Boruto Episode 84

Boruto Episode 84

Ohnoki’s Thoughts, Ku’s Thoughts

Before anything else let me just say how terrible the title of this week’s episode is. “Ohnoki’s Thoughts, Ku’s Thoughts,” really? That was the best they could come up with? It could have simply been titled, “The Sanzu Plains.”

Along with not having a very good title, this episode just wasn’t very good in general. I like my world-building episodes as much as the next person, but when no new information is actually added, it just becomes a waste of time.

In the end, we only got two new pieces of information this episode, and they don’t matter all that much. The first is that Sarada and ChoCho made it back to the rendezvous point, and the second is that Boruto is trapped in a place known as the Sanzu Plains. We already knew that Shikadai had been captured along with Kurotsuchi.

The Sanzu Plains

So what exactly are the Sanzu Plains? It’s a vast area near the Hidden Stone village which traps anyone who enters its barrier. Once inside, the only way to escape is to find what’s known as your “heart stone,” among the billions of other stones scattered on the ground.

None of the stones within the Sanzu Plains are intrinsically special or unique in any way, and so any of them could technically be the heart stone needed to escape. However, which stone the heart stone ends up being doesn’t matter. What matters is how you come to recognize it as your heart stone.

Basically the way to escape from the Sanzu Plains is the equivalent of saying that “the real treasure is the friends you make along the way.” By this I mean that the end result is irrelevant, it’s the process which matters.

But, while a heart stone is needed to escape from the plains, just like the stones themselves, these plains don’t appear to be all that unique. In fact, if the man-made barrier wasn’t set up around the area, I don’t think the heart stone would matter.

So, why was a barrier set up around this particular location? We’re told by Ohnoki that the Sanzu Plains were once used as a training ground for the Stone shinobi, and it seems to be their counterpart to the giant forest or desert we see in the Hidden Leaf and Sand respectively.

If we were to see a chunin exam take place within the Hidden Stone village, it’s very likely that the second phase would take place within the Sanzu Plains just as we saw with the forest in Naruto and the desert in Shippūden.

It’s a shame the chunin exams took place in Konoha again this time around, because although a different training facility was used, I would have liked to see what the other villages had to offer. Perhaps in the Sanzu Plains there would have been a time limit for teams to find their heart stones and escape.

Millennial Shinobi Ruin Everything

Once stuck in the Sanzu Plains, Ohnoki explains to Boruto how the new generation of shinobi have no interest in learning through experience, and would rather learn from books. Because of this, these training grounds are hardly ever used anymore, and so nobody will be coming to their rescue.

That said, I feel like Ohnoki could escape from the plains any time he wanted.

He then teaches Boruto some survival techniques, such as how to not lay on the ground waiting to die. Not even a few hours had passed and Boruto was already complaining of starvation. Didn’t he literally just eat at that restaurant in the Stone village?

He also looked surprisingly proud of himself when he scooped some water out of a puddle. I think he really believed the water was going to run away and so he had to be quick about it. Kids these days, what would they do without their fancy gadgets?

I can’t say I know exactly how it will happen, but we all know Boruto is going to find his heart stone, escape from the Sanzu Plains, and prove to Ohnoki that millennials aren’t all terrible. Also, from the next episode preview it looks like some random Stone genin is going to wander into the plains with them.

Free Will (Again)

It feels as though I’ve been bringing up the concept of free will in every post for the past week, and no, this isn’t because I’m obsessed with it as a concept. Instead, this just goes to show how prevalent this concept is throughout the medium of anime.

In this episode we learn some of the things which make the various homunculi unique. We already knew that Sekiei is fascinated with humans and Kokuyou finds them weak, but now we also learn that Kirara likes collecting cute accessories and the red-haired homunculi enjoys reading human books.

The homunculus Kirara from the anime Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Kirara

While each of these homunculi have individual personalities which could be considered a form of free will, their leader, Ku, isn’t quite the same. As I predicted earlier, Ku is a homunculus created as a clone of the third Tsuchikage, Ohnoki.

He also states that he was originally created as a blank slate, hinting that he doesn’t really have a will of his own. The fact that he doesn’t have a will of his own doesn’t seem to matter to Ku, but it can be debated whether or not someone without a will of their own can be content that way in the first place.

Ku then correctly assumes that Mitsuki hasn’t directly asked his creator, Orochimaru, whether or not he was made with a will of his own. And, when he asks if it matters either way, Mitsuki responds that it doesn’t, which is exactly what I predicted earlier as well.

Really, the fact that Mitsuki is even able to go on this soul-searching quest is proof enough for me that he does in fact have a will of his own.

Conclusion

What did you think of this week’s episode of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations? Also, since I brought up the idea of having a chunin exam set in the Sanzu Plains, what do you think the challenge would be? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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