Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
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Gina Szanboti
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188-189
That was quite a nice change in the art style this week, and to my eyes at least, some really sweet choreography and sakuga during the big fight scene. Wish they'd keep all that up, but from the previews, I'd say not. I like Kawaki a lot so far. I guess he was born with that two-tone undercut. Heh, I always thought the Uchiha's fan/hot air balloon logo was kinda silly looking for such a supposedly bad-ass clan, but I think Jigen's hamburger has it beat by a mile for stupid-looking. It's like Kara is actually a fast food franchise. 190 Wow, that was the lamest, most contrived escape I've seen since the prison escape. You'd think these kids might've learned a thing or two about security from their time there, but guess not. Or at least the writers didn't. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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192
That was a really excellent episode. Some of the victim beats were pretty trite, but the scenery and music were downright lyrical. I'm ashamed to admit I didn't see the spoiler[goldfish guy's] heel-turn coming though.  And wow, unwittingly bad choice of words there, Naruto.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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198-199
Fun to see Naruto flexing his muscle and layin' down the smack! Pretty decent animation too. Those step-up Rasengans were kinda getting out of hand though. Boruto: "Dad seems really mad." Ya think? 
Not sure how he missed the pink drone hovering right over head. Not only was he up there high-jumping around in its airspace, but she kept looking right at it -- you'd think that would've tipped him off. So these people are still trying to Infinite Tsukuyomi the world? Please, that's so ten years ago. You villains need to get with the times and stop living in the past. Oh, wait, I guess that's the whole point of I.T., huh. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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202-203
So Sasuke's checking out this weird temple place with these runes on the wall, trying to figure out what they mean.  (click for larger image) (click for larger image)
Clearly this is a temple to ice hockey. They seem to be fans of the Red Wings and/or Capitals.
This may be Boruto, but frankly I'm so much more enjoying Naruto and Sasuke getting to show off. And Kawaki is a much more interesting character than Boruto is. Can we just go ahead and make him the main character? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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204
This might just be the best episode of this series to date. What a great cliffhanger, especially from the side of the people who have no idea what's going on. I think this is the first time I've actually felt any real emotion or investment in these characters since Shippuden. What amazes me most about this episode is there wasn't even one time, let alone the usual half dozen, where I was rolling my eyes or grinding my teeth asking "Why are you acting like that?" or "Why aren't you doing this very obvious thing?" Everyone, from Naruto and Sasuke, down the ranks and on to Sakura's brief cameo, and even all the kids, was absolutely on point this episode, behaving like actual people in an emergency who've been training all their lives for shit like this. Bravo! |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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210
As much as I like the Kawaki storyline, the Boro part of it is really unfortunately timed, what with the conspiracy of creating a virus to gain control of people with the cure, and all the cult behavior around that. I guess it illustrates the adage that it's easy to convince people of a lie, but once they believe it, it's almost impossible to convince them they've been fooled. Also, I'm starting to automatically cringe now whenever they go off on an undercover mission. They're just so, so bad at it. This wasn't quite as pathetic as the prison infiltration plotline, but the adults were running this one and they still sucked at it. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2324 |
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Yeah, felt similarly. I rather suspect it's the episode authors rather than the characters that are bad at espionage, at this point.  Sai and Konohomaru made almost 0 effort to blend in; more-or-less announced they were Konoha spies; drew a ton of attention to themselves by practically shouting their 'rumor' in the second-in-command guy's face; and then magically appeared in the room he ran to, undetected, wrapping the 'We're spies!' plot up before they had even begun to try to become genuine members of the cult. They were still 'those new guys who showed up 10 minutes ago and hail from far-away lands, which by the way we don't have many of, thus naturally calling extra attention to them' when their brilliant charade came to an end.
That said, I'm finding Boruto (the show, I mean) a lot more tolerable now than ~90 episodes ago. I skipped a huge chunk of it because it just felt sufferingly slow, but I'm happy to see it has remembered it has a main plot. (I suppose this isn't all that different from how I felt about pre-time-skip Naruto/Shippuden, thinking back.) |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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Ep 211
I thought this was just going to be a "let the other characters have a week" episode, but turned out it was certainly not that. I did feel a bit relieved when Kakashi dropped by to supervise though.
