Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

Now, the infamous boruto "sequel". This is how everyone refers to it due to the overly biased naruto fanbase, well considering how its normal for any fanbase to have that type of opinion, this is more of a new start of the new story of another protagonist than a sequel of the old series and characters.

Many people were expecting it to get a lot interesting cause they wanted to see the life naruto was chilling in living as the hokage and showing his strength on the frontlines, but people started hating it due to the one ironical reason which is his literal son boruto.
Most of the hate that the series gets is cause of the biased fanbase of naruto cause of how the story shifts from naruto to the younger generation and how they show naruto to be.

(FIRST CHAPTER SPOILERS)
Imo the boruto manga did a VERY good job at shifting the attention from the old generation to the new in the first ever chaper by just literally showing how everything from the past ends up in the future which is the first chapter of kawaki vs boruto. It was a reallly good idea of showing how the heroes of the past will no longer be relevant to the godly threats incoming. And how kawaki states that he will "send boruto where he sent the 7th hokage" which was completely indirect, having double meaning, showing how he just referred to the 7th hokage casually, also at the same time showing how the concept of strength evolved in the future with the "End of the shinobi world".We see two references in the beginning with kawaki referring to naruto and boruto wearing sasukes coat and using his sword.

Introduction=10/10

The story pacing and and the style is definitely different and from a completely different perspective that is boruto, kinda like how bnha is set up with the mc narrating how the story of his past came to be. The overall story up from the beginning is fast paced compared to naruto but at the same time it retains its flow and smoothness. Every chapter builds up hype and you dont have any choice but to continue reading once youve gotten involved.

Upto to the point of the latest chapter the hype has just kept on increasing with the buildup of the introduction of new aspects and new characters I feel it does a really good job hype wise, but due to the montly release the storys progression has not been much as it only has 50 chapters till now.

Story=8

As for the new characters there arent much new chars other than the already existing ones from shippuden for me to give a review on it but ISHHIKI a villain from boruto is honestly one of the best villains in narutoverse as a whole and that just gives more hype to the new ones that are gonna be introduced further into the story.

Characters=?/10

Ikemotos art style is really different comparing to naruto, at the beginning the art style was really wierd when kodachi drew the characters in his style but as the chapters kept coming his artstyle progressed and now its really decent id say, but still different vibe than the naruto.

Art=8

Overall for how many chapters the manga has id say im saying right now its in the buildup stage. Boruto definitely has the potential to become one of the best shounen chars and protagonists once the timeskip occurs, for now the manga/anime isnt really a new gen imo considering how almost all the chars are still from naruto and naruto and sasuke themeselves are still in the spotlight (for the most part). But when the time skip occurs it seriously has the potential to become one of the top new gen

Essentially the manga adaptation and continuation of Boruto: Naruto the Movie. At the time of writing this the manga has adapted about half of the movie so it shouldn't be too long before the new material comes so I'd advise holding off expectations until then. Additionally, while the original creator Kishimoto is overseeing this, the artist and writer are different now so expect differences from the original manga. From what I can tell there are a few added scenes that weren't in the movie so there's that to look forward to. If you enjoyed the movie, haven't seen the movie (like me), and/or have been following Naruto for a long time I think you should check this out.

CONTAINS SPOILERS UNTIL CHAPTER 51


Having seen all those highly scored reviews in the main page, I wanted to make a review myself for this clusterfuck story that is called Boruto.

First of all, I want to say that I'm a HUGE Naruto fanboy as you can see it from my profile picture, so don't think that I'm one of those snob shonen haters. I grew up with Naruto, and I love it despite all of its mistakes and poor storytelling choices. However, that's not the case with Boruto manga.

I love Boruto's movie and the first 60-70 episodes of the anime, I really do. Boruto and Sarada are both really fleshed characters with flaws and cool personalities, and it is really fun to watch them develop as the story advances. First arc of the manga is a recap of the Boruto: Naruto the Movie and is pretty decent. However, after that arc, without Kishimoto holding the ropes, everything just goes downhill.

