The Boruto Series Has a Chance to Do this One Cool Thing

I don't claim to know what lies ahead for Boruto's plot; I know my hopes, and I know my concerns. This post is in the spirit of my #SpeculationSunday threads of Twitter days of yore, examining places the plot could go with the puzzle pieces that have been handed to us by Ikemoto. So please take these thoughts with both a grain of salt and an open mind. (And forgive the CBR-like review title. It's meant as a joke for an audience of me.)

The original creative team behind the Boruto manga was Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto's mangaka, as creator and supervisor, his former assistant Mikio Ikemoto as artist, and Ukyo Kodachi as writer. This lineup worked on the series from it's first chapter in 2016 until Kodachi's exit in 2020 with the release of chapter 52. In subsequent interviews, Ikemoto and Kishimoto revealed that while Kishimoto is still responsible for the supervision and wrote the overarching outline of the series, the writing itself, including the plot's direction, are being done by Ikemoto.

This authorial handoff, and an exploration of creator changes in ongoing projects as a whole, might be worthy of its own post at a later date, but I want to drill down into one specific aspect of this change and what it might mean for the plot going forward: the theme of female friendship.

In the first ~50 chapters of Boruto, we rarely saw female characters interact with one another as friends or in the interest of pursing friendships with one another. This is in stark contrast to the way in which such friendships were often centered in the Boruto anime, from the relationship between Wasabi and Namida to the threat of Tsubaki leaving her team to the second Chunin exam battle between ChoCho and Sarada, the longtime-featured female friend pair of the series.

In the manga, Sarada was on a team with all boys, Sumire worked with adults in the Scientific Ninja Tool division, Delta was the sole girl in the boy's club of Kara, and she was only there, we learn later, because she was the cloned creation of Amado's deceased daughter. (I'm doing some Ouga erasure here; forgive me.)

The story's shift begins in the Code arc, after Kodachi's departure, with the introduction of Eida, a cyborg enhanced by Otsutsuki DNA to have god-like powers, including Omnipotence, the ability to access the programming language of the gods and manipulate perceptions of reality and emotions. Omnipotence is the root of Eida's charm ability, the power she considers a curse because it causes everyone to love her, robbing her of both true love and friendships.

After Boruto's death and revival and Code's reveal to still be a wimp after having his limiters removed, Eida allies with Konoha and brings explorations of complex attachments with her to disseminate to the other female characters in the series. The house-sharing mission brings Sarada and Sumire into each other's orbits for the first time in many chapters, and it's Eida herself who invites both girls into her bed to discuss first romance, then friendship. In fact, it's Eida who demands the presence of other women, declaring, "There aren't enough girls here. I can't express myself properly like this."

The scene in which Sarada and Sumire are in Eida's bed, both of them realizing they're immune to Omnipotence and, thus, might be the only ones who can take down Eida should she turn on Konoha even as Eida herself is expressing the heartfelt wish to be able to have true friendships, could be seen as a mere contrivance, especially after the series has neglected relationships between female characters for so long. However, as Boruto: Two Blue Vortex begins, we realize that the friendship dynamics laid out in the first part of Boruto have not only continued, but exponentially grown in size.

Sarada and Sumire have gone from two characters who barely interacted to each other's only allies in a village where the rest of the population views them as insane, their worldview—what we as readers know to be the accurate perception of events before Omnipotence swapped Boruto's and Kawaki's places in people's minds—being "wrong" to everyone else. The room sharing mission has continued for the past three years, Sarada and Sumire still watching over and interacting with Eida while Kawaki lives with her and her little brother, Daemon.

The tension over romantic attraction is threaded through the girls' characters: Sumire still liking Boruto, Sarada failing to explicitly define her feelings for him (and allowing her actions to speak for her), Eida questioning her feelings for Kawaki, as she did at the end of part one, recognizing her emotions as physical manifestations of attraction that are failing to connect with her brain—or, perhaps, her daily reality of who Kawaki has turned out to be after living with him.

Sarada and Sumire's dueling affections for Boruto boil over in chapter 16 in front of Eida while the girls are debating which path to follow to help their maligned ally. However, the conversation's progress is not dissimilar to the same one that occurred in chapter 76 of Boruto: Naruto Next Generation: What starts as a conversation about boys and feelings becomes a conversation about female friendship, Sumire first calling out Sarada for never thinking of Sumire's feelings in addition to Boruto's, then adding that Sarada still is addressing her as Class Rep instead of her own name.

This is where the plot leaves us: Sarada heading to the Sand and fighting the Shinju, Sumire witnessing Kawaki's assault on Amado and his demand for power, Eida allying with Boruto after telling Mitsuki she wanted to speak with our young rogue-nin.

Stepping back from the story and into reality, if a fifteen-year-old asked you whether a unrequited crush (or a requited one!) should ruin a three-year friendship with another girl, I think the responsible adult answer is clear: no, you shouldn't let feelings about boys get in the way of your friendships with other women. Attraction is a sticky, complex thing: is the affection returned, can it be returned, what kind of emotional bond you feel as a fifteen-year-old will sustain a long-lasting adult relationship?

(Hypocrisy from the author: I started dating my husband at 15. BUT, I'm still friends with the woman he was slightly romancing before we got involved.)

From an adult standpoint, it seems reckless and short-sighted to wreck a friendship over feelings for a boy. We could take a similar view of Eida's character: her only motivation thus far in the story has been to be near Kawaki in the hope that he'll love her, returning the feelings she has for him and providing her with self-worth that can't be found in the forced love of others. What would happen if Eida learns to love herself? Or discovers that the unaffected girls are capable of loving her as friends as well?

Boruto wades into the waters of Shonen love triangles, but we also know that the author is an adult man and the series itself hasn't shied away from taking a more complex look at topics than its predecessor, such as childhood abuse, trauma, and mental health. There's potential for the story of Boruto to lean into an adult view of female friendships as a source of unity rather than romantic rivalry. The ultimate strength at the end of the story might not be in an individual's abilities, but in power of girls working together as one.

For me, this would be a welcome narrative turn, not only coming on the heels of Naruto that didn't delve too deeply into female friendships in its later chapters but also to take a more adult look at the value of such relationships.

This might be unsatisfying for readers who come to the series with their eyes on endgame couples and want defined winners and losers in the realm of romance, but focusing on the power of bonds as a means to resolve conflict would be in line with the themes of the story thus far. It would also set Boruto apart from other series in the genre to center the relationships girls have with one another over romantic arrangements that could happen at the end of the series.