With the geese’s migration period barely minutes away, Boruto and the others must find a way to cure the remaining geese of their Curse Mark before it spreads to other areas. But first, they’ll have to defeat Tosaka…and Jugo! Remember, if you like this article and 5 Point Discussions, please share it on Facebook or Twitter! It really helps. And if you’ve got any comments or questions, please hit me up @SageShinigami.
1. Last year, sixteen time WWE champion John Cena felt lost at the prospect of for the first time since he’d become “John Cena”, not really having a path to Wrestlemania. He’d orchestrated several opportunities to find his way into one of the main events for WWE’s heavyweight titles–but found himself stymied at both the Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber Pay Per Views from attaining a #1 Contender spot. With his chance at a title shot gone, he began to call out the Undertaker, one of the only people in WWE with a longer and potentially more illustrious career than him; a man who had gone undefeated at 21 Wrestlemanias for 21 years.
He spent weeks trashing and threatening the Undertaker, until finally he got his shot–literally in the middle of the show. He rushed off excitedly after attending as a fan, getting ready for his legendary match. From start to finish, the match lasted two minutes, forty five seconds. It became a showcase for how powerful the Undertaker was, as Cena got in almost zero offense while Taker proceeded to show off every move he’d become famous for over his thirty-plus year career, before finally winning the match. The match was over, with John Cena learning an important lesson in humility, and that maybe it’s a bad idea to spend weeks of your life antagonizing someone into a fight.
Those two paragraphs also sum up this fight between Tosaka and Jugo. After an entire arc of machinations to get things to exactly this point, where he could fight against Jugo and “prove” he had the Superior Curse Mark, Tosaka doesn’t even make it past the first punch. Jugo shatters his armored fist, beats him into paste, and drains his Curse Mark away to leave him a regular human, before tossing his beaten body into the distance. This was (and should generally be) the only way this fight could’ve ended. When you go looking for that work, don’t be surprised when someone calls you back offering a full-time position catching these hands.
2. Much of the tension of this episode is built on a premise that I stopped caring about three episodes ago. With only minutes remaining until sunrise and the migration of the geese, Sarada and Karin have to decide whether they’ll kill the infected geese or wait on Boruto to bring Jugo back to normal so he can cure them. They look so broken up about what should’ve been an easy decision–this wasn’t just about protecting humans, but the environment of every animal in the country. It sucks to harm a rare species, but the handwringing was pretty frustrating to watch.
Fortunately eventually Suigetsu shows up with the cure to the curse mark and spreads it by transforming his body into a rain cloud that covers all the geese, restoring them all back to normal, but this is definitely not the ticking clock this show needed.
3. For an episode that saw Boruto defeat Jugo by relying on some basic science principles, and Suigetsu saving the geese by doing the same thing, they just HAD to get one thing wrong. Earlier in the arc, Boruto laments over a domesticated goose being unable to fly alongside the other wild ones. Now to be fair, this is a series with aliens and chakra and a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t work in real life, but they’ve all got explanations to help viewers suspend their disbelief. This is just flat out a “Science Doesn’t Work That Way”, as at the end of this episode we watch the same goose Boruto hoped against hope could defy its genetics and fly…take off into the sky and join the other geese. I understand shonen needs to be inspiring–it’s a big reason why I love these shows despite being in my 30s–but was this particular plot point even necessary? Take it out and the whole arc loses nothing.
4. The good part about breaking up Team 15 is it was anime-only so they aren’t even interfering with the manga it’s not following. After spending the entire arc trying (and mostly failing) to control her summon Nue, Sumire finally realizes what she really wants to do as a ninja. She decides she’s going to join the Scientific Ninja Tool Division, now that it’s being rebuilt in the aftermath of the Otsutsuki/Chuunin Exam arc. It’s a good role for her, and it continues this trend of Boruto’s class of ninja figuring out that they aren’t all fit for the typical three-man team business, at least not right now. Shikadai’s already working on being a politician, now Sumire’s a scientist–hopefully the rest of Team 15 figures out something they can do soon as well, if they aren’t going to stick together going forward.
5. Next Episode: Wow, the last two arcs haven’t been all that strong. I think I’m going to skip the next ep…wait, there’s a kitten?! And Mitsuki has to learn how to take care of it?
This combines my love of cats with one of my favorite characters in the show grasping more of humanity by learning to take care of a living thing. I can’t really say no to this.
Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is available on Funimation, Hulu, and Crunchyroll.
from Anime – COMICON http://bit.ly/2IZLJ4F
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