If I were to summarize Boruto's story structure, it would be like this:

Boruto with or without Team 7 encounters a mysterious figure from a mysterious organization > Somehow teleports to or just happens to be in a bland enviroment with nothing but rocks in the vicinity (Imagine the battlefield of the climax of 4th Great Ninja War, every battlefield is like that) > A bland fist fight with no creativity or ninjutsu> Boruto somehow wins with his mysterious "Karma" power > Nothing is explained, back to the status-quo

Rinse and repeat every 5-6 chapters.

As a series, Naruto was a battle shonen, there's no denying that. Cool battles with high stakes, well written buildups, extremely satisfying payoffs and fleshed characters with rich backstories was always the strongest aspect of Naruto. Probably everyone who watched Naruto has a villain that they love or symphatize because of how well-written they are, be it Itachi, Nagato, Obito or even Madara.

Boruto too, is a battle shonen, and sadly, has none of those things I listed above. Villains are just punchbags for Boruto and have no depth or backstories. The main organization in the series, Kara, is just full of lunatics who has no motives. Jigen, their founder and leader is just another Otsutsuki like Kaguya who just wants to destroy the world because he's an alien race that needs to destroy worlds in order to survive. Like, really? Kaguya storyline was probably the most criticized arc of Naruto, and you say that you're giving us MORE Kaguya's and Otsutsuki's? Why? Just... Why?

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, battles. Forget about cool battles of Naruto because they don't exist. Don't get me wrong, there are battles. In fact, majority of chapters consist of just battles that doesn't end for quite a while. Remember how Pain was able to absorb ninjutsu and how that made him a unique character that felt like a really big threat? Or do you remember how Madara was basically immortal and could regenerate from any wound in both his Edo Tensei and Jinchuriki form? Yeah, every single Boruto villain has those now thanks to something called scientific ninja tools. Doesn't matter if they're a low ranked villain or the main villain, they can easily absorb ninjutsu with their scientific cybernetics and regenerate their bodies from many wounds, and can even come back from death. This destroys the whole point of ninjutsu and no one uses it since their enemy is just going to absorb it with a flick of their hand. Only ninjutsu you see are just finisher moves and those are, at most, just rasengans from Boruto, as if we didn't see that in main series. Also, this Kara organization doesn't use much ninjutsu either, so all of the battles are just "aigh let's see which one of us can punch hardest." So much that Rock Lee with his just 7th gate could probably beat every single Boruto villain, maybe even Jigen. By the way, Boruto never actually wins a fight, his Karma does. Whenever he starts to lose, Karma somehow activates itself and do some mysterious shit to turn the tides of the battle. Every single fight feels like Naruto ve Neji, which was a failure of storytelling itself.

Speaking of battles, Naruto and Sasuke are HEAVILY nerfed in this series. Delta, one of the small villains of the series, takes Himawari, daughter of Naruto and yeets her into the air to threaten Naruto. So Naruto, one of the fastest people in the world, makes a move towards Himawari but hell no! Kawaki, who is just at the age of maybe Naruto in OG series, is as fast as him and blocks the incoming attack of Delta. This isn't even nerfing old characters, this is just making fool of Naruto fans.

Yes, this series is called BORUTO, not Naruto, and I agree that old characters shouldn't take the spotlight much, and maybe even should nerfed. However, if you're going to create an organization that threatens not only the world, but maybe the whole UNIVERSE, Naruto and Sasuke, who are literal Gods at this point, will of course steal the show from 12 year old Boruto that can barely do 5 shadow clones. Imagine Madara or Kaguya being the first villains that Team 7 encountered in the original Naruto and not Zabuza or Orochimaru. It's literally like that in Boruto and I have no idea how they will find new stories to tell after this arc. (Other than bringing just more Otsutsuki, of course)

I've been following Boruto since its first chapter back in 2016. Oh, I forgot to say that this manga is monthly right? Yes, it is. Weird for a battle shonen, but not a big problem. Sike, it is an ENORMOUS problem that ruins all the pacing.

