We’ve seen Naruto as a hero and leader; now, in Boruto: Naruto the Movie we get to see him as a father. As it turns out, he’s pretty bad at it. That doesn’t mean this is a bad movie, however.
Boruto is basically two movies in one film. The first (and by far the better of the two) is the tale of the titular character. Boruto, son of Naruto and Hinata, is a headstrong child and an emotionally damaged one — largely due to his relationship with his father.
From the start, Naruto has been driven to become the greatest Hokage ever. By the time Boruto takes place, he’s done much to attain that goal. The Village of the Leaf is more prosperous than ever before and the various nations are at peace. There have even been major — that is to say “ridiculously amazing” — technological advancements under his reign as well. (Seriously, they went from industrial revolution to computers and portable game systems in 15 years.)
Unfortunately, the best hokage makes for the worst father. Naruto is a workaholic. More than that, he uses his shadow clones constantly to help out with the work. The problem is, when it comes to important family events, he simply sends a clone instead of going himself. Sometimes, he doesn’t even bother with a clone, sending relatively impersonal emails instead.
Watching not only himself but also his sister and mother being treated as secondary in importance for all of his life, Boruto has developed more than a small amount of hatred for his famous father. But behind that hate is the need to be recognised by his father — to for once have Naruto put his own son before everything else.
To accomplish this, Boruto believes he must surpass his father. This drives him to try to do everything on his own, using shadow clones rather than trusting his own teammates and friends. He also goes to Sasuke, seeking to train under the wandering ninja to learn his father’s weak points.
In training, Boruto is often quick to anger. For him, failure is not an option. To fail means that his father is justified in treating him as something of secondary importance.
Other characters play off of Boruto’s insecurities — namely a pair of scientists who have developed a miniaturized scroll launcher that allows even low-powered ninjas to use powerful skills. By giving one of these devices to Boruto, they hope he will use it to pass his ninja qualification exam and prove the worth of the new invention. Of course, as Naruto has banned the device, using it is classified as cheating.
Boruto is faced with a terrible choice: cheating but potentially earning the respect of his father and the people of the village or relying on his friends and his own power and likely failing — proving his father’s neglect to be deserved (in his own mind at least).
Unfortunately, this all-too-human story of the difficult relationship between a father and son is derailed suddenly and completely by the arrival of the film’s “forgettable movie villain.”
At that moment, the film becomes another movie entirely — not one about Boruto, but one of pure fanservice where once again we watch Sasuke and Naruto go all out against a strong enemy in a lengthy, flashy fight scene.
It is the best-looking Naruto fight scene I have ever seen — and the animators deserve all the congratulations in the world for a job well done. However, the villain is completely irrelevant to Boruto’s story. He is only in the film to give it a climactic action scene — even as doing so horribly undercuts the rest of the film.
Boruto’s role in the final act of the film is almost exclusively one of an onlooker — gawking along with the rest of the audience at just how “cool” his father is. And while there is an attempt at some father-son bonding at the end of the battle, it serves as a weak and unbelievable resolution to their rocky relationship.
More than that, many of the major themes of the film are left unresolved. Boruto never learns to rely on his teammates, and the ramifications of cheating are completely swept under the rug.
Boruto is a fantastic film that uses a tale of ninjas to explore the all-too-common real world problem of trouble between a busy father and a neglected son — until the final act where it becomes a cliché Naruto movie about Naruto punching a villain really hard.
Last year’s Naruto movie, fittingly called The Last, was billed as the final Naruto-centric story. If only that had turned out to be true.
Boruto: Naruto the Movie was released in Japanese theatres on August 7, 2015.
Comments
One response to “In The Boruto Movie, Naruto Is A Terrible Father”
I’ve seen enough of the new manga to know that Naruto is in fact a great father… to Sasuke’s daughter.
Still staying true to the essence of the classic “Naruto” shōnen manga idea…Kishi is stlll an Sasuke-fanboy and as predictable…in the last movie he directed…Kishi is more focus on the ‘brotherly romance’ between Naruto and Sasuke…All other minor issue and screen development are just another amusement to lure low life people to continue benefit from his creation ‘Naruto’.
Anyway at least hope is not lose as we have other better ‘normal’ & intellectual quality of webtoons which are way more better than Kishi’s dull and eccentric story plot/movie to looking forward for when Naruto or Boruto-whatever officially end like this one ! http://mercworks.net/comicland/sad-ted-and-the-dead-dad
Nice review, but how did you see the movie? It hasn’t been streamed online, has it?
Yeah I mean seriously…Naruto and Sasuke show more “love” and “affection” for one another than they do for their “female” partners….Kishi obviously intended for Naruto and Sasuke to be gay for each other so why even bothering giving them wives and kids in the first place.
Zomzoma Why dili pilit ?????
I thought that another main important focus of Boruto movie or the so-called ‘final’ Naruto movie should be the introduction of the new but mystery character Mitsuki whom is under Team Konohamaru. So far from the source of the internet, we only know that Orochimaru could be his father. (but as usual being an made-for-boy manga, Mitsuki’s mother is not introduced or he could be created artificially from Orochimaru’s experiment).
Could this be an hint that Naruto will have another future version 3 (hopely not another weird name like ‘shippuden’ which seem to pronounce like ‘shittuden’ if you know what I mean) coming just like Dragon Ball Z although in the last interview by Kishi, he confirmed that he will ‘stop’ drawing once the final Naruto movie ended, Talking about been contradictory here!
Still it would be pretty waste of time if Kishi is just to recycle the same ‘old’ ideas into different form for any future new Naruto’s manga like rivalry, rejection but stubbornly prove people wrong, ambition number one e.g being Hokage etc. It just like one chinese idiom saying “Change the soup but not the medicine”.
I don’t care so much for the movie. It’s good, I like the way Konohamaru turned out alot! I’m not thrilled with Boruto or Naruto very much though. Naruto has become a complete douche bag. He never had a father, or a mother, and he always felt alone and unwanted, he wanted to strive to be accepted, he longed for a family, a loving family. And when he has one of his own, he completely fucks it up. Boruto is exactly like Naruto when he was young, and frankly it’s disappointing, the Naruto in the film doesn’t feel like the Naruto we’ve known the past 15 years, he feels like a cold fraud. He’s isolated Boruto to the point where he’s the same as Naruto was….It seems pathetic that Naruto isn’t sympathizing and doing whats best for his own son. So much for the hero Naruto was supposed to be, I feel like he’s betrayed the character he used to endorse, rejected the person he wanted to become. Disappointing really.