Boruto Episode 73

Boruto Episode 73

Summary

This week we continue to follow Boruto and Sarada as they search for Mitsuki, who has disappeared after being involved in an attack on the Hidden Leaf village front gate. The pair is making their way towards one of Orochimaru’s hideouts in order to ask him about Mitsuki’s whereabouts.

For any fans of the original Naruto or Shippūden series, this episode was full of references to the past. We see that Captain Yamato is still in charge of watching over Orochimaru’s hideout for the Leaf Village. For anyone new to the series, Yamato was originally one of Orochimaru’s experiments much like Mitsuki.

It’s Yamato who first informs Orochimaru of Mitsuki’s disappearance, and although he seems to believe Orochimaru knows more than he’s letting on, it later appears that Orochimaru truly has nothing to do with Mitsuki leaving the Leaf. After all, Orochimaru no longer wants to destroy the leaf, he just wants to continue his research.

We later learn that it was actually Mitsuki’s choice to go and attend the ninja academy in the Leaf village, and Orochimaru asked Naruto to accept him on his behalf. Previously it had been assumed that Orochimaru was the driving force behind Mitsuki attending the academy.

But, as we saw last week, and continued to see this week, only Naruto and Shikamaru knew Mitsuki’s true identity. The village elders, Kakashi (6th Hokage), Tsunade (5th Hokage), and even Konohamaru had no idea who Mitsuki really was. I think I mentioned it last week, but the fact that Konohamaru knew Mitsuki was from the Hidden Sound village should have given something away.

The Hidden Sound village was founded by Orochimaru as a way to legitimize his opposition to the Leaf. Further, the fact that Mitsuki uses snake jutsu should also hint towards his connection to Orochimaru since he’s one of the few snake sages (sort of).

Technically Orochimaru never mastered snake sage jutsu, only Kabuto did, but he still uses it to an extent and has a pact with the snakes of Ryūchi Cave. Sasuke also has a pact with Ryūchi cave which is why he’s able to summon snakes.

Hopefully all my talk of things from Naruto and Shippūden isn’t boring anyone who’s been a long time fan of the series. I just feel that giving all of this background could be helpful to newer viewers who may not understand a lot of the background being referenced in this episode.

Speaking of Ryūchi Cave, that’s actually where Boruto and Sarada are headed at the very end of the episode. Orochimaru tells them that the White Snake Sage may be able to extract more information about Mitsuki’s whereabouts from the snake they’re carrying. Alternatively, as a snake sage as well, Kabuto probably could have done the job too.

As much as I like the fact that we might get to go back to Ryūchi Cave and have Boruto and Sarada meet the White Snake Sage, I think them going to see Kabuto would have actually tied into the current plot better. In case you’ve forgotten, Kabuto is now the overseer at the orphanage where all of the Shin Uchiha clones reside.

The reason this would have tied well into the current plot is because not only could Kabuto fulfill the same role as a snake sage, but the fact that Mitsuki is a clone just like the Shin Uchihas could have been played up. Just like how the Shin Uchihas rebelled against their father, Mitsuki is likewise following his own path separate from Orochimaru’s.

But, that doesn’t seem to be the direction the series is going to take. Oh well.

Going back to how only Naruto and Shikamaru knew of Mitsuki’s origin, here is actually yet another reference to the earlier series. The fact that the village elders, Tsunade, and to some extent, Kakashi, don’t trust Mitsuki is because they all remember what Orochimaru did to the Leaf in the past.

Orochimaru was the first big antagonist of the series. Sure, Zabuza was the first antagonist, and Gaara was a fairly big antagonist, but Orochimaru was the first antagonist to span multiple arcs and who was considered to be in a league of his own.

In fact, I can only think of three antagonists in the entire franchise so far who I would put into that category: Orochimaru, Pain (Nagato), and Obito (Tobi/Madara). The fact that there are only three of these characters in the 720 episodes of Naruto and Shippūden shows just how big a deal each of them were.

This fear of Orochimaru/Mitsuki is also shown through Mitsuki’s teacher, Konohamaru. Konohamaru is the grandson of the 3rd Hokage, who was killed by Orochimaru (sort of). Technically he killed himself in a failed attempt to stop Orochimaru from destroying the Leaf.

The fact that Mitsuki, Orochimaru’s son, was placed on Konohamaru’s team despite Naruto knowing this is something that can’t be ignored. For starters, it shows that Konohamaru is the one Naruto can count on the most. As Mitsuki is the son of Orochimaru, he can’t be entrusted to just anyone, despite Naruto believing in his innocence.

However, at the same time, Naruto knew that if Konohamaru was aware of Mitsuki’s origin from the start, he may have hated Mitsuki because of it. This is why Naruto explains to Konohamaru that he wanted him to get to know Mitsuki before learning who his parent was.

Now, acknowledging that Mitsuki isn’t the same person as Orochimaru is an important lesson for Konohamaru, and one which he expresses he already knows, but there’s more to it than that from Naruto’s perspective. Get ready, because we’re about to go all the way back to the first episode of Naruto for this reference.