So, fights generally took 3-4 chapters to end because of the awful artist that draws the series. Don't get me wrong, Ikemoto's drawings are definitely not bad, albeit not great either. However, I can only assume that he has no idea how the manga medium works, because in every fight, he uses 3 panels at most for each page, which makes fights long as hell while nothing happens in a 45-page chapter. You read just non stop punching/kicking scenes for literally 3 months for a fight that doesn't even advance the story further in the end. Even weekly manga series advance their story more with their single, weekly 17-page chapter! Hell, even Attack on Titan's story develops faster than Boruto's.

Characters are... I'm sorry what characters? All those colorful characters you see in the anime adaptation are nearly non-existent in manga. Only characters you see other than the new Team 7 and only a handful of old Naruto characters are Kara members, and like I said, they're pretty shallow, one dimensional characters. Not only that, but characters that are well fleshed in anime are just filler characters here. Sarada? You forget that she even exist. Mitsuki? Oh, that other guy in Team 7. Kawaki is kinda a cool character and probably the only one that has some kind of character development, but he's nothing revolutionary.

Speaking of characters, this series doesn't forget to bring old characters back and use it to bait Naruto fanboys to like the series. (And apparently it's working) Remember everyone's favorite mentor Jiraiya? That one cool dude who had an awesome end for his character, and affected both Naruto and Nagato, and indirectly the whole ninja world greatly with his death? Yeah, he's back as a clone now because apparently this Amado guy can do what Kabuto couldn't, with his super uber powerful scientific ninja crap. Which means, every old character can be easily cloned by villains, as if Edo Tensei wasn't enough to ruin the series. (Also ruins the whole point of Orochimaru, since even random guys now can do things he spent his whole life to achieve)

I can brag about Boruto for hours, but for now, this is it. Overall, a huge disappointment that feels like a Wattpad fanfiction rather than the next generation of Naruto.

The manga starts off basically setting up for the events of the movie but it kind of goes downhill from there. Now I know Boruto gets a lot of hate because it doesn't live up to being as great as Naruto was, and I agree with that. Boruto will never be as good as or better than Naruto, but Boruto is good nonetheless. Trust me once you get deeper into the story the manga becomes significantly more interesting and exciting. It's a monthly manga which means a chapter comes out every month, so if you have some free time on your hands, and you have nothing else to read/watch, then I say give it a chance, why not? If you get to the good parts and you feel like it's just not good enough then you can drop it. It is not as bad as people make it out to be.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
The Boruto manga fills me with dread at each passing chapter. It shouldn't exist.
Now you might write this off as a triggered Naruto fan's comment, and you would be right. I'm gonna divide my review between story, art, characters( the new and the old because they have different strengths and flaws), fights and overall enjoyment. Needless to say my review will include spoilers for Naruto and Boruto.

















Story: 7/10
The plot of the story was promising. Many didn't like the whole Ootsutsuki plotline at the end of Naruto. I did, although it was a bit out of nowhere, and I have to say that Boruto's story following that plotline comes naturally. I also enjoyed the quite surprising adition of Scientific Ninja Tools, and the whole deal with shinobi becoming obsolete. However, the conciliation of these two plotlines is awkward and somewhat inconsequential. The narrative seems to point out that shinobi are becoming a thing of the past, but at the same time implies that the only ones who can save the world from the ootsutsuki threat are shinobi (see the fight with momoshiki, SNTools were useless against them and only Naruto and Sasuke, representative of the old shinobi way, could take him down). So in the long run the whole SNTool thing became inconsequential when merged with the more dominant Ootsutsuki threat plot.
Furthermore, the whole Karma mechanics and concept is very interesting, it keeps the flow of the story going in exciting ways and I think it definitely is a step in the right direction. I have a few issues with some aspects of the story but I''l include them when I talk about the old characters and fights in general.
To sum it up, when all is said and done, the story doesn't do anything remarkable by itself, although it is interesting and compelling, so I give it a 7/10.

Art: 6/10
Unfortunately, the art is quite mediocre. It doesn't convey the kinematics of the fights very well, the designs feel inorganic in some ways, and overall it gives off a static and unremarkable vibe to the panels. There are very few panels where I got chills, or just re-read the panel to absorb it all.
So, overall it is functional, but barely above that, so i give it a 6/10.

