Boruto Two Blue Vortex (Unmarked Spoilers for Part 1)

[LaZodiac]

The time travel arc was actually surprisingly good. It involved a third Otsutsuki that was anime original called Urashiki. He started with an arc involving Gaara's adopted kid Shinki, and those episodes were...honestly pretty dumb. There's a particular point I recall where Shinki and Boruto are trying to evade Urashiki and come to a river in a deep gorge. They declare that they can't pass this and need to go to a bridge, where Urashiki will no doubt be waiting. Nevermind that these are both ninja who would be able to run down the side of one cliff, across the water, and up the other. Or that Shinki has Magnet Release and could easily levitate across on a platform of iron sand. Etc. This sort of problem was endemic to the anime, and is characteristic of a lot of the poorer filler episodes.

But to get back to the time travel arc, after they do get back to the Leaf Village they are again attacked by Urashiki, and a quirk of the ninja tool Urashiki is using gets Boruto, Sasuke, and Urashiki thrown back in time to a period shortly after the Sasuke Retrieval arc - after Sasuke is gone but while Naruto hasn't left to train with Jiraiya.

And that's where things get interesting - Boruto gets to meet Naruto as a kid, and it really shows just how different he is from Naruto when Naruto was the same age. Jiraiya is heavily involved in the arc and it's great to see him again. There's a wonderfully touching scene with Neji. The whole arc has some great character work and is one of the better examples of what the Boruto anime is capable of.

I just wish the anime hadn't been so...bipolar. The Shinki arc I described was preceded by a Konohmaru romance arc, which was mediocre. Before that it was the Steam Ninja Scrolls (a.k.a. the Mirai comedy adventure) which was superb. But that was preceded by the Jugo arc, which plumbed the depths of the worst Naruto Part 1 filler.

The way the Boruto anime is written makes it hard to tell what's going to be good or not. Maybe I should try picking it up again with a watch guide to get the stuff that's actually good. A quick check on Reddit shows that I quit just before the Mujina Bandits arc from the manga begins, and that the point where I stopped was at the end of a LONG period of recommended skip episodes (Time Slip arc excluded).

Gaara can literally fly using sand who wrote this WHAT???

... admittedly I haven't seen it play out, but that feels very... halmark-y time travel story. Going back to when the series was at its peak to just provide some much needed reminders of the past and contrast with our characters. I'm still unsure how I'd feel about it because time travel in general is such a loaded gun, but from what you describe it sounds fine. It's... a genuine shame that none of that stuff will basically ever touch on the main series!

Shinki and The Inexplicable Other Alien Moon Rabbit sounds exactly as dumb as you said. "Konohamaru finds a girlfriend" is so tedious sounding, especially given the current status of him in the series is "single but his female squad mate is clearly into him and Angry he won't make moves" which like, just kinda makes the whole event useless. I'm... genuinely shocked anyone remembers Jugo enough to MAKE an arc of him... or that he even has enough going on to fill an entire arc of anything, he was always somehow the least important member of Sasuke's idiot squad, which is impressive given Karin was there.

Mirai's story getting the recognition it deserves makes me happy though. What a good series of manga chapters/anime episodes. I can't believe how gay Kakashi and Guy are.

Also I forgot to say it, but; the fact that the Boruto anime really is just a bunch of dubious canon material between the moments where they actually touch on the manga content is... astounding. Generally when you're making an anime of a monthly series and you find yourself in that situation, you sit on your hands till enough has happened to justify it. I know Kishimoto's been in charge of the filler since Shippuden in some capacity or another (all the stuff in the anime that could have happened in the manga but didn't, like dealing with the Slug's sealed host) but ultimately, beyond Boruto's nurse love interest girl who is currently helping Sarada with Eida, none of this has come up (and even then, there's absolutely no indication that at some point in recent history she went turbo evil and then got saved). It's an absolute mess from beginning to end, clearly trying to touch upon thet main manga's initial themes detailing the new, controversial technology of the era, and how the Ninja World has advanced since Naruto's time (Shinki's time travel device, Mirai witnessing the twilight years of two greats, stuff like that), before ultimately devolving into ridiculous super powers out of functional nowhere and magic alien moon rabbit eyeballs.

So, exactly like how Boruto's always been, to be honest.

I actually liked the Jugo Arc but I'm a sucker for when the mechanics of the power are explained and the arc provided some good data for how Jugo's bloodline and the curse marks work.

Entirely fair! Jugo was a character who fascinated me as a kid for that exact reason; he's apparently the source of the Cursed Mark stuff Orochimaru was using. The fact that ultimately this didn't amount to anything was always a minor sticking point with me.