Boruto Episode 166

Death Match

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations episode 166 was a very good episode, as I expected it would be. However, what I’d like to focus on in today’s review are the parts of the episode that went against my expectations. And, in case you were wondering, there were a lot of developments that I didn’t see coming.

Let’s start off with the quadruplets since they’ve been pretty major characters throughout this arc. Allegedly, all four brothers are dead by the end of the episode. But, I don’t buy it. We know that Yuuga and Yoruga are dead because we saw their deaths in previous episodes. And I think it’s safe to say that Asaka is dead now too.

Hiruga, on the other hand, could very well be alive. The only problem with that theory is that the next episode preview seems to imply that we’re heading directly back to the Hidden Leaf Village without getting a real conclusion to the quadruplets’ arc.

It was implied that Hiruga was killed by Deepa’s initial attack. This is why Asaka decided to use his own self-sacrifice jutsu, Red Spider Lily. When he uses this jutsu, we see the faces of his brothers flash on screen, implying that their spirits are with him.

But my problem with this conclusion to the quadruplets’ arc is that there really isn’t a conclusion. Their earrings never made it back to their homeland. Asaka and Hiruga died before they got there, and Boruto didn’t take the earrings to carry on their will or anything.

It would make a lot more sense if it turns out that Hiruga wasn’t actually dead. Then he would be the one to bring his brothers’ earrings to their homeland.

Oh, and Asaka’s jutsu seemed to just turn his body into a bomb, so I guess I’d rank that one above Yuuga’s and Yoruga’s jutsu, but below Hiruga’s.

Deepa’s Armament Haki

I’m glad that Deepa decided to follow the classic shounen battle series bad guy trope and explain his abilities to us. I mean, it would have been nice if it was done in a different way, but I’ll take the information any way I can get it at this point.

So, previously, I thought that perhaps Deepa couldn’t actually use any jutsu, or maybe that he could only use the Yang chakra nature. For those of you who aren’t aware, Yang chakra is what’s used to perform physical enhancement-type jutsu. For example, Chouchou’s Partial Expansion jutsu.

Along with that, I figured that the armored portion of his outfit, which looks like leather armor that might be worn by an archer, was actually some sort of scientific ninja tool. I thought this because we had only seen him get hit on that armor, and no damage was dealt.

As it turns out, Deepa does have the ability to use jutsu, specifically Earth-style jutsu. He can create small rocks and then fire them at his opponents from all directions, which is his primary offensive jutsu. For defenses, he can alter the carbon in his body to create a hardened shell anywhere on his body.

If you’re familiar with One Piece, Deepa is basically using Armament Haki.

How is Deepa going to be defeated in the end if attacks do no damage to him? Well, he’s an Earth style user. And as we know, Earth is weak to Lightning. So, I’m thinking that a strong Lightning style attack, such as maybe Sasuke’s or Kakashi’s Chidori, would do the trick.

My main question is, who is going to be the one to defeat Deepa? While I do think it could be Sasuke or Kakashi, my bet is actually on Mitsuki. Lightning style is his go-to, and with his sage mode, he may be able to break through Deepa’s defenses in the future. Also, they kind of foreshadowed him and Deepa fighting again in the future at the end of the episode.

Dr. Viktor

It’s been pretty clear that Dr. Viktor is associated with Kara, but we still don’t know in exactly what capacity. He was shown to be present during a Kara meeting, but he doesn’t have the same facial tattoos that the other members do. This led me to believe that he was basically just their scientist, not a full member.

However, that theory appears to be incorrect for two reasons. First, Viktor gave orders to Deepa and those orders were followed. If Viktor wasn’t a high ranking member of the organization, I don’t see Deepa following his orders. To me, Deepa seems to be very similar to Deidara in that regard (and Deepa is probably from the Hidden Stone as well).

So, that implies that Viktor isn’t just some pharmaceutical scientist who Kara has allied with in order to achieve its goals. He’s a real member of the organization. Or, the leader of Kara told Deepa to follow Viktor’s orders and they’ll kill him or toss him aside once they have no more use for him. Either one.

But, the second reason that I think Viktor is a real Kara member is that he’s actually an extremely strong shinobi in his own right. Sure, Konohamaru and Mugino were injured, but Viktor was still confident enough in his own abilities to take on two jonin alone.

Also, we saw that Viktor is capable of using powerful Wind and Lightning style jutsu. And keep in mind that he didn’t just use these styles of jutsu the normal way. He literally altered the weather with his jutsu. So, I wouldn’t really be surprised if it was revealed that he can make it begin raining as well.

One final note on Viktor is that I did consider that perhaps he was using a scientific ninja tool of some sort since he’s a scientist himself. But, when he used his jutsu, we actually saw him perform hand signs unlike when Boruto was using a tool. Of course, he could be doing this in an attempt to hide the fact that a tool is being used.

Oh, and he has another pair of muscular arms coming out of his back. I don’t really know what to say about that just yet so I’ll leave it at that.

No Sharingan Upgrade

One thing I was really expecting out of this episode was for Sarada’s Sharingan to finally receive an upgrade. However, I’m not entirely sure how that would have worked out considering the fairly obvious result of the Leaf shinobi losing against (fleeing from) Deepa.

So, I know there are a lot of viewers of Boruto who may not have watched the previous parts of the series and therefore might not understand how the Sharingan works. Basically, the Sharingan upgrades in response to extreme emotion. Generally, this is negative emotion, but theoretically, positive emotion works as well.

There are four main tiers of Sharingan, being the base variant, the Mangekyō variant, the Eternal Mangekyō variant, and finally the Rinnegan. If you want to know more about how all the various dōjutsu are related, I’ve written about that in the past.

Now, at this point, there may be some of you saying that Sarada obviously wasn’t going to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan here, and that’s correct. But, you have to remember that even the base level Sharingan has tiers of its own. There’s the single-, double-, and triple-tomoe Sharingan.

Right now, Sarada has the lowest of the low-leveled Sharingan, the single-tomoe variant. My assumption was that her Sharingan would be bumped up to the double-tomoe variant after seeing the difference in power between Deepa and Team 7.

This could have happened, but it would have relied on Sarada’s upgraded Sharingan being responsible for the genin escaping from Deepa to be considered a success of any kind. And so since it was Mitsuki who saved them instead, it would have made no sense for Sarada’s Sharingan to upgrade.

I’m interested in learning more about Mitsuki’s sage mode, but I do think that was the perfect opportunity to focus on Sarada’s growth. Mitsuki didn’t really grow in any way by saving his comrades. He just did something we’ve seen him do in the past.

Conclusion

How did Boruto: Naruto Next Generations episode 166 compare to your expectations? Clearly there were a lot of developments I expected to occur that simply didn’t. But, I do think that overall the direction the episode went in was good. We learned a lot, got some good action, and it looks like we’ll be getting a lot of character growth over the next few weeks.

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My review of the next episode is available here.