My Thoughts On Boruto

Been meaning to do this for a while...lets talk about Boruto. I liked Naruto in the beginning but then Shippuden dragged on and on that I got kinda of sick of it. At the time of this post I'm about 70-ish episodes in as shounen anime is not something I watch weekly. I find it much easier to watch while marathoning. I'm gonna give my thoughts on the arcs I've seen so far and other stuff pertaining to the show.

Boruto is a perfectly fine show...when its focusing the kids and not the lingering threads from Naruto. The Nue arc, the Hidden Mist Field Trip arc, and Byakuya Gang arc are probably the best examples of where Boruto's strengths as a story lies. I also particularly like the stuff centering around Mitsuki. Though thats mostly because I find it fascinating that he isn't just a pawn in an Orochimaru scheme. Dude just wanted a kid and gave him the free will to follow his own path.

The power scaling regarding the kids seems a bit off. Iwabe I can buy being able to use earth style since he its outright stated that he was held back a lot. I can also understand the kids who have clan specific justu already having mastered them before entering the academy. However, they all seem a bit too skilled in their academy days for kids who aren't even official ninja (Iwabe withstanding cuz again, he is older than everyone else). It irks me in particular that Boruto himself is able to use lightning style right off the bat (though at the very least they do state its his natural chakra element so maybe thats why) and he was able to get the hang of wind style just by watching Mitsuki do it a few times even if he failed to do the wind scythe properly. Him figuring out the Rasengan I can sort of buy but the instinctual elemental change irks me because somehow Boruto can just use lightning style without thinking about it. That felt kinda like they just wanted give him his own custom Rasengan early on to separate him from Naruto.

It also irks me that they seem to have broken the Sharingan a bit. Sarada activates it for the 1st time during the Hidden Mist Field Trip arc without the massive chakra drain that is supposed to happen once its triggered (yeah its worse for non-Uchiha but even Sasuke looked like he was tiring out from using it in the Haku fight besides all the damage he took). She also figured out the copy ability really quickly and thats where another change became evident. The Sharingan seems to scale back the chakra requirements for copied jutsu to something the user can handle now. She copied a lightning style justu and elemental stuff in general is supposed to require a fairly decent amount of chakra on its own. The guys there were facing during this arc were either Chunin or Jonin (can't remember which) so that fight should've been way out of their league since they weren't even Genin yet. Yet they all came out with barely any scratches.

They were fighting these guys

The "prodigy" explanation only goes so far as even though Sasuke was considered a prodigy because he could use fire style, he still had to train and struggle (my head hurts just saying something good about Sasuke). It also really doesn't hold water for a good chunk of Boruto's classmates since we don't know who their parents are.

The opening arc of the show had me hooked after 4 episodes. It was a great introduction Boruto and his classmates. The first few episodes a give you a good feel for how much things have advanced during the time-skip. The later half of the arc centers around some left over stuff from Danzo's foundation. Its also a bit of a revelation that even though the world has moved on since the 4th Ninja War, the Leaf still has some aspects of its past that it needs to deal with.

Despite the weird power-scaling, the Hidden Mist Field Trip arc was really good imo. Its essentially Boruto's class going on a field trip to help build solidarity between the two villages. Their trip happens to coincide with an attempted coup de ta. Boruto befriends Kagura,the front-runner for the title of Mizukage. Sadly the guy leading the coup knows a lot of about Kagura uses his guilt over being related to the Mizukage that instituted the killing exam Zabuza mentioned to manipulate Kagura into joining the coup. Its essentially a really nice, dramatic arc about the Hidden Mist needing to deal with the sins of its past. Its especially effective as Kagura was able to realize that he is not responsible for his family's sins. Its also a nice parallel alongside the first arc.

The Byakuya Gang stuff is really good. Its essentially an arc about a gang of "thieves of justice" from the Land of Snow breaking into the Leaf's science office to steal gadget with data on every jutsu ever created. In order to cover their theft and escape, they actually slowly make the workers in the Leaf village more and more disgruntled until they take to the streets in protest. The subplot is about Shikadai befriending a kid in the part over a game them just hanging out. Naturally the kid winds up being apart of the gang and since Shikadai helped come up with a plan to track them the two come to blows. The kid gets thrown in jail for taking part in the theft but decides to do better when he gets out as he found out that the "thieves of justice" he works for just common crooks during the heist. The kid has this interesting ice style jutsu that hypnotizes people via reflections in the icicles.

