Boruto: Naruto Next Generations 1×212 Review – “Amado’s Defection”

Boruto anime episode 212, titled ‘Amado’s Defection’, brought a whole lot of changes for our heroes to make sense of. Next week’s episode is going to be so much fun!

For months, the anime writers haven’t been shy when it came to dropping hints about Amado not being completely loyal to the Kara organization for some reason. This week, ‘Amado’s Defection’ finally showed him going all the way through with his plan to leave the villainous organization behind. The only option for Amado to remain safe and ensure Jigen’s defeat was asking Naruto for refuge at the Hidden Leaf Village. In return, Amado’s willing to share intel about the Kara organization, the Ten-Tails, the Otsutsuki, and his scientific skills.

One can argue that he could have presented his conditions in front of Naruto and the rest in a better way. However, if you think about it, Amado wasn’t even sure if Naruto was still active after his and Sasuke’s battle with Jigen. In Amado’s mind, Naruto would still be recovering from his injuries and Shikamaru would be in charge of running Konoha. That’s why Amado decided to take Shikadai hostage (by placing a bomb around the young ninja’s neck) to talk directly to Shikamaru.

Having said that, I think the writers ran into an issue by having Amado make such a decision. The anime has shown us that Kashin Koji was still in Konoha days after Naruto’s fight with Jigen. While Kashin Koji was stealing data about the village shinobi, why didn’t he tell Amado that Naruto had recovered faster than anticipated and was back to performing his Hokage duties?

I think the current issue was due to the anime opting to make certain changes in the timeline. In the manga, Kashin Koji going to fight Jigen didn’t take almost 10 days to occur (after the Kara leader’s battle with Naruto and Sasuke). From what I can remember about the manga, Kashin Koji vs Jigen and Amado making his way to the village happened two or three days after Naruto vs Jigen. Slowing down the timeline of the events in the anime is what makes Kashin Koji’s senseless failure to tell Amado about Naruto’s health so obvious. He should have been able to deliver said information to Amado before sending him to the Hidden Leaf Village.

Anyway, certain fans didn’t like Shikamaru losing his temper in front of Amado in the manga and I think they won’t like seeing that in the anime either. Due to Shikamaru being a very logical person, I do think the writers could have handled the situation a lot better. Shikamaru’s allowed to get angry, of course, due to his son being used by Amado. But Shikamaru’s outburst could have been tweaked a bit to feel more in character with who fans know him to be.

All in all, ‘Amado’s Defection’ was a good little episode setting up things for the battle upon battle the fandom will get to enjoy starting from next week. I can’t wait to see all of that epicness be animated.

Other thoughts and questions:

• Yes, to Shikadai, Chocho, and Inojin participating in a training session to improve their abilities. According to their teacher Moegi, those three were very worked up after failing to apprehend Kashin Koji.
• Of course, Katasuke would be excited to learn from Amado. Katasuke made it very clear that he needed Kara’s scientific data to help repair Kawaki’s body.
• Amado shutting down Delta with a voice command was a boss move.
• The line about Amado traveling to Konoha with a section of cell fragments along with the digitized data aggregate and having a secret weapon (due to Kashin Koji stealing shinobi data) has me wondering if all of that will connect to what Amado’s cooking up in Boruto manga issue 60. Hmmm. 

What did you think of ‘Amado’s Defection’?

Let us know.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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