Previously on A Healthy Dose of Anime...
Griffin: "The next post will be on the Pokemon Showdown stuff I've been working on."
also Griffin: "The next post will be on the Top 10 Most Influential Pokemon."
Hi, my name is Griffin Yamada and this post is about Boruto.
*Insert live studio audience laughter here*
Alright, I promise I will write what I said I would write. It's just that while I was watching a Crunchyroll trailer for Boruto last night, I realized something incredibly important to the way that people view Boruto.
Here's the context. Naruto and Naruto Shippuden together make one of the greatest Shonen manga/anime series in history. With them, Masashi Kishimoto cemented his name next to Osamu Tezuka, basically the grandfather of Japanese pop animation, and Akira Toriyama, creator of the Dragon Ball series. And what did he do after finishing the series?
A. He took a well-earned break and admired his work
B. He wrote a bunch of spin-offs
C. He started a new manga series
D. He started to write the same exact story, except with the main character's son.
He chose to do Option freakin' D, and he created Boruto: Naruto Next Generations.
I have a loyal Naruto fan as a friend. He watched every single episode including fillers for 5 years. (Fillers are episodes that don't progress the plot of the anime and are usually created so that the manga can catch up to the anime). He hates Boruto, despises it.
There are memes out there that mock and belittle Boruto as a series because of how stellar Naruto was. For example, a question asked by a humorous fan was, "Is this just Naruto with a B?".
What my friend wants to see is the old characters from Naruto in the Boruto series. Boruto is an extension of Naruto, and yet it is not about Naruto at all. It fits the niche audience of Naruto that wants to see the Naruto characters' lives after the series of Naruto and especially an audience that wants to see what Naruto would be like if it was in a modern time, where technology has the chance to affect ninjas.
To talk about the changes that have to occur for fans of Naruto to appreciate Boruto, let's think about Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Avatar: The Last Airbender was a Nickelodeon success. It became a popular series known for mixing Asian culture, western animation, comedy, romance, and action. The characters can be complex, but many of them were straight-forward. Aang wants to protect the world, the evil Fire Lord Ozai wants to take over the world, and Momo wants food. Meanwhile, The Legend of Korra, which takes place 53 years after Aang's adventure, has automobiles and strange technology. It has less direct and more subtle ties to Asian culture. The genres that it covers: comedy, romance, and action, are the same as Avatar: The Last Airbender.
What can be understood from this comparison is that they were both successful despite their audiences being different and viewers not wanting to watch the sequel at first. I originally didn't want to watch Korra either. It has much less smooth fight scenes, some fairly ridiculous drama from an immature Avatar, and I thought the machines were just kind of gimmicky.
The same reasons for which ATLA fans watched TLOK: seeing old Zuko and Toph, endearing comedy, and interesting new action, are why Naruto fans will watch Boruto, whether they like it or not.
In the end of TLOK, Korra's opponent is trying to take over the world and completely industrializing everything. However, Korra uses the energy from the machines and defends the world. All the things that seemed to be problems with the series made it a complete experience.
A more serious problem with Boruto is that people immediately write it off because it seems overused or obvious. The child of the hero inherits the will of the parent and fights against evil. To counter one point, this idea may be overused in Western media- Superboy, Damian Wayne, even Harry Potter. However, in my opinion, it is not as mainstream of an idea in manga and anime.
When you think about sequels with children of main characters, I immediately think of Gohan and Goten or even Trunks from Dragon Ball Z. But the show wasn't about them. They were just some characters who got a lot of screen time at certain parts of the show. No other anime comes to mind when it's about a main character having a child.
While Boruto still has a lot of symbols from Naruto in it, the series will instantaneously change when the symbols are removed. I think that character development of the new characters (possibly the deaths of old characters, gimmicky conflicts, and newer interpretations of the world by the author will separate Boruto from Naruto.
"It's fine if you're the same as you've been up until now. All I want is that when we get to meet up every now and then, don't give me lectures... from now on, tell me about your past instead, dad."
-Boruto Uzumaki, to Naruto Uzumaki
Griffin: "The next post will be on the Pokemon Showdown stuff I've been working on."
also Griffin: "The next post will be on the Top 10 Most Influential Pokemon."