Not sure why, but this episode really pinged my radar on this feeling, and made me a lot less certain that I'm wrong. On top of the frog stuff, Koji's got the white hair, the marks under his eyes, interest in past shinobi, a mask... and now it's revealed he's never been working for Jigen (though that wasn't much of a revelation at this point). Damn it. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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Ep 214
Poop. It wasn't bad enough that in a franchise that rarely kills off any characters, they already killed Jiraiya once. Now they gotta kill off his clone too? So unfair. I mean, ok, he's not dead yet, but... Also, I really hate the literary idea of how clones work, because that's not how they work (it is, however, pretty much how shadow clones work ). You don't inherit all the original's knowledge and skills just because you have the same DNA, any more than identical twins automatically share knowledge and skills.
Man, Kawaki just can't catch a break, can he. But wouldn't it be easier to move him to, oh I dunno, say, another dimension for a bit, instead of evacuating the whole village? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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Ep 215
Poor Boruto. Gets sidelined by dad in his own series. Not that I mind. But I liked how he and Sasuke worked together in an old callback to the original series. Also, someone should've warned Konohamaru about how useless his Rasengan would be. Still, these guys are all seasoned shinobi by now. Seems like they could easily dodge pillars dropped from the sky on them, instead of staring at them dumbfounded. At least Koji seems to have escaped, though certainly not unscathed. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2324 |
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You can, uh, tell that Sasuke and Naruto have a really deep bond, what with Sasuke watching as Naruto directly informs his son that he can't come fight the angry god with them, and Sasuke then covertly helping Naruto's son sneak into the middle of the battle to use space-time ninjutsu (which I thought Sasuke could use anyway?).
I also thought Boruto's 'explanation' was hilariously weird writing: now you can go all out, dad! (Except that, of course, his son, who could be taken over by a second angry god at any moment, is right here next to him, and also they literally just finished evacuating the village, with Ino saying exactly the same "Now you can go all out, Naruto!" to Naruto all of 5 minutes prior. I hope that goofy parallel structure is the show's way of showing us that Boruto is recklessly endangering all of them by acting like a brat, bizarrely abetted by Sasuke, and not somehow trying to show us through the power of intense redundancy that he really is helping and his dad should respect his child-soldier ninja spirit.) |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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Sasuke can use it, but to shove him through the portal he'd have to get close and Isshiki wasn't allowing that. So they used the old shadow-weapon clone maneuver to get in range to do that. Yeah, I see what you mean about Ino and Boruto saying the same thing, but Ino's main concern was people not dying (since she didn't know there was any other option but to fight there), while Boruto wanted to also not have the whole village destroyed in the battle. It's already been destroyed what, at least 3 times now, and rebuilding must be getting tedious. So I think he actually did do a good thing in this case, even though he was acting like a brat as usual. And it is his show after all, so they really can't just let him sit at home stewing.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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Ep 216
So yeah, it's Boruto's show, but it's Naruto who gets a fancy new power look. Jigen's shrinky-dink jutsu is pretty formidable, though his Bag of Holding must be getting full by now.
Gotta say, I actually did feel Boruto's pain when Jigen was curb stomping him. Ouch. Also, sidelined again while Dad shows off. That's gotta sting. I don't think they can keep this up for two days... |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
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Ep 218
Ok, that was all pretty great, from Kawaki's deception and bad boy Boruto, to the finale. But anime has burned us all so, so many times, I feel robbed of the emotional response I would have otherwise had to this episode. I can't enjoy wallowing in the tragedy because I'm waiting for the "Psych! Sucker!" down the line. So I guess the fact that this wrung even a few tears from me, given my cynical heart, is doing pretty damn good. And it was very nicely done. I suppose I won't be too mad if/when they renege though (and I can think of a number of loopholes to exploit). Anyway, well done, staff of Boruto!
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2324 |
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The Return of Evil Boruto felt a little contrived to me (though I can't quite place my finger on why), but otherwise agree; I thought that was a lovely episode. I am not sure sure they will back off; after all, spoiler[Itachi, Hiruzen, and Jiraiya are still dead, right? Naruto has had some major writing problems in certain areas (like not appreciating the villains it carefully builds up, preferring whatever sounds like the 'most powerful' in-universe escalation to emotional connection), but I don't think it has a history of major 'faked' character deaths.]
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