was caused by a beast known as Nue, which, to be brief, was created by old enemy Danzo before his death during the Naruto Shippuden series, that was then implanted into a young girl named Sumire Kakei. Some decent action and a nice message about friendship overcoming hardship fills out the end of this small arc nicely.

We then get a few stand-alone (mostly either feel-good or plain comedy) episodes before entering the next story arc surrounding Sarada Uchiha, the daughter of Sasuke and Sakura. The set-up is a new antagonist boy who somehow has the sharingan, the special eyes exclusive to the Uchiha clan, while at the same time Sarada becomes convinced that Sakura isn’t her real mother due to the fact she more closely resembles Karin, Sasuke’s old teammate whom she sees in a picture. So when Naruto sets out to talk with his old rival-turned-friend-turned-rival again-turned friend again about the new boy, Sarada sets out to follow him and confront her father to find out the truth.

In order to offset some of the heavier elements of this story, Chocho Akimichi, the daughter of Choji, is also convinced that her father isn’t really her father due to how dissimilar they are, the joke being how beyond skin colour and gender, they’re exactly the same. She believes a mysterious skinny guy whom she saw in her house once is her real father, but that was actually Choji using one of his old fat-burning techniques… So yeah, that’s all happening while Naruto and Sasuke confront the mysterious sharingan user with some decent fights and Sarada goes through some troubling times. It’s interesting that this mini-arc, which lasts from Episode 19 to 23, features little-to-no Boruto whatsoever. It’s good, mind you, as sometimes our titular hero can be on the obnoxious side, but a surprise at only 20-odd episodes in.

The last couple of episodes set up the next, longer story arc where Boruto and his classmates head off for a field trip to the Hidden Mist Village, which is trying to overcome its old reputation for being a place that breeds evil assassins and doesn’t work with the other villages in the Naruto world. Should be interesting to see a bit more focus on a different village, if nothing else.

“Baton Road” by KANA-BOON is still the opening for these episodes, meanwhile “Goodbye Moon Town” by Scenarioart is the ending for the duration of the set. The extras are a clean opening and ending, as well as the 11-minute OVA that was accidentally advertised on the first print run of the original Boruto set. It’s a quick gag short featuring Boruto, Sarada and Mitsuki getting a mission to stop a suspicious person and ends with more “the Akimichi family are all overweight people who like to eat crisps” jokes…

So should you take a look at Boruto Set 2? Well, you could do worse. While some of the stand-alone episodes are rather dull and predictable, the mini-arc surrounding Sarada is actually quite sweet and well-written and does well developing the new Uchiha member, as well as showing some small measure of character development for Sasuke, which is quite the feat really after all this time. So you could do worse than a good half the set being a good self-contained story. Otherwise the other half is either the last episode of one arc, the beginning episodes of the next, or just stand-alone and not very interesting. I guess that’s the curse of sticking rigidly to 13 episodes per release!