Boruto Episode 72

Boruto Episode 72

Introduction

Another Thursday, another episode of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. This week we continue the arc about Mitsuki’s will with an episode titled, “Mitsuki’s Will.” After this arc, we should be starting the next major arc of the series, which will likely coincide with the start of the Fall season.

Summary

At the end of last episode we saw the guards at the front gate of the Hidden Leaf village get attacked by who I assumed was Mitsuki. This episode somewhat confirmed that suspicion, but it’s not as clear-cut as it first seemed.

While Mitsuki was indeed present and appears to be one of the assailants, he also had two other, unknown shinobi with him who seem to be working under him as his escorts. While this seems like something Orochimaru would have planned, I find that outcome to be unlikely.

As we’ve seen from previous times Orochimaru has gotten involved with Mitsuki, he tends to either do it personally, or he sends Suigetsu. The fact that the two shinobi Mitsuki is seen leaving the village with are unknown to us makes me think Orochimaru isn’t actually involved.

However, the jutsu of these two shinobi are what really interest me. One of them seems to have been using a dirt form of Gaara’s sand jutsu, and the other appeared to have been using detonation clay to create animal-shaped bombs much like Deidara.

This means that these two shinobi could be from a currently unknown organization, or they could in fact be subordinates of Orochimaru whose jutsu he manufactured in an attempt to copy the jutsu of Gaara and Deidara respectively. I’m hoping for an unknown organization, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Throughout the episode we see a variety of old characters such as Sai, Ino, and Tsunade, as well as the two village elders who must be 100 by now since they’ve been around since the founding of the village. All of these characters, and more, come to the conclusion that Mitsuki must have betrayed the Leaf.

Their reasoning for this is that Mitsuki is the son of Orochimaru, something they all just learned, but Naruto and Shikadai were already aware of. I didn’t realize that even Konohamaru didn’t know who Mitsuki’s parent was, despite knowing that Mitsuki came from the Hidden Sound village.

While Konohamaru, and somewhat Naruto, defend Mitsuki and claim that he wouldn’t do something like attacking the Leaf without a good reason, the rest of the adults aren’t convinced. Seems to me like it’s time for a Sasuke recovery mission 2.0.

Boruto and Sarada were sneaking around and listening in on the conversations of the adults, and after hearing that Mitsuki was being treated as a deserter, decide they need to ask Mitsuki themselves. They’ve realized that despite being with Mitsuki for so long, they don’t actually know anything about him.

Mitsuki from the anime Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Mitsuki leaving the Hidden Leaf

At one point, before Sarada officially agrees to help Boruto track down Mitsuki, although we knew she was going to anyway, there was a great scene between the two of them in which Boruto calls Sarada’s values into question. Sarada almost assumes Mitsuki’s guilt in the same way that the adults did, but Boruto asks her what kind of Hokage she wants to be.

He reminds her that being the best ninja isn’t the only thing that makes a Hokage great, and this seems to remind Sarada that her hero, Naruto, would never assume Mitsuki was guilty without asking him in person. While this scene didn’t really add much to the episode, it was still important for Sarada’s character.

Remember, the Uchiha clan has always sought to govern the Leaf Village with an iron fist, all the way back to its founding with Madara Uchiha. More recently, Sasuke attempted to become Hokage and do the same, but was stopped when he “lost” to Naruto in their final fight.

However, thanks to Boruto’s words, Sarada realized her mistake and is now moving away from the ideals of the Uchiha clan in a similar way to both Itachi and, more so, Shisui. Just thinking of how similar she is to those two gets me excited to see how she’ll turn out when she’s older.

I know this isn’t the end of the post yet, but what do you think Sarada’s Mangekyō ability is going to be? Do you think she’ll even get the Mangekyō? I think she will at some point, but for some reason I don’t think it will be due to trauma, but more to an intense positive feeling.

As for her ability, since she’ll probably end up as a medical ninja, it would be interesting if her Mangekyō ability worked into that somehow. I don’t really know exactly how it would work, but something that has the ability to help her teammates would be a great shift away from the typical Mangekyō abilities.

Back to the summary, at the end of the episode Boruto finds one of Mitsuki’s snakes, and is given a cryptic message by it about Mitsuki’s will. He then officially decides to leave the hidden leaf despite knowing he’ll be pursued by the village, and Sarada decides to go with him because she’s part of Team 7 too.

Sarada also agrees to lead Boruto to Orochimaru’s hideout because she believes that’s where they’ll learn the most information about Mitsuki. While she’s met Orochimaru before, Boruto hasn’t and doesn’t quite understand what the big deal is.

Next Episode

In the next episode, Boruto and Sarada make it to Orochimaru’s hideout and meet with the slippery snake himself. It seems to me like they got pretty lucky considering Orochimaru has hideouts all over the Land of Fire, and yet he’s at the one they go to. Maybe it’s his main base?

From the next episode preview, it also looked like Captain Yamato is at Orochimaru’s lab as well, which makes sense considering he’s tasked with keeping an eye on him. I’m sure Yamato will send word back to Naruto that Boruto and Sarada are safe with him, but I wonder if he’ll really help them or try to turn them back.

Also, will the rest of Orochimaru’s gang be there? I can’t remember seeing Jūgo yet in Boruto (I’m probably just forgetting), but we know that both Suigetsu and Karin are still with Orochimaru. Suigetsu seems to be the one in charge of watching over Mitsuki, so perhaps he knows his whereabouts.

Something tells me that Orochimaru is also going to bring up the fact that he trained Sasuke due to Sarada being present. This, in turn, will likely cause Boruto to be interested in Orochimaru, but I don’t know how far that interaction would really go considering the circumstances.

If Boruto wasn’t focused on finding Mitsuki, I could definitely see him trying to get Orochimaru to teach him some sort of jutsu such as the summoning jutsu. However, perhaps he still will and then he’ll be able to summon a snake to help him track down Mitsuki.

Finally, I don’t think the pair will catch up to Mitsuki within the next episode. I predicted that the next arc will be a main arc and will begin at the start of the fall season, but there are still three more weeks before then. Because of this, if they caught up to Mitsuki next week, I’m not sure how much the arc could be dragged out.

At best, they’ll catch up to Mitsuki just as the episode ends. This way, the following week would be the climax of the arc, and the week after that would be the conclusion, just in time for the new season.

Conclusion

I’m hoping that Mitsuki’s character get fleshed out a lot more throughout the rest of his arc since he’s my favorite of the new generation, but what are you looking forward to? Do you want to see something from this arc or are you just waiting for the next major arc to start up?

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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