Boruto Fans Think The Anime Suffers Because Of The Manga's Pacing Issues

While the "Naruto" franchise is beloved by fans, the sequel series "Boruto: Naruto Next Generations" has not been quite as well received. Can the series somehow redeem itself with some tweaks? Some Reddit users have been discussing ways to make the show work better, but most are pessimistic.

According to a number of fans, the show's issues stem from the fact that the manga and the anime's release schedules aren't synergizing. The "Boruto" manga comes out monthly, meaning that arcs can stretch out over many months. Since the anime releases weekly, there isn't enough manga content to adapt. Reddit user u/Professional_Trust37 took to r/Boruto and asked fans if they thought there was a way to save the "Boruto" series. Some users suggested that they change the manga release schedule to a weekly one or make the anime seasonal, but the outcome appears bleak for most fans. 

"I've always said that the way to fix the series is to make [the manga] a weekly release," u/SilentGinja said. "Now it's 6 years later and every month that passes by they lose more and more of their audience. I mean sometimes you have fights that last 5 to 6 chapters. You expect your audience to wait half a year to see the conclusion to a fight?" While some agreed with this notion, others don't think this would change anything. "People keep saying to make it 1:1 with the manga but the manga's pacing is unreadably bad," said u/peepy-kun. "I keep having to put it down and come back later because it's so frustrating."

The general consensus among Redditors is that little can be done to save "Boruto" at this point. If they started releasing the manga on a weekly basis to give the anime more to work with, the quality of the source material would inevitably suffer. That's according to u/KanekiTheSav, who gave the most upvoted response to the original question — is there a way to save the "Boruto" series? They wrote: "If the manga goes weekly then we might as well get stick figures and 7-8 pages per week because [illustrator Mikio] Ikemoto isn't built for that, the dude takes up a whole month to give us the stuff we get currently." They also said that making the anime seasonal wouldn't help matters. "If the anime goes seasonal then people will just whine about the side cast getting neglected, the power scaling, and the pacing."

The "Boruto" anime is set to go on a hiatus in March 2023. The first part of the series is coming to a close after a whopping 293 episodes. Pierrot (the studio behind the anime) and Shueisha (the publisher of the manga) have both said that "Boruto" will be back, but will changes be made to combat waning interest? While many seem to think "Boruto" is doomed to fail, there's one suggestion that just might work — a timeskip. This is something that has already been teased, and it could be the savior of "Boruto," according to u/Morbu. "Basically, everything relies on the timeskip at this point because it's the only point where they can naturally do a sort of soft-wipe on everything."