New Characters (strictly Boruto characters): 6/10
The Boruto manga introduces us to a set of new characters akin to the classic Konoha set of characters that we know and love from Naruto. I can't help but feel disappointed in most of them. They copypasted a lot of htem from their mothers and fathers (e.g Shikadai is literally kid Shikamaru I literally cannot understand how they thought that was a good idea) Characters like Shikadai suffer little to no development in the manga, which I would think they would have learned from Naruto's poor treatment of such side main characters to do better. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt because the manga is still relatively recent, but I still think it could have been handled better. then we have genuinely interesting characters like Mitsuki, Sarada and Kawaki. Honestly Mitsuki and Kawaki bring a lot of emotional depth to the manga and their backstories have been well used in doing so. Their charater is well defined, they grow troughout the manga (namely Kawaki's growth, which was very well done in my opinion) and are likeable and compelling. Sarada is also well written and makes for a good shonen female character. Now, Boruto is also moderately well written but he is a bland shonen protagonist. Echoing the same shonen troupes of "wanting to be stronger", "not giving in to a hidden power that takes over him", doesn't get the character anywhere. The only redeeming aspect that I see in him is the fact that he is able to grow in the Chuunin Exam arc and find his Nindo, that was well done, but the rest of it is honestly just so bland. I think the writers have failed to capture a theme or a set of themes to define his character, and that's why he comes off like this. The villains suffer from the same thing. The new Kara villains are literally villains for the sake of being villains. They are BAD, and I mean very bad. They are an Ozai-type character (from Avatar: The Last Air Bender), characters that had to exist because they needed villains, and their character is solely defined like that. It is fine in a series to have one or two such villains, but to have the MAJORITY of Kara be like that? It's very bad. Really, aside from design, powers set, etc, try to think of one character trait that differentiates Delta from Boro. Found little to none? That's because there are little to none. The only redeeming villains are Isshiki, Jigen and arguably Kashin Koji and Amado (which aren't really villains), but I'll talk more about Koji in the following segment.
Overall, all the mediocre characters bring down the rating to 6/10.

Old (Reused Naruto characters): 1/10
Oh boy. Here we go. You would expect, from a sequel named Boruto: NARUTO next generations, that they would treat Naruto characters well. Well, think again. Naruto characters aside Naruto and Sasuke are treated as literal landscape. They appear to make very specific roles in function of Boruto characters (i.e Sakura exists solely as Sarada's mom, Hinata the same to Boruto, Shikamaru as an advisor-type character to other people, etc). They have no relevance as characters to the story. And that's bad when you have a lot of them. They are doing close to nothing in the story, and are just doing functional roles and also passively atracting old Naruto fans to the story. It's horrible character treatment. Now, Naruto and Sasuke. Jesus Christ. They forget every development that has been done from shippuden onward. Naruto is a moron with brain damage and Sasuke is the calm colected planning master. Except when he tries to attack Isshiki with a sword, after establishing that he could shrink non-living objects. They gave Naruto and Sasuke brain damage, which also affects the fights, but most importantly affects their character. What happened to all the intellectual development that Naruto got? By the end of the war, Naruto is still a goofy individual, but no longer the moron that couldn't devise strategies and plans and think logically. And what of Sasuke's emotional development? Where is it? Where is his atonement, where is his reflections on his past actions, where is all of that? There isn't. Because Naruto and Sasuke are being used purely to bait old Naruto fans, and aren't being treated like Naruto and Sasuke. It really upsets me especially with these two. Kashin Koji also suffers from these. He was made a Jiraya clone just for the sake of being a Jiraya clone. He literally serves no purpose but to die and make a poor emotional appeal to old fans.
It's this horrible and inconsiderate treatment of this set of characters that for me really ruins Boruto, because the other characters are not enough well done for me to not care. 1/10

