Boruto Episode 70

Introduction

While we’re now done with Cho-Cho’s filler arc, that doesn’t mean the filler is totally complete. This week our episode was titled, “The Other Side of Anxiety” and was a filler episode following Metal Lee as he learns to overcome his anxiety.

Much like the Cho-Cho filler episodes, Metal’s episode also includes a moral at the end of the story. While I understand that teaching kids these things is important, I’d still like it to be a little less obvious. At least try to hide the moral of the story a little bit.

Summary

Today I’m going to write less of a chronological summary and more of an overall summary of the episode if that makes any sense. I’m busy playing the new Fate/Grand Order event so I can’t be bothered to put too much effort into today’s post considering how it’s filler and all.

Metal Lee has extreme anxiety which causes him to fail under pressure, this is something we should all know by this point in the series. However, since he has special training to learn the Eight Inner Gates technique coming up, he’s decided that he needs to do something about his crippling anxiety for the time being.

His solution is to buy a charm which he was told will reduce his anxiety. Unsurprisingly to the viewer, as well as the rest of the cast, this doesn’t work. However, that doesn’t stop Metal, and he proceeds to buy two more in hopes that more of them will simply amplify their power.

Upon seeing that Metal is relying on charms to get rid of his anxiety, his father, Rock Lee, postpones the training for the Eight Inner Gates technique, but doesn’t explain to Metal why. This causes metal to become depressed because he believes his father thinks he’s a failure.

Enter, Guy Sensei!

Guy Sensei appears from the sky in order to help Metal out with his training. Although he doesn’t actually train him in any physical way, he shows and tells Metal how a handicap, such as his anxiety, is just a part of him that he needs to accept, much like how Guy accepted being crippled in the war.

Now, here’s my main problem with the moral of the story. It’s saying that you need to accept things like anxiety and just go along with them instead of trying to overcome them. I get what they’re trying to say, which is that things like anxiety shouldn’t hold you back, but they’re kind of saying it in the wrong way.

Anyway, at some point in the episode the rest of Metal’s squad meet up with him and Guy Sensei where he’s about to give a lecture to the academy class. He performs a demonstration using Metal and Iwabe, but that’s not really what I cared about during this scene.

Instead, before his demonstration, and at the end of his lecture, Guy mentions that with the power of Taijutsu alone he was able to fight alongside Naruto in the war and even go head to head against the strongest opponent the world has ever had to face.

I enjoyed this reference to the events of the end of Shippūden, however, Guy forgets Madara Uchiha’s name! I understand that this reference was supposed to be there for those who have already watched Shippūden, but seriously, the new generation of Boruto viewers need to know who Madara is.

Skipping farther ahead in the episode, Rock Lee challenges his son to a duel, I can only assume so that he can beat the anxiety out of him. The rules are simple, Metal only needs to land one hit on his father in order to win, but there will also be a massive audience watching their match.

When he arrives in the arena, Metal declares that he’s no longer going to be held back by his anxiety, and the match begins with Guy as the referee. Once again, there was a reference to the original Naruto series here, but it went unexplained for the new viewers as well.

However, this time I can sort of understand why. Metal’s anxiety-style fighting was extremely reminiscent of Rock Lee’s drunk-style fighting. Guy almost mentioned it, but the camera cuts away from him before he gets the chance. This is likely because they don’t want to talk about drinking alcohol in a “children’s series.”

Anyway, Metal is able to win the match by unknowingly activating the first Inner Gate and pulling of a clean Leaf Hurricane, sending his father smashing into a wall. I have to say, I don’t think Metal should have the power to even land a single hit on Rock Lee, but whatever.

Next Episode

Unlike Cho-Cho’s three episode filler arc, Metal only got a single filler episode. The next filler episode doesn’t appear to follow any one of the “Boruto 12,” but instead follows Team 7 as they show the previous Tsuchikage around the Leaf Village.

A five-kage summit is underway, but the previous Tsuchikage has also traveled to the Hidden Leaf, likely as part of the Land of Stone’s escort. Once in the Leaf, he declares that he wants some dumplings, and so Team 7 helps him find some, or so I assume.

The team is also likely going to underestimate the Tsuchikage’s power because of how old he is, and then something is going to happen to make them see him in a new light. But, clearly nothing too crazy is going to happen. I doubt we’ll even see his signature Particle Style.

Conclusion

That’s it for this week’s Boruto episode review. If you liked this post, leave a like. If you have something to comment, leave a comment. You can also subscribe to my blog via email or follow me on Twitter or Tumblr. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some more FGO to go play.

My review of the next episode is available here.