Review of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

I started watching Boruto when it first aired back in 2017 but slowly lost interest as the show progressed, but I heard that it had recently ended and that gave me the motivation to start it again. So, the beginning arcs of the anime (Academy Entrance, Sarada Uchiha, School Trip, Graduation Exams, Genin Mission, and Byakuya Gang) [eps 1-50] didn’t really have much going on besides some world-building, plot outlines, character introductions, and explaining old plots from the previous Naruto and Naruto Shippuden anime, and so they were a bit boring to watch and slowly became predictable. On the other hand, the middlearcs (Chunin, Steam Ninja Scrolls, and Kawaki: Kara Clash) [eps 51-66, eps 106-111 and eps 188-205] were very fun to watch. It was nice to watch old characters from the previous show being included in big fight scenes or enjoying their retirement, and I liked the introduction of some of the new characters too.
However, other arcs such as Kawaki and Himawari Academy [eps 261-273] and Labyrinth Game [eps 274-281] were mostly boring to watch and I found myself skipping through most of the episodes as I didn’t enjoy them. I think that they either had too much story and not enough fighting or the other way around, but in the end, it wasn’t well-balanced and thought out.
But, the final arc Code Invasion [eps 287-293] was short but had some tense moments throughout, but I did get a bit confused on the ending. For example, the show started with the big fight scene which lead me to believe that that was how the anime was going to end, but they didn’t really show it or show how the characters got to that point in the future. I haven’t read the manga so I don’t know if it’s explained better there or if it’s the same as the anime.

Other notes that I have:
- As much as I love the updated animation and art style, I feel like it looks flat sometimes and doesn’t have the same vibes as the previous shows.
- I noticed that the music tends to repeat throughout the anime, for example, there’s the fighting music, talking music, angry music, happy music, resolution music, and something-bad-and-tense-just-got-revealed music.
- Openings and endings have good music and their animation looks very nice.
- Some parts of the anime just don’t have the same dramatic value as Naruto and Naruto Shippuden did, a lot of the time it felt as though they didn’t know what to do next so they threw a lot of stuff together.
- Some of the OG characters just fell through the cracks, they aren’t shown to be at their strongest, and they’ve been forgotten and pushed aside for other characters that don’t hold the same value.
- Sometimes the storyline puts too much focus on background characters or side characters that don’t have any relevance to the main characters and their story.
- It’s nice to see the heartwarming moments between the OG characters and their kids, it shows how much they’ve progressed in their life and moved on from the previous shows.
- I understand that this show is trying to be different than the previous ones but as points, I felt like it got too techy for what it was trying to show or tell through its story.
- Despite having 293 episodes there aren’t that many filler episodes (between 45-50)