Fights: 2/10
Honestly the only reason I am not rating the action moments or fights 1/10 is fights like Team 7 vs Boro, which I bellieve was moderately well written. My main issue is with the majority of fights like naruto and sasuke vs jigen, and really all the battles of Naruto and Sasuke. The Boruto manga forgets everything but the most generic power set of these characters. Naruto is literally just rasengan go brr, if not enough rasengan go more brr, then Sage of Six Paths + KCM mode and poorly drawn and written taijutsu sequences, at which point he gets trashed. And Sasuke just uses ocular techniques, spams Amenotejikara which consumes a lot of chakra and Amaterasu for SOME reason, since he should have already realised that Amaterasu is useless on Ootsutsuki level foes (as seen when he fought Kaguya). Where is Naruto's clever use of clones? Where is his vast arsenal of Rasengan variants? Where is his clever use of his chakra arms, senjutsu (like frog kata and gather of natural energy and such), summoning jutsu? And where is Sasuke's vast arsenal of techniques, Katon (Fire ball and its variants), Raiton (Chidori and its variants). I mean was I the only one who thought that when Isshiki shrunk a swift chidori nagashi would have been effective? or kirin? no, instead they hit him with a big rasengan. wtf. You look at a fight like Team 7 vs Boro, where there is clear strategy and teamwork, the flow of battle turns a few times, then plot twist Borushiki appears. That's a good fight, the kind of Naruto-type fights that i enjoy. Because they're thrilling and keep you on edge. But you can't do that if you're constantly thinking what kind of BRAIN CANCER Naruto must have to keep letting himself getting hit by Delta instead of, uh, idk, USING HIS INSANE SPEED TO DRAG GER AWAY FROM THE KIDS WHERE HE CAN SAFELY GAUGE HER STRENGTH. It's really upsetting and horrible to be reading a fight and being constantly wondering what the hell is going on inside their heads. And this is evidence that the writers are unable to write compelling, well written fights with Naruto and Sasuke because they don't wanna have the effort of creating a fight where Naruto and Sasuke's tremendous power could be challenged. So they dumb them down and make the fights easier to write, while making them absolutely terrible. This is lazy writing. I mean, Boruto is a battle shonen, these things matter to the audience.
Now to talk about Baryon Mode and Kurama's death, which is the thing that motivated me to write this review. Baryon Mode is such a stupid and asspulled power that I can't even begin to describe the problem with it. Is it the fact that "fusion of chakra" has never been stated in 700 chapters and 700+ episodes of story and lore? Is it the fact that this technique existing invalidates much of the events in Naruto, namely when Naruto almost died by having Kurama extracted? is it the fact that now, with Kurama dead, they ignore this fact, and have Naruto remain alive? Is it the fact that LITERALLY the bare minimum of introduction of preparation to this ability would have made it make sense, such as early on in the story Naruto and Kurama discussing the "new risky technique " that they have found and have been perfecting? No, instead it is used as a cheap plot armor device, which ultimately results in an emotional bait over Kurama's death. Furthermore, Kurama's death scene is the most ridiculous thing I have read in my life. The dialogue is nonsensical and inorganic. The 700 chapters of Kurama's character development ignored, as well as his relationship with Naruto. Everything about it is horrible. Boruto as a battle shonen is, hence, severely flawed and I give it a 2/10.

Overall enjoyment: Reading the boruto manga is similar to eating a horrible cake with chocolate chips. It's horrible and insulting most of the time, but somehow someday there's a chapter that makes you feel good about it. However the horrible after taste of the cake ruins the experience. Having everything in consideration, I give it a 3/10.

Summary: Boruto has so far been a poor followup to Naruto. The art is low quality and inconsistent and the action lacks flow and power. The story is rushed and contradictory and seems to be forgoing everything good about Naruto in favor of elevating powerlevels even more.

Following up on a story that focused on the maturation of it's characters is always hard, especially when it's one as successful as Naruto. That said, so far Boruto seems to do virtually everything that others stories that tried doing this and failed have done in the past.

I'm gonna begin by talking about the art though, because that's something a lot of people have trouble with and isn't really related to the rest of my complaints. I don't actually have a problem with Kishimoto's decision to hand the reigns over to a new artist, in fact I kinda like it given that it both fits thematically with the work and it allows him to work on that new sci-fi thing he talked about in 2015. The problem is that I don't think the art is really good enough.