The Shin Uchiha arc is just downright stupid and pointless even from a character perspective. The entire thing is about Sarada not being 100% sure Sakura is her mother because of a photo of Sasuke and his old crew from his days with Orochimaru. She goes looking for Sasuke to get the truth from him. You know the drill for this type of setup, she finds "evidence" that Sakura isn't her real mom (the "evidence" led to miscommunication that made her think Karin was her mom) and its revealed its all because of a mix up and that Sakura is actually Sarada's mom. It honestly would've been much better handled if the arc had revealed that Karin was actually Sarada's mom but that Sarada didn't care because she'd only known Sakura as her mother this whole time and Sakura took care of her. The idea that family isn't just blood would've added another layer to this arc. This arc also just glorifies Sasuke so...no, thats points off for it in and of itself. Somehow Sarada doesn't have daddy issues. I legitimately don't understand that.You probably noticed I didn't cover Shin Uchiha...thats cuz he doesn't add much of anything to the arc despite being the villain. Just something about wanting to kill Sasuke for killing Itachi and that he has an army of clones of himself. This is the worst arc out of all of them so far.

The Chunin exam arc was great and I was really digging the updated tests. All the tournament fights were pretty fun to watch. It showed off a lot new and different jutsu and fighting tactics while avoiding dragging the fights out longer than needed. The "Don't cheat!" lesson for Boruto was handled well enough. It was easily my favorite arc at that point...then the stuff with Kaguya's clan crashed right into it and tanked it for me. During that stretch of episodes I just sat there bored and counting down how long I had until the kids (besides Boruto) became relevant again. Not really much kids can do in a fight between gods. It felt a bit like a slap in the face to have an arc centered mainly around the kids and then side-lining them for a less than stellar meta-plot thats trying to help tie up loose threads from Naruto's ninja war arc.

Like I said before, the show is actually pretty fun when its not focusing on the stuff from Naruto or when the characters from Naruto aren't taking center stage. Boruto's plot-line about having issues with Naruto is a bit irritating. Him wanting to step out of Naurto's shadow is perfectly fine. However, him thinking Naruto is a bad father is just dumb. I know he is a kid but someone likely would've explained Naruto's philosophy in great detail to him before his issues with Naruto being Hokage ever got this far. Now that doesn't absolve Naruto of neglecting his family in favor of the village. I can buy him relying on his shadow clones to make sure he can fulfill his duties has Hokage, however I feel the way he does it is wrong. He has his clones spend time with his family so he can do his job as Hokage. Given Naruto's personality, it should be the clones doing the work while he spends time with his family. Another part I don't like is the chosen one plot-line for Boruto as its a tad over-done as far as shounen anime is concerned and its weird that they gave him that when his main goal is to escape his father's shadow. Overall, its an alright show that fans of Naruto will probably like, I just wished it stopped trying to expand on notes from the original show and focused squarely on the kids finding their way in the world.

What I love about One Piece

Ok, I know I already talked about this during my post on the Big 3, but I've been playing One Piece Romance Dawn almost non-stop so I figured I'd elaborate on why I consider One Piece to be the king of the Big 3. Pardon me if this ends up turning into a crash course on One Piece.

This thing is arguably the most popular anime and certainly best selling manga series in the world. I have yet to actually meet anyone in the anime community with something bad to say about it other than its length. It is quite honestly an anime that is worth all the acclaim that the fans give it. It is also one of the strangest anime I have ever seen yet the show makes it work so well that it just results in a really fun show.

All of the Straw Hats are great characters and each of them has gotten great moments so far. Unlike the other members of the Big 3, where the main character is usually the only one shown getting stronger, everyone gets the chance to become stronger so they don't just get knocked out of a fight immediately. They all feel like legitimate characters. My personal favorite being Ussop because I feel he has come along way since his cowardly beginnings both in terms of his tactics and in terms of his creativity. Characters that might seem broken actually aren't as the anime/manga makes it very clear that no matter how strong someone gets, there will always be someone stronger down the line. This leads to a lot of very gripping, intense fights. My personal favorite arc so far is the CP9 arc because it shows exactly what each of the Straw Hats are capable of. The villains are unique, very memorable, pose a great threat, and in general are just fun antagonists. Every battle in this anime/manga has this sort of grand feel to it which lacking is really lacking in Naruto and Bleach.

