Is Boruto: Two Blue Vortex Worth Reading?

Quick facts
Format	Manga, 8 volumes
Run	2023–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.5 · MangaUpdates 7.0
Where to read	Viz Media / Shonen Jump — official

Overview

Three years pass between the end of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations and the start of Two Blue Vortex, and almost nothing about the status quo survives the jump intact. Kawaki now lives in Konoha as its celebrated hero, Naruto and Hinata are gone, sealed away in the fallout of Part 1's ending, and Boruto is the one treated as the outsider in a world that no longer sees him the way it used to. Getting his father back becomes the engine driving the story forward.

This is the sequel arc to the original Boruto manga, and the biggest structural change is behind the scenes: Masashi Kishimoto, creator of the original Naruto, now writes the story solo, with Mikio Ikemoto continuing on art. It's serialized monthly in V Jump, with Shueisha handling Japanese volumes and Viz Media publishing officially in English both physically and digitally.

What it does well

The time skip isn't cosmetic, it genuinely reshuffles who has power, who's trusted, and who's on the outside looking in, which gives the early chapters real tension instead of just picking up where things left off. Kishimoto writing solo shows: the pacing is tighter and the stakes read as more consequential than stretches of the original Boruto manga, which often struggled under a split writing/art credit structure.

The Boruto and Kawaki dynamic is the clearest beneficiary. Positioning a former rival as the celebrated hero while Boruto fights to reclaim his place draws obvious comparisons to Naruto and Sasuke, and the manga mostly earns them rather than just coasting on nostalgia. The redesigned art holds up well too, action sequences read cleaner and character designs feel more deliberate than Part 1's.

Where it falls short

This is not a jumping-on point. The emotional weight depends entirely on investment built up over the original Naruto series and the first Boruto manga, so anyone without that history will be lost within a few chapters. Monthly V Jump serialization also means the story moves slower in real time than a weekly Shonen Jump title would, so waiting between chapters takes patience. And while the story does more for its side cast than Part 1 did, a few legacy characters from the original Naruto era still show up mostly as background presence rather than active participants.

Verdict

A confident creative reset for the Boruto franchise, sharper writing, higher stakes, and a rivalry that finally does justice to the Naruto/Sasuke comparisons it's clearly reaching for. Worth reading if you already have a stake in this world and want to see Kishimoto take the wheel directly. It's not the place to start the franchise, but for existing fans it's some of the strongest Naruto-universe material in years.