The impact of the original Naruto series cannot be understated. The original series, created by Masashi Kishimoto, behaved similarly to Dragon Ball Z in that it introduced an entire generation to anime, and that most popular (love it or hate it) genre of anime: shonen.

Naruto grew older and more powerful as the audience that loved him was also growing older and taking on more responsibility. This is one particular strong suit of traditional shonen anime -- in that it's often both a power fantasy and a coming-of-age tale that encourages hard work and the importance of chasing one's dreams. It's certainly corny, but the end result is a fictional world and a set of characters that behave like friends and role models. Because of this, their fans' connection to them is very close. It is all of this that makes Boruto: Naruto Next Generations a particularly divisive piece of media.

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By the end of Shippuden, Naruto had achieved his ultimate goal of becoming the Seventh Hokage. He'd fallen in love, gotten married and had children. He had come of age as a character -- the story was over. It was because of this that the idea of a sequel to Naruto was a no-go for Masashi, but one that he was willing to turn over to his (at the time) assistant, Mikio Ikemoto (artist) and Ukyo Kodachi (writer).

The Boruto series follows the story of Boruto Uzumaki -- the son of Naruto and Hinata -- as he works to become a strong shinobi in his own right. Originally the series was published in Shueisha's weekly magazine Shonen Jump but was later moved to a monthly release schedule in Shueisha's V Jump. While both the manga and the anime have received positive critical attention and seem to satisfy most fans, there are, of course, certain gripes which a fan-base as die-hard as Naruto's has with a spin-off series created by a different writer but working in the same universe with the same characters. It's not dissimilar to the most recent Star Wars films in this sense.

While the Boruto anime is not terrible, it's certainly not without its flaws. But before we get into those, we would be remiss if we were to neglect to mention the incredible animation that makes for some of the most dynamic and visceral fight scenes of any current shonen series, but it would be equally irresponsible not to discuss one of the biggest issues: all that filler.

To break it down, the manga (the source material for the anime adaptation) is currently on its fourth arc, while the anime concluded the first of these arcs some time ago (the versus Momoshiki arc, to be exact) but has yet to begin the second arc and is instead engaging in slice of life filler episodes, which are entertaining at best, but have left the main storyline by the wayside for more world-building.

Now, of course, Naruto as an anime has more than its fair share of slice of life episodes. When rewatching, it is not uncommon to skip large portions of a season in order to stick with the main story and trim the fat, so to speak. However, it is important to keep in mind that Naruto is in many ways an anime of different time periods. It used to be that the vast majority of anime was being aired weekly, just as the manga chapters were being released weekly. Now this means that, at times, the anime would catch up to the manga and in some cases overtake it. In the event of this happening, there are two real options: A. the anime can start creating its own story instead of following the manga -- as was the case with the first anime adaptation of Full Metal Alchemist or B. the anime can create fun little filler episodes (or in some cases filler seasons) in order to grant the poor mangaka some time to produce more content.

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For a long time, this was the norm, but in recent years the production of anime has changed, and with it, so have our expectations. At the time that Naruto was originally airing the filler felt far less egregious than it does now because it was far more accepted. But now, when big shows like My Hero Academia have ditched the old method and instead use a season by season model in order to stick closer to the source material, the filler sticks out and drags down the viewing experience significantly.

Mitsuki Boruto Uzumaki Sarada Uchiha

The true let down, however, is not that Boruto as a character isn't his father, or that the show is "boring" and like it's geared toward a younger audience, but that it could be so much better. The Boruto manga is well-paced and enjoyable. The art style is incredibly unique and, for the most part, the story makes good use of the original Naruto characters. While for older fans it doesn't feel the same as Naruto did, it's fun to return to that world and to learn more about it through the eyes of someone new. But the disconnect between the anime and the manga is so large, even in terms of the art style, that the two feel they're on two completely different pages.

Boruto, as a manga, feels like the next step for the world of ninjas that many of us grew up with and have learned to love, but as an anime, it seems to confirm all of the cynical opinions about what Boruto was, in that it just seems like a way to keep an incredibly lucrative series running just a little bit longer.

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