The latest episode of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations took this new Mitsuki-centric focused arc into a new direction as it began to reveal the villains behind the attack on the Leaf Village, and it’s teasing something else as well.
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With the introduction of the mysterious Lord Ku, fans are suspecting that he’s actually the former Tsuchikage Ohnoki’s grandson and further tying in Boruto with its predecessor series.
With Ohnoki paling around with Boruto and the others in a filler episode before the start of the Mitsuki arc, fans are beginning to suspect that it wasn’t a filler episode at all. Instead, it’s a bit of foreshadowing potentially leading to Lord Ku being directly related to the powerful Kage.
The only evidence of Lord Ku’s identity so far is the fact that he is from the Land of Earth, and is using created beings as shinobi much like Orochimaru did (and Ku even sounds a bit like Orochimaru). In the latest episode, they are actually awaiting the arrival of Mitsuki, as he seems to play an important role in Ku’s plans. With such a knowledge of Orochimaru’s work, Ku must have ties into some of the bigger wigs.
If Ku isn’t Ohnoki’s grandson it won’t damage the arc in any real way, but it would add an extra layer to the confrontation. Many of the arcs in Boruto have centered on how the new generation deals with the leftover problems of the previous (which was a running theme throughout the first series as well), and this would be another good example.
Originally created by Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto ran in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump for 700 chapters. The story follows a young ninja, with a sealed demon within him, that wishes to become the leader of his home village. The sequel, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is set several years after the events of the original Naruto story and features the children of many of its key characters such as Naruto and Hinata.
Boruto: Naruto Next Generations has done well in Japan. Recently it even made TV Tokyo’s list of Top 5 Anime in sales and profits, coming third in sales and fifth and profits. The anime has been such a success that the Naruto franchise as a whole stills holds a top spot in many anime profits rankings as well. The series even managed to cross 235 million copies of the manga sold worldwide.
