Boruto: Two Blue Vortex Chapter 22 Review
Jura
Cover
Holy aura, Batman (take two).
The shift of darkness to light between the chapter 21 cover to the chapter 22 cover is giving me whiplash.
This is the first TBV cover we've gotten in which Boruto has forgone his cape. His jacket is draped over his shoulders, his shirt baggier than usual and with visible buttons. The half-tucked in look brings us back to the Shikamaru cover. This Boruto look is more vulnerable than the ones we've gotten previously, more casual. He's added an yet another necklace, perhaps in homage to Minato's Flying Raijin Kunai or a crow's foot. There's a new pin on his right lapel as well that could be a stylized version of the kanji for older brother. If we view these accessories as representative of his bonds, they only appear to be increasing as the story goes on.
Boruto is staring directly at the viewer, features set, mouth slightly open. Despite his relaxed posture, his face is serious, determined. Pale blue light, perhaps reminiscent of the Jougan, radiates out from behind him as though he's the central point of an astral explosion, paint flecks like stars speckling the background.
If you forgive the philosophy lesson, there was something in how Boruto is drawn that reminded me of Walter Benjamin's description of the angel of history, which was based on the painting Angelus Novus by his friend Paul Klee.
From Benjamin's 9th essay in his Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940):
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
That's what I thought of when I saw this cover. Thanks a million to Dr. Sajay Samuel's Ivan Illich seminar.
A New Challenger Emerges
The scene opens with both Mitsuki and Araya crouched over their incapacitated female teammates. Mitsuki's plan for Araya snag the thorn soul bulb to revive Shinki while he fights off the Claw Grimes is only short lived as Jura rises out of one of the Claw Grimes. Does he appear to give a shit about his comrade's thorn soul bulb? Nope. Instead, he silently stares at Sarada passed out in Mitsuki's arms, then stares off into the distance.
Konohamaru Sensei!
Konohamaru has been on an interesting trajectory in TBV. We're introduced to him as Shikamaru's advisor, suggesting that he's getting ever closer to achieving his dream of being the next Hokage. He seems to be the same Konohamaru he's always been, if more serious. From his perspective, his mentor died while his son survived, even if he stood next to that son when Momoshiki took over his body and allowed the Hokage's murderer to escape. A stalwart shinobi, he's dedicated to his shinobi way over all else. But we see cracks in his resolve, first when he decides to defend the traitor during the fight with Hidari. Though this didn't stop him from slapping a pair of cuffs on him, he seems even more puzzled now, after his emotional rollercoaster of Matsuri, that an enemy (Boruto) popped up out of nowhere and one-shotted his date.
Konohamaru's personality throughout the entire manga has been "ask questions now, fight later," and he continues that pattern here, yapping with Boruto about Moegi's thorn soul bulb while a murderous Shinju sniper targets them. Boruto's demand that Konohamaru gather the others and return to the place where they first met the Sand shinobi suggests that someone—perhaps one of Koji's scientific ninja tool frogs, is going to be waiting there to give them further instructions.
The Boy Doth Scream
Definitely my favorite moment in this entire chapter, probably one of my top five favorite moments in TBV thus far, is Boruto losing his goddamned shit at Konohamaru, screaming, "You heard me. Move!!!" at Konohamaru when he keeps talking rather than turning tail. There have been so few moments when we've seen Boruto's stoic shinobi mask slip—the moment he saw Hima, talking with Sarada and Sumire, and here, commanding Konohamaru to not waste another second when he's put his life (and the future of the world) on the line to save him.
With Jura fast approaching and time running out, Boruto grabs Konohamaru by the collar, much like Sasuke did when he saved him, and yeets his teacher to safety. Jura's look of utter disregard when he watches Konohamaru run with the thorn soul bulb probably represents the feelings of about 2/3rds of the fandom to our dear sensei.
Shuriken scattered across the landscape, what follows is an epic battle between man and tree, Boruto pulling out almost every tool in his arsenal that's proven effective against Shinju and barely managing to hold his own. Still, he performs better than Hima did against Jura, despite her phenomenal abilities, reminding us of what Kurama said: "He's a bigger monster than I expected. Definitely not someone you can do something about soley with high potential."
No Emergency Exits
Our intermission from the battle is a one-on-one with Koji and Eida in which we're informed:
- Escape? With his modified Flying Raijin Jutsu? Don't make me laugh! He needs to concentrate to teleport to a tiny piece of metal that's miles away. And there's no way he's doing that in the midst of battle with a deadly foe.
- And if he manages by some miracle to escape? Well, Jura will recover both Thorn Soul Bulbs and kill his friends.
- Boruto (and the world by extension) is fucked.
One interesting thing in the Koji/Eida back and forth is Koji saying, "There's no way he can win. Not with the current sequence of events." I think that gives us little wiggle room that there's a sequence of events Koji hasn't foreseen that could result in a different outcome.
If you haven't done so, I suggest you take a look at my blog post about the second Boruto arc and the theme of sacrifice.