One of the big issues I think a lot of people have with Ikemoto's art is the characters. He uses much softer looking, more rounded lines which ends up giving all his characters a more feminine look. Now admittedly this was something that Kishimoto actually said he was bad at doing himself so it's possible that the girls suddenly looking like they're from a completely different manga was done on his instruction but in my eyes some of the design changes just go too far and overall don't look very good.

That problem is compounded by the halfhearted attempt to match the style of the original. The reason I say "halfhearted" is because sometimes Ikemoto just plain old doesn't try to draw the character the same way as normal. This is most noticable with Boruto, because sometimes his hair will suddenly get a lot shorter and curly just like the female characters, but frankly the art is just inconsistent all throughout. If Ikemoto was just going to do the manga in his own style then fine, I don't like it that much but I'll accept it, but just stick to one style! Honestly I find it rather shocking that someone who has been working on this series for over 15 years has seemingly regressed in his ability to match Kishimoto's style. If you read back through the series you can find some background characters that match the style of Boruto, but they still look closer to the original series than a lot of what we have now. Also, he seems to by trying to keep the original style more with the men while just doing his own thing almost all the time with the women, which just makes it even more jarring.

The final problem I have with the art is the action sequences. I mean, overall the art in the series is pretty mediocre but the action sequences are the worst. At around page 32 of chapter 3 (page number might change depending on how you read it) you can see a clear example. You see Lee's kid in a really awkward pose fighting a poorly shaded enemy. If you look at his hair and pose it seems like he's lunging forward and down. Only the lower half of his leg has any speed lines and they seem to be implying that his leg is going straight up. Also his foot is missing. In the next panel you see that he's completed a roundhouse kick that doesn't really match the direction his leg was coming from at all, the speedlines are still only on the lower half of his leg despite his whole leg moving (they also look really weird and I'm not sure what kind of motion they're meant to show), and he's jumped in the air for some reason despite not really having been in any position to do that. The biggest sin though is how the enemy is just flying away from him with NO indication that he actually kicked him. If you're going to have a fight that consists of a single hit, not actually showing that hit is just awful, especially considering how much Kishimoto used showing the moment of impact to great effect. There are plenty of other instances of awkward poses that don't have any impact and just plain old look weird, so I'm not gonna bother pointing them all out, but I would recommend checking out 5/12, just because Sakura's pose is so stupid it's honestly hilarious.

I do want to criticize one major problem with the fight sequences specifically though, and that's the speed lines. They're worthless, and this is weird because apparently one of Ikemoto's jobs was adding white to the speedlines, so how he managed to do that for over a decade without noticing how Kishimoto used them is a complete mystery to me. Kishimoto's speedlines were excellent. They gave a sense of power and speed to his action sequences, but more than that they tied the flow of the actions together. Just look back at Lee Vs. Garaa. You can see exactly where Lee has been in the trail he leaves behind. You can see how badly he's been hit by the intensity and length of them. That is completely lacking in Boruto, and I think Ikemoto's failure to use speedlines properly is one of the major contributors to this. He draws them far to short, makes awkward angles with perspective, and rarely seems to consider how the rest of the body is moving aside from whatever limb is the focus of the movement. Because of this, it often just looks like characters are teleporting around the battlefield trading awkward blows that do no damage. It just lacks any sense of continuity, power, or speed.

Now I'm not just here to bash Boruto so I want to point out something that I feel he's done fairly well with the art, and that's the shading. Naruto has always been a very well shaded series. Kishimoto eschewed overusing screentones and preferred to do the majority of his shading by hand, which is one of the things that gives Naruto it's distinctive, sometimes downright grimy look. Ikemoto has continued this, and while I do think it's not quite as good as it used to be it still looks good and is a refreshing departure from how much screentone you see in other manga.

Now that I've gotten the artwork out of the way, onto the story.