Hi, my name is Griffin Yamada and this post is about Boruto.
*Insert live studio audience laughter here*
Alright, I promise I will write what I said I would write. It's just that while I was watching a Crunchyroll trailer for Boruto last night, I realized something incredibly important to the way that people view Boruto.
Here's the context. Naruto and Naruto Shippuden together make one of the greatest Shonen manga/anime series in history. With them, Masashi Kishimoto cemented his name next to Osamu Tezuka, basically the grandfather of Japanese pop animation, and Akira Toriyama, creator of the Dragon Ball series. And what did he do after finishing the series?
A. He took a well-earned break and admired his work
B. He wrote a bunch of spin-offs
C. He started a new manga series
D. He started to write the same exact story, except with the main character's son.
He chose to do Option freakin' D, and he created Boruto: Naruto Next Generations.
I have a loyal Naruto fan as a friend. He watched every single episode including fillers for 5 years. (Fillers are episodes that don't progress the plot of the anime and are usually created so that the manga can catch up to the anime). He hates Boruto, despises it.
There are memes out there that mock and belittle Boruto as a series because of how stellar Naruto was. For example, a question asked by a humorous fan was, "Is this just Naruto with a B?".What my friend wants to see is the old characters from Naruto in the Boruto series. Boruto is an extension of Naruto, and yet it is not about Naruto at all. It fits the niche audience of Naruto that wants to see the Naruto characters' lives after the series of Naruto and especially an audience that wants to see what Naruto would be like if it was in a modern time, where technology has the chance to affect ninjas.
To talk about the changes that have to occur for fans of Naruto to appreciate Boruto, let's think about Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Avatar: The Last Airbender was a Nickelodeon success. It became a popular series known for mixing Asian culture, western animation, comedy, romance, and action. The characters can be complex, but many of them were straight-forward. Aang wants to protect the world, the evil Fire Lord Ozai wants to take over the world, and Momo wants food. Meanwhile, The Legend of Korra, which takes place 53 years after Aang's adventure, has automobiles and strange technology. It has less direct and more subtle ties to Asian culture. The genres that it covers: comedy, romance, and action, are the same as Avatar: The Last Airbender.
 |
| Avatar: The Last Airbender is dramatic, but mostly action-packed and romantic. |
 |
| The Legend of Korra is action-packed, but filled with a lot of spirituality issues and love drama. |
What can be understood from this comparison is that they were both successful despite their audiences being different and viewers not wanting to watch the sequel at first. I originally didn't want to watch Korra either. It has much less smooth fight scenes, some fairly ridiculous drama from an immature Avatar, and I thought the machines were just kind of gimmicky.
The same reasons for which ATLA fans watched TLOK: seeing old Zuko and Toph, endearing comedy, and interesting new action, are why Naruto fans will watch Boruto, whether they like it or not.
In the end of TLOK, Korra's opponent is trying to take over the world and completely industrializing everything. However, Korra uses the energy from the machines and defends the world. All the things that seemed to be problems with the series made it a complete experience.
A more serious problem with Boruto is that people immediately write it off because it seems overused or obvious. The child of the hero inherits the will of the parent and fights against evil. To counter one point, this idea may be overused in Western media- Superboy, Damian Wayne, even Harry Potter. However, in my opinion, it is not as mainstream of an idea in manga and anime.
When you think about sequels with children of main characters, I immediately think of Gohan and Goten or even Trunks from Dragon Ball Z. But the show wasn't about them. They were just some characters who got a lot of screen time at certain parts of the show. No other anime comes to mind when it's about a main character having a child.
While Boruto still has a lot of symbols from Naruto in it, the series will instantaneously change when the symbols are removed. I think that character development of the new characters (possibly the deaths of old characters, gimmicky conflicts, and newer interpretations of the world by the author will separate Boruto from Naruto.
"It's fine if you're the same as you've been up until now. All I want is that when we get to meet up every now and then, don't give me lectures... from now on, tell me about your past instead, dad."
-Boruto Uzumaki, to Naruto Uzumaki
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