With Season 1 of the Boruto anime finished, Western fans of the Boruto English dub have been left scratching their heads — again. There's little communication between Japanese producers and Western distributors, and even less between those distributors and audiences. This has often left the future of the Boruto dubbed release for streaming audiences up in the air.
The history of Boruto's English dub is controversial, as English dubs can sometimes be. This is mainly due to fans being subjected to restarts, contract changes, and even streaming complications. Due to a combination of surprisingly low Western ratings, a tenuous global distribution relationship, and a whopping COVID-19 delay, the Boruto English dub has struggled to reach viewers for some time. The unknown status of Season 2, however, has allowed the dub some time to catch up. With its now completed release on Blu-ray, hopefully it shouldn't be long before streaming services make it available for audiences who have been patiently waiting.
Updated on October 16, 2024 by Lauren Younkin: Due to the sporadic nature of the English dub's release for Boruto, complete information can be hard to come by. As such, this article has been updated to reflect the most recent information available on the English dub, and has been edited to comply with CBR's current formatting standards.
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How Many Episodes of Boruto Have Been Dubbed?
The controversy surrounding the Boruto English dub began with its initial distribution by Adult Swim, which released the first 52 episodes on Toonami before dropping the series from the programming block. Although the Boruto dub began with around a reasonable 50 episode gap between its subbed counterpart, after being forced to restart the release via VIZ Media's home-release schedule and a COVID-19 delay, the dub began to seriously lag behind.
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VIZ was finally able to get things back to normal with the company managing to release two box sets in 2023, each of them containing 21 dubbed episodes. They then released the final Blu-ray box set on August 13, 2024. As of now, the Boruto English dub has completed its release of all 293 episodes in Season 1 via the aforementioned VIZ system of box set collections. Dubbed Boruto box sets usually contain thirteen episodes per collection and cost around $45-$50 per box set, but the most recent two each had 21 episodes.
As DVD and Blu-ray continue to phase out of the average household and streaming makes media more accessible than ever, people have far fewer reasons to justify spending the price of each full box set that comes out, meaning that streaming is the most practical option. However, even though online streaming platforms seemed like they were finally starting to pick up the pace and catch up on releasing Boruto's English dub episodes, this ground to a halt.
Where to Stream the Boruto English Dub
Where to Stream Naruto and Boruto | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Series | Streaming Service | |||
Naruto | Peacock, Pluto TV, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Tubi | |||
Boruto: Naruto Next Generations | Crunchyroll, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video |
Despite the steady release of dubbed Boruto dubbed episodes from VIZ, many fans are finding it difficult to stream the dubbed episodes. This includes doing so with paid streaming services. Often, legitimate platforms offer only so many episodes of the dub, causing some to mistakenly believe production has ceased entirely. However, the culprit is often licensing issues.
One legitimate platform that seems to have disappointed fans of the Boruto dub in the past is the Disney-controlled streaming service, Hulu. Hulu originally garnered a slew of complaints regarding its lackluster release of the English dub. Since its announcement in January 2021, Hulu has finally begun catching up on the demand, but it seems to have slowed again in recent years with updates being infrequent. To date, Hulu has only released dubbed episodes up through 210, "Clues to Kara." The batch of dubbed episodes 156-210 became available on June 1, 2024.
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Many subscribers to the Crunchyroll streaming service (and previously Funimation) across international markets have fared worse, as there have been unilateral reports of the addition and subsequent removal of some licensed Boruto episodes. Following the acquisition of Madman, Funimation eliminated the previous platform, AnimeLab. It then offered only sporadic dub episodes from the full catalog or, in some regions, none at all. Funimation no longer became a streaming option after its consolidation into Crunchyroll in April of 2024. Conversely, Crunchyroll does not have any of the Boruto dub available.
At present, all 293 episodes of Boruto Season 1 have been dubbed into English. Only 210 of those dubbed episodes are presently available on Hulu. This means that English-preferring audiences who want to stream will have to wait to catch up on the remaining 83 episodes that finish out the rest of Season 1. Boruto has been on hiatus since March 2023, and there's no word on when it will come back. Regardless of whether it's dubbed or subbed, the Boruto anime has long since been contentious among fans, especially when compared to its predecessor, Naruto.
Fans Have Had Several Issues With the Boruto Anime
Even before the issues with the Boruto dub, the anime as a whole was controversial among fans. The biggest reason for this is the use of filler and the series' overall pacing, which is something even Naruto and Shippuden struggled with. The Boruto anime initially adapts the story of the movie, diverging quite a bit from the original manga. Far more lighthearted, it has a plethora of "anime-original" characters and storylines, many of which steer the tone away from more serious storytelling. This includes Boruto himself, who acts a lot sillier in the anime than he does in the manga, adopting a personality that makes it difficult for fans of his father to get behind. This also affects character development, with Boruto seeing character growth at a much slower rate than in the manga. It's a problem that goes back around to the anime's consistent use of filler, meaning that story beats from the manga are essentially postponed.
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New characters don't receive the necessary development or screentime that they need, making those who initially seem important fall by the wayside instead. Even the series' power levels are fairly inconsistent, which has an impact on the fights. This is all the case regardless of whether fans are watching the Boruto English dub or the original Japanese version, and it's made some prefer the manga as a way of continuing the Naruto storyline. That's without even getting into the animation issues with the series, many of which are so hard to accept that longtime fans of the Naruto franchise don't understand how such a major series could be treated so poorly. Add in the fact that the Boruto English dub is incomplete, and it's perhaps the most inefficient way of enjoying the series.
Loyal fans continue to hold out hope for things like improvements in the production and animation, and even the full availability of the English dubbed episodes on streaming. For many, however, it sometimes feels as though the Boruto anime itself is simply a means to continue cashing in on the success of its predecessors. The manga, which many believe got off to a slow start, has a dedicated following and a compelling enough story that fans deserve to see it come to life in Big Three fashion, and that includes dubs for every episode.
Boruto
TV-14
Action
Adventure
Son of Naruto Uzumaki, Boruto, follows his father's footsteps along with his friends to become great ninja. Throughout all their adventures, Boruto is determined to make his mark in the ninja world and live outside of his father's shadow.
- Release Date
- April 5, 2017
- Creator
- Masashi Kishimoto
- Cast
- Amanda Céline Miller , Robbie Daymond , Maile Flanagan , Todd Haberkorn , Colleen O'Shaughnessey , Cherami Leigh , Max Mittelman , Melissa Fahn , Stephanie Sheh , Billy Kametz
- Main Genre
- Anime
- Seasons
- 26
- Studio
- Pierrot
- Franchise
- Naruto
- Writers
- Masashi Kishimoto
- Number of Episodes
- 297
- Streaming Service(s)
- Hulu , Crunchyroll , Amazon Prime Video