Quote Originally Posted by Ramza00 View Post
So why didn’t anyone tell me Bleach the anime is back?

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Obviously I want to talk about Boruto, I just have nothing to say until the new post time skip arc is out.

I am not sure if I like the art that was released this week?
Boruto as a series has always had some pretty poopy art. It's got good moments, but the artist just isn't quite there with it.

These new designs are perhaps some of the worst I've seen. Especially Sarada's, they massacred my poor girl over the course of this series both writing wise and now design wise, and it's depressing as hell.

Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
So, something I literally just learned.

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This is a piece of Art that was drawn by Masasi Kishimoto that accompanied the Japanese release of Voruto Volume 1, the collected edition that contained the first three chapters of the Manga as well as the "Gaiden" chapter elaborating on Mitsuki's backstory.

This collected vlume was published back in 2016, that is to say, roughly seven years ago.

Look closely at Sarada. Her eyes, specifically.
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Thesame Mangekyo design that she unlocked in the final chapter of Boruto Part 1.

So... Sarada's Mangekyo was designed seven years in advance, at least...

What else was planned out that far ahead?
I mean, an Uchiha having a sharingan design isn't a sign that all of this has been planned- the switch over from Kishimoto simply observing and providing input to "Kishimoto is now writing fully again" accompanied some pretty severe shifts in the writing. Decoupling from whatever the original writer had intended to go to what Kishimoto wanted to go for was not a smooth and easy transition, as Baryon Mode going from "oh this is going to kill us" to "actually lol it'll just kill me", to the rather absurd means that led us to Kawaki and Boruto coming to loggerheads kinda shows... as does the (hilarious!) fumbling of the bag that is Code trying and failing to be taken as a legitimate threat in any capacity.

Some of the funniest (though certainly not intentionally so) moments in Boruto as a series has been how the events of the story seemed to push us further and further away from the opening's flash-forward ever being a reasonable place to end up at. Kawaki has become a pretty nice and honourable boy, every antagonist has been beaten either due to superior firepower, sheer incompetence on the part of the baddy, or in one particularly noteworthy case by genuinely sensible human logic that in any other fiction story wouldn't work. It's astounding to see every means by which the series could offroad into the flash-forward was followed up immediately by someone gently course correcting the wheel and going "naw we're good actually". It's not since Jojolion that I've seen such wicked devotion into presenting a teaser to the future and then completely passing by it without thought or reason.

All that which is to say, the internal inconsistency of "Okay since I've revived you, it's actuatlly impossible for me to take over and unzip my data over yours" being replaced by "oh lol nevermind I can still control you I just can't make myself look like how I'm supposed to look, I'm stuck with your ****ty anime protagonist body" is a pretty bad set up for what's going on here. Kawaki's motivation of "hey I wanna protect Naruto so bad I'll ****ing kill you on a 1% chance you might kill him" is inherently flawed but makes sense in character, and is honestly kind of interesting as motives go- but the way he's going about it is a bit shaky, writing wise.

Aida's "everyone who isn't blood related or a space rabbit is instantly in love with me no matter how creepy it'd be" powers actually being GODLY REALITY REWRITING SUPER POWERS that allow her to, by mistake, rewrite everyone's brains so that Bort and Kawaki have always been in each other's positions, is the most blatant example of railroading a plot line I've EVER seen. It comes out of nowhere, it's entirely too powerful in any real capacity to be interesting, it is ludicrous beyond all measure, entirely arbitrary in execution... and just, just plain stupid. I'm impressed by how head ass this plot development is. I appreciate Sasuke recognizing Something Is Up, but the series does make clear that he's going to eventually dismiss that Something as the omnipotent memory altering global range super power does its thing, but man. MAN.

This series used to be about how the rise of modern technology raises the questions of "what does it MEAN to be a ninja nowadays?".