Title: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Vol. 8
Author: Masahi Kishimoto (Creator), Mikio Ikemoto (Art), Ukyo Kodachi (Story)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
Genre: Shonen, Battle
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
The Story
In the eighth volume of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Kawaki is forced to follow Naruto on an errand. Sarada runs into them and ends up tagging along. Kawaki finds her a bit annoying but, in the end, Sarada regards him as a friend which is a foreign concept to someone like Kawaki. The errand is to get a vase to replace the one that Kawaki broke. Meanwhile, Delta and Koji arrive at Konoha but they realize that they cannot enter due to the Yamanaka clan’s barrier detection defense that’s placed around the city.
Somehow, Koji doesn’t need to worry about that so he tells Delta to sit back and wait as he searches for Kawaki. He ends up finding him but simply observes from a distance. In the meantime, Boruto and Kawaki have a sparring match to see if Boruto can control his karma. Delta gets a bit too impatient in waiting and sends a drone out to find Kawaki. When she locates them, she ends up attacking and now we get a battle between Delta and Naruto!
This was a pretty short volume but it had a nice mixture of story and action. Obviously, the Kara group is on the move to retrieve Kawaki but it seems that Delta has her own way of doing things and it extremely impatient. Still, the final chapter gives up a nice battle that looks to continue on in Volume 9. There really wasn’t much of a cliffhanger here, though which was a bit disappointing. It felt as if we reached the halfway point of the battle, and suddenly, the manga took a commercial break. I would have thought that there would have been a bigger moment to end the volume on but it kind of just went out with a whimper. Oh well, it was still entertaining and we did end up getting some nice character development.
Characters
The big focus continued to be placed on Kawaki in this volume. Here, we seem him slowly beginning to trust Boruto and Naruto. He’s still pretty cold and uncaring but that’s just his nature after everything that happened to him. We are given some flashbacks during the time he was being “trained” (more like forced) to use his karma and improve it. We saw how he was abused physically for his initial weakness and it serves as a clear reflection of who he is today. Kawaki, however, slowly sees the value of being protected… even if it is just a little. Still, he’s beginning to open up a little bit more to Boruto, even going as far as to offer to help him train to get him used to his karma. With Naruto sticking up for him when Delta arrived, I can tell that it will have an even greater effect on Kawaki next volume.
Outside of that, not much in the way of development for the other characters. We got to see more of Delta’s impatience as well as Koji’s level-headedness. Sarada is still the same Sarada and Naruto is still Naruto sticking to his tried and true ninja way.
Final Thoughts
This volume did feel a bit on the short side but we did get a lot of good stuff within it. It’s nice to see Kawaki becoming the “young Sasuke” of the series and it’ll be interesting to see how he comes out of this battle between Naruto and Delta. It makes me wonder if Koji will get involved or if he’ll simply observe and scold Delta for being rash once everything is said and done. Perhaps Delta doesn’t make it out of Konoha alive and Koji simply scoffs and leaves the village? I don’t know what to expect but I doubt the outcome will result in Delta getting captured and spilling her guts. That would be completely uncharacteristic of her so that means she’ll either die or she’ll be defeated and rescued by Koji.
Of course, there is the possibility of her making off with Kawaki and the manga goes into a retrieval arc. Which, given the history of the Boruto/Naruto series, isn’t exactly out of the realm of possibility. In fact, as I sit here and type out my thoughts, it’s slowly creeping up to the top of my list of things that will happen next volume.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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