What is a good hero without a good villain to challenge them? Such is the case with shonen series like Naruto and One Piece. The two long-running anime franchises are quite different when it comes to their worlds of pirates and ninjas but it’s clear that the Seventh Hokage and the would-be king of the pirates do share some similarities. In a recent interview with Naruto’s creator Masashi Kishimoto and Boruto: Two Blue Vortex’s artist Mikio Ikemoto, the pair discussed how villains like Orochimaru and the Divine Trees were forged by Eiichiro Oda’s approach in creating the Grand Line.
To start, Masashi Kishimoto in a recent interview was asked why he took the route of fleshing out his villains more rather than making them full-blown ‘super villains’, “It’s true that I want to tell human stories. From the start, I had opportunities to introduce characters as supervillains. Since One Piece was already doing that, I wanted to do something different with Naruto. My villain characters also had a story. Manga is also an industry where you have to create what doesn’t exist yet, which pushes you to try different approaches.”
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Boruto: Two Blue Villainy
To add to Kishimoto’s thoughts, the former assistant turned Boruto: Two Blue Vortex artist Mikio Ikemoto touched upon the villains that make up the current sequel series, “I try not to duplicate what was done in Naruto. That’s why there are more purely evil villains in Boruto. Real villains.” As readers have seen in the current manga run, there’s not much that is human about the likes of the “Divine Trees”, aka the evolved beings born from the Ten-Tails and the Otsutsuki’s energy-absorbing plants.
While One Piece continues to release anime episodes weekly, Boruto remains missing in action. Studio Pierrot had placed the anime on hiatus following the previous fight against Code as the production house looks to take a more seasonal approach to its works. While Pierrot stated in the past that it would return with four new episodes that focus on the original Naruto series, said installments were indefinitely postponed.
Want to stay up to date on the villains of both Konoha and the Grand Line? Follow along with Team Anime on ComicBook for the latest updates on Naruto and One Piece and hit me up directly @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime.