Karin Uzumaki from the anime Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Karin Uzumaki

As you should know by now, Naruto has the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed inside him. However, this wasn’t always the case. The Nine-Tails was sealed inside him as a baby by his parents, who were killed by it, in order to stop it from destroying the Leaf village.

While this should have made the villagers love Naruto for being the “savior” of the village in a sense, the opposite was actually true. Many villagers hated Naruto when he was a child simply because they saw him as the Nine-Tails in human form, even though that wasn’t the case.

Naruto’s first teacher, Iruka, was one such person. Despite Iruka being Naruto’s teacher at the academy, he hated Naruto because both of Iruka’s parents had been killed during the fight against the Nine-Tails. Sure, in the end Iruka is able to look past this and see Naruto as his own person, but the fact that this wasn’t the case originally is part of why Naruto’s childhood was so miserable.

By hiding Mitsuki’s identity from Konohamaru and the rest of the Leaf, Naruto was protecting him from being shunned in the same way he was when he was a child. In many ways, Mitsuki is the Naruto of the new Team 7 (Boruto is Sasuke and Sarada is Sakura).

However, despite Naruto wanting Konohamaru to see Mitsuki as his own person, and not simply as Orochimaru’s son, he refuses to let Konohamaru join the efforts to bring Boruto, Sarada, and Mitsuki back to the village. Since he’s their teacher, it’s believed he’s too emotionally invested.

This is something which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d understand if one of Konohamaru’s students had been killed and Naruto was worried about Konohamaru trying to get revenge, but that’s not what’s happening here.

Konohamaru simply wants to bring his students back to the village safely, and he’s proven in the past that he can think things through rationally even when his students are in danger, as seen when they encountered a modified White Zetsu in a cave. In a circumstance like this, it seems Konohamaru would be the best person to convince them to come back.

On the other hand, I could also see Konohamaru being convinced by his students instead, which may be the real reason he isn’t allowed to help. If he finds Boruto and Sarada, they may convince him to help them go after Mitsuki rather than bringing them back to the village safely.

At this point in time, I’m not exactly sure what Konohamaru would do in that situation. I like to think that he’s similar to Kakashi and so would stand his ground and force Boruto and Sarada to go back to the village, but at the same time he does tend to be persuaded by Sarada easily.

In his place, Moegi’s Team 10 (Ino-Shika-Cho) is sent to track down and bring Boruto and Sarada back. The reason this team was chosen is because Shikamaru believes Shikadai will be able to understand what Boruto’s thinking, and therefore outmaneuver him, which isn’t a wrong assumption.

That said, wouldn’t Hanabi’s Team 15 (Wasabi, Sumire, and Namida) be a better choice? Team 15 is the tracking team of this generation, much like Hinata, Shino, and Kiba were in the original series, so you’d think they’d be the ones chosen to track down Boruto and Sarada.

Hanabi’s Byakugan allows her to see farther into the distance than anyone else in the Leaf, Wasabi’s cat cloak increases her senses so she can detect people from a distance, Sumire has Nue to help search and is able to use sealing jutsu, and Namida is able to paralyze the quarry once the team locates them.

Suigetsu and Karin also make appearances this episode, but not Jugo. Karin arrives to save Sarada from being caught by Yamato and his men while she’s leading them away from Orochimaru’s hideout disguised as Mitsuki. Suigetsu, on the other hand, finds Boruto sneaking around inside the hideout.

Since Sarada kind of sees Karin as her aunt, I hope we see her more throughout the series. Karin has a lot of jutsu and various other abilities which were only briefly touched on in Shippūden that I would like to see more fully explained. Also, Karin is an Uzumaki, just like Boruto.

Next Episode

Next episode Team 10 is going to attempt to stop Boruto and Sarada and bring them back to the Leaf village. Even though this fight would be four against two, and Team 10 has the jonin Moegi on their side, I feel like Boruto and Sarada still have the advantage.

Boruto is a prodigy who’s able to use at least three chakra natures already, something that’s previously been stated to be jonin-rank, and Sarada is an Uchiha so that already makes her a formidable opponent. However, I don’t think it will come down to a standard fight.

I’d like to bring up how Team 15 would be the better choice for chasing down Boruto and Sarada once again. While I don’t think Team 10 can beat them in a fight, there’s no doubt in my mind that Team 15 could. Team 15 isn’t all that special, but they do have Hanabi Hyuga as their teacher, and she alone could defeat Boruto and Sarada.

Based on the ED animation, it seems that Boruto and Sarada will somehow be able to convince Team 10 to help them bring Mitsuki back. Boruto will probably give some speech to Shikadai about how Mitsuki is one of their friends too and so they can’t just leave him behind.

Maybe Moegi will finally get some character depth. Despite being in the series as a supporting character since the original Naruto, we know very little about both Moegi and Udon. At least in Boruto we finally learned what Udon’s special jutsu is, but I don’t think we even know that much about Moegi yet.

Conclusion

I feel like I forgot to mention some pretty important references from this episode, but this post is fairly long as is, so if there’s anything you feel I left out, let me know in the comments. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on this episode, especially if Boruto is your first experience with the Naruto franchise.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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