I really loved this scene between Naruto and Boruto!
First of all, the mood in the scene is impressive. Mostly the lighting; when showing Boruto’s face, the picture is bright due to the light coming in from the window, yet when it’s Naruto’s face, it gets darker, the light from behind him shading his face. It fits the mood perfectly. As for the sad music in the scene, while it could’ve started earlier, I can understand why it started after Boruto realized Naruto was talking about himself. It reflects not only Naruto’s, but also Boruto’s feelings.
Second, I’m glad that Boruto actually brought up what bothered him, and even happier with the way Naruto handled it. First, he assures his son that he has the situation under control (I didn’t put that scene here because there were already so many pics and that’s not as relevant for this post as the rest), and then proceeds to tell why he decided to do things this way, instead of just saying that his decision is final and leaving it at that. Of course, he makes it clear that he isn’t changing his mind, but he’s still ready to hear Boruto’s opinion and to explain his own reasoning. That’s exactly how an adult should handle important decisions.Â
The third point is a little darker, something that I didn’t even really catch the first time watching this scene. The thing is, Naruto looks so sad here, which tells us that as happy as he is with his life now, the childhood trauma(s) is still haunting him. No wonder there; I don’t think that he ever had much of a chance to talk about it with anyone aside from his dead parents, who he probably didn’t want to worry too much, and what’s worse, I don’t think anyone ever actually apologized for how they treated him. That’s one thing I never liked about the series; even after he became the hero of the village and later of the whole world, we saw not one of his old tormentors step up and apologize. This is something even Kumogakure does better since Motoi eventually, after around 30 years, steps up and apologizes to Killer Bee, the eight tails’ jinchuuriki, after regretting the way he treated him for years. So, yay for Motoi of Kumogakure, nay for all the shinobi of Konoha!
And as a very unpleasant cherry on the top, Naruto now thinks that the treatment he received was understandable due to the circumstances. I mean, in a sense yes, but the way he says it it’s like he thinks it can’t be helped and that the people of Konoha don’t owe him anything, like an apology. And that’s just sick; they’ve made the victim, in this case Naruto, think that they didn’t do anything that they should apologize for. Konoha did victim blaming, and it worked on Naruto, full force. Actually, I think it might’ve already worked on him as a little kid, since he seemed to think that only after he’d become Hokage, the villagers would start respecting him as a fellow human being. As in, he had accepted the fact that he had to work hard just to get some basic human decency which everyone else takes for granted. And that’s depressing.
But yeah, good episode!
