Boruto: Naruto the Movie

BORUTO -NARUTO THE MOVIE-

9.0(1)

OtakuDen

7.4(320,106)

MAL Score

Ranked #2744

Popularity #526

Action
Adventure
Fantasy
Martial Arts

Episodes: 1
Duration: 1 hr 35 min
Aired: Aug 7, 2015
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Boruto: Naruto the Movie follows Boruto Uzumaki, the talented and headstrong son of Naruto, now the Seventh Hokage. While Boruto has inherited his father’s drive, he struggles with Naruto’s constant absence as Hokage responsibilities keep him away from home. When Naruto is set to observe the upcoming Chunin Exams, Boruto becomes determined to earn his attention and recognition, turning to Sasuke Uchiha—Naruto’s longtime friend and rival—for guidance.

What begins as a straightforward test of skill takes a sudden turn when a new enemy attacks Konohagakure, threatening the hard-won peace of the village. As Naruto and his allies rush to defend their home, Boruto is forced to confront real stakes beyond competition, gaining a clearer understanding of the burdens Naruto has carried and what it truly means to live as a ninja.

Otaku Consensus

Studio Pierrot and director Hiroyuki Yamashita deliver one of the better-regarded Naruto films by making the franchise handoff feel like a big-screen martial-arts event rather than a disposable side story. Critics and fans most often praise its animation, family tension, and use of Sasuke as a new-generation mentor, while the most persistent complaint is that the ending compresses its escalation too aggressively.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Boruto: Naruto the Movie if you want the emotional payoff of the Naruto era without committing to a long sequel series first. It scratches the same itch as The Last: Naruto the Movie in its legacy focus, while its exam pressure and young-cast energy sit closer to the competitive spark of My Hero Academia than to a war-arc epic. The appeal is not just nostalgia: Hiroyuki Yamashita’s direction gives the fights a cleaner theatrical snap, Yasuharu Takanashi’s score keeps the franchise’s heightened ninja melodrama intact, and the film’s best material comes from seeing peace create a different kind of conflict than battlefield survival. It is especially strong for viewers curious about Boruto, Sarada, and Sasuke’s mentor role but wary of filler-heavy sequel viewing.

Key Characters

S
Sasuke Uchiha(VA: Noriaki Sugiyama)
Sasuke is compelling here because the franchise’s former avenger is reframed as a terse, demanding mentor whose silence carries more weight than long speeches.
S
Sarada Uchiha(VA: Kokoro Kikuchi)
Sarada brings the Uchiha legacy into a new register, combining sharp composure with the ambition of a child raised in a less apocalyptic era.
N
Naruto Uzumaki(VA: Junko Takeuchi)
Naruto’s interest in this film comes from seeing a shounen icon judged not by underdog grit, but by the compromises of adult responsibility.
B
Boruto Uzumaki(VA: Yuuko Sanpei)
Boruto works as a deliberately abrasive heir: talented, impatient, and written to challenge viewers who expected a simple miniature Naruto.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Hiroyuki Yamashita serves as both director and storyboard artist, giving the film a more unified action identity than many franchise tie-in movies. His staging favors readable martial-arts momentum over abstract energy clashes.
2
Studio Pierrot produced the film with Tetsuya Nishio credited as both character designer and chief animation director, while Hirofumi Suzuki also handled character design. That dual design credit matters because the film has to make older legacy characters and the new child cast feel visually connected without making them interchangeable.
3
Yasuharu Takanashi handles the music, keeping the sound of the Naruto franchise tied to heightened percussion, dramatic swells, and battle-track intensity rather than treating the sequel generation as a full tonal reset.
4
The film’s structure is a deliberate generational bridge: it uses shounen competition and ninja spectacle, but AniList’s highest-weighted tags identify Family Life at 95% and Primarily Child Cast at 79%, signaling how strongly the movie shifts the franchise’s center of gravity.
5
Its reception profile is broad but measured: MyAnimeList lists it at 7.37 from 320,106 votes with popularity rank #526, while AniList records a 71/100 score and 937 favourites. That places it as a widely watched franchise entry with solid approval rather than a universally canonized fan favorite.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Boruto: Naruto the Movie aired in Japan on August 7, 2015 as a single completed theatrical entry, not as part of a TV-season rollout.
Fun fact 2: Masashi Kishimoto is credited as the original creator, while Ukyou Kodachi is credited for the script, making the film an early formal handoff point between Naruto’s creator-led identity and the Boruto-era writing structure.
Fun fact 3: The storyboard credits are split among Hiroyuki Yamashita, Naoki Kobayashi, and Shingo Tamaki, a production detail that reflects how much of the film’s identity depends on action sequencing and large-scale set pieces.
Fun fact 4: The main Japanese cast keeps major continuity with the Naruto franchise: Junko Takeuchi voices Naruto, Noriaki Sugiyama voices Sasuke, while Yuuko Sanpei and Kokoro Kikuchi front the new-generation leads Boruto and Sarada.
Fun fact 5: Contemporary online reception often placed it among the stronger Naruto films, with praise for action, bonds, and hidden details, while professional summaries still flagged the fast final stretch as its most common structural weakness.