One Piece is that at that level of weirdness where everything just seems to make sense no matter how odd or outlandish it gets. Seriously, only in One Piece can a cola-powered cyborg shipwright, fish people (not just mermaids), a skeleton musician with an afro, and a talking shape-shifting blue-nosed reindeer doctor make total sense. My personal favorite example of its weirdness however comes from the Alabasta arc. It is during the battle where Chopper and Ussop are fighting Baroque Works agents Mr.4, Ms. Merry Christmas, and their cannon dog Lassoo who is quite literally a cannon that ate the Mutt-Mutt fruit Dachshund Model.

Ussop asks Ms Merry Christmas how it was even possible for a cannon to do that and she basically responds by saying "Its a new Grand Line trick. You haven't seen anything yet.". That one line speaks volumes about One Piece's weirdness.

The Devil Fruits bring a very nice variety in abilities to the table. Though each fruit has different strengths, they all share the same weakness: people who eat the devil fruits can no longer swim and will sink like a rock in water deep enough to drown in. On its own, that doesn't sound a like a big weakness but it becomes a major possibility when you consider that the two most common occupations in the show/manga are Navy and Pirate so just about every devil fruit user falls into one of those two categories. That isn't the only threat to the devil fruit users either. There is a special stone from the bottom of the sea that can shut off a person's devil fruit abilities as long as the stone touches them. There is also Haki and one of the types (Armament Haki) can counter devil fruit users abilities and is especially effective against Logia types.

One of my favorite Devil Fruits: Ace's Mera Mera Fruit.

Overall there are three basic types of devil fruits: Logia, Zoan, and Paramecia. Logia devil fruits allow the user to change their body into a specific force of nature like Ace's fire based powers thanks to the Mera-Mera Fruit. Zoan fruits give the user the power to transform into animals such as Chopper's humanoid form and ability to speak via the Human-Human Fruit. The Zoan type is not limited to just regular animals, there are some that grant the powers of mythical creatures like Marco's Phoenix fruit as well as the Ancient Zoan fruits that allow the user to turn into dinosaurs. Parameicia fruits grant the users general super-human powers such as Luffy's ability to stretch via the Gum-Gum Fruit. To make it even more interesting, certain devil fruits render the user immune or resistant to other devil fruit abilities, like the Gum-Gum fruit rendering Luffy virtually immune to Enel's Rumble-Rumble fruit due to Luffy's body being rubber or the Wax-Wax fruit being able to neutralize/block the Venom-Venom fruit's poison.

One of the more fascinating things about the show is how Oda set up the Navy wanting the Straw Hats heads. The Straw Hats are pirates in name and symbol only, they have for the most part done nothing that is actually illegal. It shows how corrupt that the Navy and the World Government actually are if they're willing to hunt down people doing more good than harm. The testimony from all the people they've helped would be more than enough to clear them of the charges but as long as they fly the Jolly Rodger, the World Government will only ever see them as pirates. That is a stroke of genius.

However, the most impressive feat of the anime/manga by far is Oda's ability to keep things consistent with previously established continuity and character backstories. Now on its own, that compliment doesn't sound like much of a compliment but consider this: At the time of this post the manga currently has over 748 chapters which is a total of 78 volumes and the anime has 708 episodes with about 12 movies. That in and of itself is amazing. I can't help but think Oda reads through some of his notes before writing a new arc just to make sure he doesn't repeat himself. Oda also really knows how to handle character deaths. He rarely kills off characters but when he does, he always does it in a grand fashion so no matter what happens later, you will always remember the character's final moments. Anyway those are my thoughts on One Piece, an anime that I consider to be the current king of the shounen genre and it is definitely worth the acclaim that the fans give it. The anime is just plain old fashion-ed fun. And with that, I'll leave all with this: