Compared to many came around after Two Blue Vortex.

There's a problem though: the young manga still hasn't quite done enough. It's in the unfortunate position of standing in the shadow of the massively influential series that spawned it. Naruto hasn't aged perfectly, but its sheer influence and magnitude provide it with wiggle room. Not to mention that, aside from a few narrative hiccups, the story remains amazing on its own. Boruto lacks the same leeway Naruto earned by its originality and impact. There are a few major things Boruto needs to do if it has any hope of standing on equal footing with Naruto.

5 Step Away From the Aliens

Boruto's Decision to Lean Into the Otsutsuki Twist Has Hurt It

Naruto's Otsutsuki twist is one of the most controversial parts of the entire series. Boruto decided, in spite of that, to fully lean into the ideas that the Otsutsuki twist put in place. Boruto himself has Otsutsuki DNA, after all.

For the (somehow) uninitiated, the Otsutsuki twist is when it's revealed that Naruto's plot is effectively the long-con game of overpowered aliens. Boruto picked up on this in a strange way. The Otsutsuki twist, in combination with the Fourth Great Ninja War, led to huge advances in technology, ushered in by an era of unprecedented international cooperation. By the time Naruto fans return to Konoha, it's practically become a bustling, high-tech metropolis. While it's jarring to see Naruto-universe characters with laptops, it's not the worst thing ever.

What is bad, though, is that the Otsutsuki clan became a major force in a series that was originally about ninja. Boruto prompted a major shift toward science fiction away from a good old-fashioned ninja battle anime. This is notable all throughout Boruto, but maybe a quick example could come from comparing two massive forces: Kara and Akatsuki.

Kara is often called the Boruto equivalent of the Akatsuki, but that's a shallow reading. The only thing they have in common is that they're renegade groups representing threats to the shinobi order. While Akatsuki has a tangible material origin in Naruto's world, Kara seems prefigured, the result of an alien influence on shinobi society that comes from outside to threaten it.

If Boruto wants to win back the fans of Naruto who loved its straightforwardly grounded ninja action, then Boruto needs to find a way to break away from its dependence on its science fiction and supernatural syncretism. However, the unfortunate truth of storytelling is that there are no take-backsies. Boruto has already dug its hole, and a number of fans like these very same science fiction elements. But they've caused some problems for the worse. This is abundantly clear when one just looks at the way that battles have changed in the series compared to Naruto.

4 Acknowledge and Handle Combat Problems

Boruto's New Mechanics Have Created a Massive Power Creep Problem

Naruto has always suffered from problems with power creep, an oft-cited example of which being Madara. At his peak, Madara was unstoppable. Boruto follows up on Naruto's power creep. One example is how the series has taken some of Naruto's most broken powers and spread them around, thanks to the advances in scientific ninja tools and the embedding of the Otkutsuki clan into its whole narrative. Chakra absorption, for example, was rare enough in Naruto that nobody minded. In Boruto, ninjutsu absorption is especially ubiquitous, and it's hurt the combat gravely.

Scientific ninja tools were developed during the timeskip. In fact, the once-leader of Kara, Jigen, played a big role in their development and proliferation; meanwhile, Konoha would develop its own team for their advancement and dispersal. They're a cool idea in a limited context, but there are two main problems. The first is that their potential isn't fully explored. The second is that potential itself: scientific ninja tools are absolutely broken.

From afar, it almost feels like Boruto has no handle on its own mechanics. There's endless escalation, from Naruto's Baryon Mode to Boruto's most broken jutsu, Omnipotence. All of these factors in combination have fundamentally changed how fights work in Boruto compared to Naruto, with many fights centered around taijutsu rather than ninjutsu, since ninjutsu can be absorbed and nullified. This isn't inherently a problem on its own...

3 Do Right by the ing Cast

Naruto's ing Cast Is Fantastic, and Deserves Better Than They've Gotten

...except, of course, for the fact that Rock Lee is underutilized: a master of taijutsu, now more viable than ever. Rock Lee was a character who especially showed how Naruto's power system was absolutely broken. Boruto is essentially his time to shine, though. Nonetheless, he's more or less relegated to the role of comic relief, as are so many characters from the original cast.

Not every fan has been happy with the narrative structure of Boruto as far as its characters go. Some even go as far as to say that staples of the main cast are annoying in comparison to their Naruto counterparts (when they even have a counterpart). That's ultimately a matter of taste, though. However, what's undeniable is that Naruto's own ing cast has been done entirely dirty, either abandoned, nerfed, or shoehorned into vacuous helper roles.

No Boruto fans make their way to the series without going through Naruto first. A lot of their emotional investments lie with the characters from Naruto, who are routinely undermined in Boruto. But considering how Orochimaru, Rock Lee, Shino, and even Kabuto are treated, it sometimes feels like the characters from Naruto are little more than fan-service. That has nothing on what Boruto has done to one of its most important characters, though.

2 Stop Throwing Naruto to the Wolves

Boruto Accidentally Undermines Naruto's Whole Story

Above all, this affects Naruto's very own protagonist. Boruto's story isn't an accident; it's intentionally written, and it could be written differently. This includes the story and fate of the seventh Hokage who needs no introduction, Naruto Uzumaki. Kishimoto might be on board with Boruto, but countless fans aren't—and for good reason, especially when it comes to the main character of the series Kishimoto himself wrote.

As previously mentioned, no fan makes their way to Boruto without going through Naruto first. Time and time again, Boruto has done a disservice to Naruto by undermining him. It's one thing that he receives a colossal nerf, especially after his and Sasuke's fight with Momoshiki. What's worse is the massive timeskip between Naruto and Boruto leaves almost the entirety of Naruto's tenure as Hokage underexplored.

What is there isn't impressive, to say the least. A great example can be found in Amegakure—it's not very charming, after an entire series where Naruto aspires to be Hokage and preaches love while sticking up for the possibility of change within the status quo, that Naruto continues the trend of previous Hokage by outright ignoring or underserving the villages outside Konoha.

Here's the simple fact: Naruto could have been written as a better Hokage. He just wasn't.

As it's clearly shown when Boruto is interrogated and tortured in Two Blue Vortex, Naruto also hasn't done much to change Konoha's political structure. Naruto left the possibility in place for Shikamaru, in his absence, to turn Konoha into a surveillance state. The village has become bustling and massive, but the horrors of its istration are the same as ever. Here's the simple fact: Naruto could have been written as a better Hokage. He just wasn't.

There are moments in Boruto where Naruto clearly struggles with whether he should have become Hokage in the first place. Boruto slaps fans in the face by making the answer to Naruto's question a big, resounding "no". The chance isn't gone forever for Naruto to be fixed, though. Boruto is already making big steps with this by bringing Boruto closer to Naruto in his ideals and heroism, but the famous overpowered orphan of yore has yet to be given a full comeback, himself.

1 Fix Naruto's Biggest Mistake

Boruto Finally Has a Chance to Do Something Better With Naruto's World

The reality is that Naruto's ineffectiveness has been a problem with the franchise for a long time. It's bad enough that Naruto never got the opportunity to show off his abilities as Hokage. It's worse that the full effects of the conflicts—arguably the result, at least in part, of an ineffective Hokage—are just as underexplored as in Naruto. In fact, Boruto is in many ways even more myopically Konoha-obsessed than Naruto itself.

A big thing that Boruto could do to truly bring itself out over Naruto would be to focus more on its world. How has the technological world impacted the social, political, and economic life within shinobi life? The question remains apt for exploration.

One of the biggest mistakes Naruto made was refusing to zoom out a little bit to take the big picture of Konoha's political power into view, then zoom back in on the lives of the individuals who actually make the whole shinobi system work by doing the "grunt work": the non-heroes. The shopkeepers, the citizens of other villages, the surely-complicated lives of the people just out walking their dogs.

Boruto has more reason than ever to work on this. Now, with Konoha being bustling and with the aftermath of the Fourth Great Ninja War well in place, plus with Boruto's big climactic fight just on the horizon, the series has plenty of opportunities to explore something Naruto never did and set itself apart in a crucial way. Right now, it's easy for fans to get the impression that Boruto is just playing dress-up on a stage where Naruto has done the costuming, aesthetics, and setting are all provided by Naruto.

However, things don't have to be that way. Boruto can do a lot more, and in spite of its problems, it's still a series with a ton of heart. It's under no mandate to live in the shadow of the series that came before it. But for Boruto to outshine Naruto, it's going to take a lot of serious introspection on the part of Kishimoto and Ikemoto.