To begin with, I'm just not even gonna talk about the opening. Yes, it is the main character narrating over a suspenseful scene, only to tell you that the story starts a while back and you need to learn more to get up to this point and jumping back into the past to actually begin the story. There is just so much I could say about that that I'm not even gonna bother touching it. Who knows, maybe down the line we'll find out that Kodachi actually had some brilliant reason for doing that. Speaking of which, why on earth was he even picked for this? If I was picking a writer for the followup to one of the most popular manga since DBZ I wouldn't go with a guy who wrote part of the script for a few anime that honestly weren't that amazing. He's never even worked on a manga before for goodness sakes!

Anyways, the story has been super underwhelming so far. Despite being called "Next Generation" the enemies they fight start up exactly where Naruto left off. Yup that's right, it's taken less chapters than the number of YEARS Naruto was in print for fight scenes against overpowered, mysterious god enemies who control the power of the final boss of the series to start happening. And yes, that remains true even if you account for the fact that Boruto's chapters are twice as long as Naruto's.

Don't forget your jutsus though! Naturally, a generation of children who grew up in peacetime are able to use techniques their parents trained years for with no problems. No, having their techniques be slightly smaller than their parents doesn't make things better. Choji had to take drugs and almost kill himself to do partial expansion yet somehow his daughter can do it effortlessly while younger than him? One of the best parts of the original series was how it showed the characters growth. There were entire arcs dedicated to characters training to learn moves, which worked so well with the series themes of growth. In this though? Characters can learn techniques which took multiple arcs to learn in the length of a single chapter. This is incredibly infuriating because a major theme of this new series appears to be that the characters have to learn not to take shortcuts and learn techniques with their own power, but apparently Kodachi doesn't actually want to bother writing training arcs so he just gives characters powers after a few pages with some implied training.

I also want to point out that he chooses Konohamaru to introduce and recommend the shortcut to training in the first place, as well as him doing some of the miracle montage training. While not something that's necessarily wrong plotwise I just think it shows how deep some of the problems with the writing go when the character who represented the idea that "there are no shortcuts to hard work" is recommending a shortcut to hard work in the story and being used as one by the author.

The final complaint I have is sort of a followup to the previous issue. So far, a great many things that got their own, sometimes very long, arcs in the original series have been skimmed over in a couple of pages, I think mainly to speed up the appearance of super powered DBZ fight scenes against literal gods. I know I said I wasn't going to talk about this but seriously, the series is so impatient to show off that characters are gonna have super high powerlevels that it wastes the first pages to show you the MC fighting Notsuke over the rubble of Konoha. It's like the series is in a mad dash to quickly distance itself form everything good about the original in favor of raising the powerlevel even higher.

Just stop. The characters literally defeated god. Recently we've had successful series like Boku no Hero or Assasination Classroom that show that people still love stories about the process of learning instead of just wanting to see how OP the main character can get next. We even have One Punch Man which is purely devoted to making fun of outrageous powerlevel escalation. I know Naruto got full of overpowered nonsense toward the end but honestly that was the weakest part of the whole series for me. Boruto feels like a completely wasted chance to restart with what made the series so popular to being with.

Boruto manga is good tbh its just people hate it because naruto isnt the mc anymore and the anime is shounen and its dumb to call naruto a shounen show if he's 32 years old already tbh this manga is good the artstyle is improving and it has good plot twist that i didnt expect tbh

idk why people hate it because of the anime being slow and didnt know the manga exist? Also stop comparing naruto to boruto they have different story tho it has its own uniqueness and both are cool

10/10 better read this if your curious about what happen to boruto naruto and sasuke vs otsutsuki's that trying to destroy the shinobi world

ill start reviewing this starting to CH 54

CH 54 shows naruto is in Bad condition and they survive against MOMOSHIKI rampage thru boruto's body (borushiki)

Kawaki sacrifice himself usinh fire style and brun himself so momoshiki will suck it (Momoshiki needs kawaki a lot) (boruto wakes up and break to horn and stop the rampage but SASUKE is worried about NARUTO because of baryon mode

CH 55
_FEB 19_

Spoiler Free Review (up-to-date with manga chapter 35):

I refrained from writing a review on Boruto the manga because I was hopeful it would change directions. However it has only gotten worse.

