Boruto Episode 226

Boruto Episode 226

Chunin Exam Disqualifications

Based on Episode 225, I was under the impression that Tsubaki’s and Denki’s match was the fourth round while Boruto’s and Mitsuki’s would be the fifth and final round. But as it turns out, that wasn’t the case.

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Episode 226 starts off with Boruto and Mitsuki being disqualified from the Chunin Exams for not being present when their match was called. This is unfortunate because I really wanted to see a fight between those two.

But what makes it even worse is that we got teased with their fight at the very end of the episode. Later that night, Boruto and Mitsuki meet up in the Chunin Exam stadium and have an unofficial match — that we don’t get to see.

Tsubaki Kurogane from the anime series Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Tsubaki Kurogane

I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised about Boruto and Mitsuki being disqualified, though. With their disqualifications, every genin team from their generation (except Team 40) has a single chunin leader. These are Denki, Sarada, Shikadai, Wasabi, and Houki for Teams 5, 7, 10, 15, and 25 respectively.

Still, even with Sarada as the official chunin leader of Team 7, I get the feeling that Boruto is going to be the one in charge. We’ve seen that he does follow along with Sarada’s plans a lot of the time. But more often than not, Sarada ends up following whatever Boruto decides.

Mitsuki was never going to be the team leader even if he had been the only member of Team 7 to become a chunin. He’s too much of a follower (of Boruto) to be the one giving orders to Boruto and Sarada.

Maybe in next week’s episode, we’ll get to see Sarada asserting her new leadership role during Team 7’s first mission with a chunin member.

Tsubaki vs. Denki

The match between Tsubaki and Denki was actually more interesting than I thought it would be. Based on the little we knew about the scientific ninja tool Denki was bringing to the fight, I assumed that Tsubaki would be defeated relatively easily.

To be fair, if Denki had landed his first big attack, that would have been the case. There wasn’t really anything Tsubaki could do other than dodge it because it would have either taken her out or broken her sword, thus ending the match.

But, I’m glad their match was more complex than Denki simply hitting Tsubaki with a powerful attack from his scientific ninja tool. I’d say this was probably the second-best match of the Chunin Exams, bested only by Houki vs. Inojin.

Denki hitting Tsubaki with a Lightning style kick from the anime series Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Denki hitting Tsubaki with a Lightning style kick

So, what made this fight good? Well, it all has to do with how both combatants learned about their opponents and adapted their fighting styles over the course of the match.

Tsubaki was able to figure out that when she made unpredictable movements, Denki’s scientific ninja tool was unable to keep up with her. She then expanded upon this by incorporating distractions into her attacks before ultimately destroying the motion sensor Denki was relying on.

That’s a great example of finding and exploiting your opponent’s weakness.

Similarly, Denki was able to make use of the information he gathered about Tsubaki during their fight, which lead to his victory in the end. He noticed that Tsubaki believed she had won once his scientific ninja tool had been broken. That was Tsubaki’s downfall.

She assumed Denki was incapable of fighting her without the tool, and he capitalized on this. Once Tsubaki let her guard down, Denki shed his exoskeleton and hit her with a jutsu of his own before she could react.

Denki Kaminarimon

I think Tsubaki could have won the match if she had only paid more attention to Denki’s name. Anime character names often describe a lot about the characters themselves, and Denki’s name is no exception.

As with most (all?) characters in Boruto, Denki’s first name is written in katakana (デンキ). However, the word denki (電気) means “electricity.” So, that should have been Tsubaki’s first clue that Denki might be able to use Lightning release on his own. Though, she may have also assumed this electricity referred to his use of scientific ninja tools.

The second clue comes from Denki’s surname, Kaminarimon (雷門). Specifically, the first part of his surname, kaminari (雷), which means thunder or lightning bolt. With first and last names referencing electricity and thunder, it’s kind of obvious what chakra nature Denki can use.

Denki using his Lightning Style: Overdrive jutsu from the anime series Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Denki using his Lightning Style: Overdrive jutsu

Of course, Tsubaki’s name is similar in how it describes her. Tsubaki (椿), also known as a Camellia, is a type of plant with pink flowers — the same flowers Tsubaki wears in her hair. And her last name, Kurogane (鉄) means “iron,” as in the Land of Iron where the samurai are from.

Shifting back over to Denki, though, we can see there’s one more “Easter egg” when it comes to his name and his match against Tsubaki. The second kanji used to write Kaminarimon is the kanji for “gate” (門). This is significant due to its historical use within surnames.

You see, members of the samurai class in Edo period Japan often had names ending with –mon (門). Additionally, these samurai had a topknot called a chonmage (丁髷), just like the one Denki has.

So, what all of this means is that Denki’s character is a reference to someone who’s a descendant of a traditional samurai family. And that makes his match-up against a current samurai that much cooler.

Conclusion

What do you think of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Episode 226? Were you surprised to find that Boruto and Mitsuki were disqualified? Where would you rank the Tsubaki vs. Denki match compared to the others we saw? And did you learn anything new from my explanation of Denki’s and Tsubaki’s names? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Episode 227 is available now.

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