This post contains spoilers for Naruto.
Summary
Narutois one of the most popular anime series in the world. It has been a pioneer in the industry, and many new anime have drawn inspiration from it. Thegenius behind the story is Masashi Kishimoto.
He worked tirelessly to come up with new ideas for the story, and they paid dividends in the long run. The manga has sold over 100 million copies, making it one of the few titles to have ever accomplished the feat. Despite its success, Kishimoto still had one regret.
Kishimoto’s Biggest Regret Was Not Surpassing One Piece
According to a statement from 2016, Masashi Kishimoto disclosed that he wanted to surpass the One Piece manga, but he couldn’t do so. This statement is hardly surprising because Oda and Kishimoto were the two mostdominant manga artists in Shonen Jump. Their respective manga were always in the headlines. Every week, fans would wait and go through the new chapters. Kishimoto’s statement is a big compliment to Eiichiro Oda and his work. It’s safe to say that Kishimoto’s inability to supplant the One Piece manga is arguably his biggest regret. However, there is no animosity between the two authors.
I wanted to surpass One Piece in manga, but I could not. —Kishimoto
Both of them respect each other and have paid homage to one another. While Naruto ended back in 2014, One Piece is still going strong. After wrapping up Naruto, Kishimoto created a sci-fi manga called Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, but it flopped horribly. Aside from this particular project,Kishimoto also acted as the editorial supervisoron Boruto from 2016 to 2020. But in November 2020, he took over the writing duties from Kodachi. Ever since Kishimoto returned to the fray, Boruto’s quality has somewhat stabilized, and it has become more bearable, especially for older fans, but there are still many things the author needs to improve on.
Boruto Has Been Labeled A Failure By Most
When Boruto was announced, fans had high expectations for it. They were hoping that it would be comparable to the level of Naruto Part 1, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. After a decent start, the story started to go downhill. It felt like the creative team behind the story wanted to use the older characters to build the hype and then humiliate them.
For starters,they made Naruto lose the Nine-Tails, who was not his main source of power but a close friend. Even if they wanted to remove the Nine-Tails, they could opt for a better buildup. The way Kurama randomly came up with a new power on the spot felt like the creative team just wanted to get rid of him at all costs. Sasuke has also been a victim, and he has received the same treatment. He ended up losing his Rinnegan at the hands of Boruto, who lost control of his body to Momoshiki.
The Boruto manga is not bad, but the anime is nothing short of a joke. The anime decided to follow in the footsteps of its predecessor, Naruto Shippuden. There were too many fillers and very few canon episodes. This infuriated fans further as they wanted to see episodes that were based on the source material. The influx of too many filler episodes caused many fans to drop the anime altogether.
The studio couldn’t sustain this approach either, and that was the main reason the anime had to go on a break. Fans were losing interest in the story fast, and the studio was unable to do anything about it. So far, there have been no updates about the anime’s return, which indicates that the studio probably doesn’t want to make the same mistakes again.
Studio Pierrot will need to waituntil the manga builds a sizable gap, after which there shouldn’t be any problem starting the anime adaptation again. This will also help the Boruto anime to regain its reputation and, hopefully, reach the level that fans always wanted.