To start off I understand that this is about the new generation. The problem though is that they do bring back a lot of old faces, but those old characters are written poorly and not true to themselves. Everything from motives, personality, even power scaling is entirely wrong about the old characters. Some characters from the original series that would rank high on tier lists are simply so weak in Boruto.


Then there are the new characters who are bland, and lack a unique personality. Boruto himself feels more like a character from some teenager's fanfic, than an actual character in the Naruto universe. He is literally given everything possible to be a strong ninja and like able character, but instead comes off as a total brat who doesn't seem eager to grow or change. The support cast is also very weak. The magic of the original Naruto series was that every character had a good backstory, this including Naruto's fellow main characters, the supporting cast, and a good portion of the antagonists.
In Boruto I can't find myself liking any of the characters new or old.

Without spoiling anything, I'll also say that recent chapters have really undermined Kishimoto's lore. Some of you might know what I mean by this. For those of you who don't basically I'll say it like this: Rather than new original storylines and characters and plotlines, old ones are taken and practically rewritten, almost as if to say "actually this is what happened"

I feel like that disrespects the back-stories, the lore, and the world that Kishimoto created

I'll end on this. When Bleach started it's "decline", I kept reading every weekly release to see how it ends and if it would at least end well.
I will not do the same for Boruto and will drop it.

If you don't mind history being rewritten Boruto might be for you, but for me, having grown up with Naruto since I was 11 years old, I feel the Boruto manga disrespects the original series and doesn't make an effort to make its own story unique.

Having been a huge fan of the Naruto series for more than 10 years, I've started reading the boruto manga thinking it would be as good as the Boruto Movie which had some great moments.
It initially started good and the arcs after the movie arc were alright only with a downside of the new manga drawings which are considerably worse than Kishimoto's on Naruto Manga and the characters generally look fat and some people like Sasuke look straight up ugly.
But that aside, as more time passed and new arcs and the big villain (ish) appeared, the plot went into the classic path of "Make the old characters useless to make the new ones shine" and Naruto and Sasuke, the god tier shinobi, just weren't what they were anymore and kept fighting like genins. STILL I still continued reading to see what will happen hoping things change for the better, but they did for the worse.

*kinda spoilery*
The last chapter as of today (chp55) straight up contradicts some of the very basic knowledges in the Naruto verse like the inevitable fact of Jinchurikis dying with Bijuus extracted from them and honestly I could not bear it anymore to see this sequel (now more like spinoff honestly) show is setting up its own rules that don't match with what the whole Naruto plot had been founded on.
With Naruto and Sasuke's strongest powers officially gone, it's only a matter of time till the plot kills em for some "character development" of Boruto and/or Kawaki and I rather not see them die trash tier deaths in a sequel show. Not to mention they weren't that strong even with those powers in the boruto plot so now they will just look like some miserable third-grade shinobi which is not honestly any better than death (might be even worse).
*end of semi spoilers*

SO that was the reason I have dropped the boruto manga after 55 chapters (which is approx. half of it apparently) and I really do not recommend this to the Naruto fans who actually care about the characters and the built up stories so far because this sequel has no fear of ignoring them whatsoever and sacrifice them whenever it sees fit. Trust me when I say Naruto chapter 700 is the true ending of the Naruto verse (with Naruto Gaiden + Boruto movie being some actually decent epilogues).

TLDR;
Boruto's approach to Naruto-verse is like the Disney Star Wars trilogy to the old ones and the SW lore. (you can search on youtube how Mark Hamil (aka Luke Skywalker) thinks about them lol)

For me the boruto manga tries to do something different. We know boruto will lose everything making it aloth more interesting. With the inclusion of kawaki in the recent chapters you get aloth of foreshadowing of the events that will come. Ikemoto's drawings get better every month and he really puts in his own style. He likes to draw big panels which leads to less text and plot. this wouldn't be a problem if the manga was weekly but that's the biggest problem. The manga is monthly making the wait extremely long and with only 40 pages a month and a cliff hanger almost every last page of every chapter makes it hard for people to keep reading without dropping it after a certain time.
If the manga goes weekly the sales would rise drastically and would probably get the popularity it deserves. But for now we will have to wait.