The Power of Knowledge, the Power of Love
Why does Jura want to kill Boruto? Because he knows too much. Too much about the Thorn Soul Bulbs, too much about the Shinju. That knowledge is dangerous, and for that, he has to die. (But could he pretty-please tell Jura who is accomplice is first? Because the big, bad Shinju has a bunch of books he'd like to be reading and hunting down some mystery man is cutting into his leisure time.)
However, before Jura puts our boy six-foot-under, he has a question that he thinks a fifteen-year-old kid who stopped going to school sometime around 6th grade is capable of answering: What is love?
While Boruto perfects his resting bitch face, Jura decides that he should explain his theory of love: "It is a concept that can be a fatal weakness for you humans. A flaw that is a side effect of being highly intelligent."
*record scratch*
I want to pause here for a moment to drill down into this theory that a. Love is a weakness and b. Love is a side effect of being highly intelligent.
Remember that moment when Jura stopped in the sky to look down on Sarada sleeping in the sand? I think she'd just disproved his theory by defeating Ryu through love rather than running from it. She'd done the logical thing, avoiding her feelings to focus on her goal, and all that had done was hold her back. It was through love that she was able to reach her full power and kill a Shinju.
We also know from Jura and Hidari's bro talks that Jura considers love to be a dangerous concept to the Shinju, one they must understand and overcome. However, we know Matsuri hesitated to devour Konohamaru because of love. Jura can bloviate all he wants about love being a flaw unique to humans, but he's also the one who states that Matsuri fell prey to it.
Now, let me tell you one more thing that might blow your: why is Jura on a quest to understand the world before he devours it? Why does he crave knowledge and honor their curious instincts? I think it's possibly because Jura himself wants to be as intelligent as humans are. And according to Jura, what is the result of a high intelligence? Love.
Also, it's kind of silly to attribute love to intelligence. Perhaps it's a result of sentience, a result of evolution, a biological instinct to bond, thus creating safety, but if Jura's theory would be true, the smarter a person is, the more capable of love they'd be... which seems like a flawed proposition. Love comes from connections with others, which is something Jura can't have. But knowledge and intelligence? That seems to be something within his reach.
I think this becomes even more intriguing in the context of the Q&A question Ikemoto answered about the Shinju's demeanor.
Everyone has two faces: the one they show to the public and the one they keep for themselves. Something very useful to live in society. Since the HitoShinjuu were just born not too long ago, they don't have this notion. They are thus primative and true to their instincts. Even if they give a different vibe from their original selves, this may be a hint of the original's true personality.
Given that Jura was born from a juvenile ten-tails, it's possible that his core instinct is to seek out love, especially after he was taken from somewhere, stuffed into cage with black rods pinning each of his tails in place, and only Jura visiting to steal his chakra.
Boruto on Love: A Fate Worse than Death
A little more fighting later and Boruto finds himself semi-crucified by Jura's wood jutsu while the Shinju holds Sasuke's sword, threating to break it if Boruto doesn't give up the name of his accomplice.
In this moment, Boruto gives his reply about love to Jura: "You might be right about love being a flaw and a weakness of us humans. But, and this is my opinion, that's precisely why you'll be never more than just trees."
Going back to our discussion above, Jura believes Matsuri paused out of love for Konohamaru. What's more, he cried when she cried, feeling the pain of her love for him, that colossal sense of loss she felt when she was about to consume him—the loss of love.
Because of that moment, I think we, as readers, can say that Shinju do feel love, though perhaps it's a remanent of their human selves that affects their tree hearts. Similar to Kawaki and the Otsutsuki, Boruto is dehumanizing his enemy, choosing to see them as incapable of love and connection in order to fight them.
There's an interesting differentiation made in saladsandbolts language analysis for this chapter on reddit, which further illuminates this point. They say that Boruto's choice of words in this moment is supposed to express the nuance that the Shinju themselves are not capable of love, and thus, "Boruto would hesitate if they were human. So he's forcing himself to think of them as trees so that he doesn't feel any love for them."
Uzuhiko Fail
Boruto manages to escape the confines of Jura's wood jutsu using a rasengan, similar to how Konohamaru escaped Matsuri's clutches. With his Flying Raijin jutsu, he's able to plant Uzuhiko right on Jura, sending the Shinju's world spinning.
Game over, right?
Nah, Jura is just like, "Oh, this is like a Biju bomb? I know what that is," and undoes the effect.
Oh no, Boruto. What can you even do against this monster?!
What Next?
Your guess is as good as mine.
A few thoughts: With Koji saying that Boruto's plan is to get his friends to safety, perhaps he harbors hopes of escaping... Or maybe he's aware of possibility that Momoshiki might be released, turning the tide of the battle.
Or perhaps Kawaki will show up!
Or Code, given that Jura promised him the fruit of the god tree in exchange for killing Boruto!
Maybe Mitsuki will come and defend his friend! Or perhaps Konohamaru!
All I know for certain? There's another 30 days until we find out.