'Naruto' Gets Emotional With a Major 'Boruto' Death

The latest episode of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations brought us one (blessed) step closer to the end of the "Mitsuki Disappearance Arc", and as we get to the end of this lengthy storyline, we're also getting some hard-hitting moments as major characters from the arc are steadily being killed off.

The last few episodes have seen members of Hidden Stone's artificial humanoids, the fabrications, all lose their lives. Kakou and Kokuyou both recently fell in battle against Boruto and his fellow Hidden Leaf genin, but this latest episode upped the ante in a big way. First we got an unusually brutal death for Kirara, the female fabrication, who was crushed by a massive stone. However, the end of this new episode, "Mitsuki and Sekiei", lived up to its title by finally getting to the emotional showdown that fans have seen coming since this new "Mitsuki Disappearance Arc" began...

WARNING - Spoilers Follow!

The big showdown in question was between Mitsuki and Sekiei, the last of Lord Ku's fabrication enforcers. Sekiei and Mitsuki had bonded and become friends over the course of Mitsuki being escorted away from Hidden Leaf by the fabrications and led to Hidden Stone; in fact, it was Sekiei who often vouched for Mitsuki and protected him, when his fellow fabrications like Kokuyou were suspicious of Mitsuki's intentions. Naturally, Sekiei blows a major gasket when he learns that he was lied to and betrayed for the first (and only?) time in his artificial life; Mitsuki admits to using him to help infiltrate the fabrications and learn of their plot against Hidden Stone. Sekiei comes at Mitsuki full-force, in a battle that only one of them will walk away from!

It's not a big shocker that, in the end, Sekiei's explosive clay jutsu is no match for Mitsuki's formidable powers. After dodging Sekiei's explosive attacks and trying to talk him down, Mitsuki simply uses a lightning style attack to negate Sekiei's jutsu, and the distraught fabrication ends up wearing out the rest of his life force in the effort of attacking Mitsuki.

As was the case when Inojin lost his pet Akuta, Boruto got unusually heavy and emotional with Sekiei's death scene. That emotion reaches its climax when Sekiei asks Mitsuki if they are friends, and goes to seal the deal with a fist bump, just as Mitsuki taught him (and Boruto first taught Mitsuki). Sekiei's body crumbles to dust just before Mitsuki can bump his fist one last time, and it's hard not to get a little teary-eyed watching Mitsuki lose the first real friend he made on his own.

It may not be enough to redeem the disappointment of this "Mitsuki Arc" overall, ut dammit if Boruto didn't hit us right in the heartstrings (again)...

Catch new episodes of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations streaming weekly on Hulu, Crunchyroll and Funimation.