Board Thread:Boruto Discussions/@comment-945885-20171013084137

Another dialogue heavy chapter. Konohamaru's teammate gets ambushed and tells Konohamaru to flee. In Konoha, the meeting in the Hokage office continues and they discuss the potential rise of dangerous new threats and how Boruto's mark is probably related to the Otsutsuki and this organization Kara. Naruto assigns the team to escort Katasuke and the prosthetic arm to a research facility in another city; Boruto initially refuses the mission out of distaste for Katasuke, but is ultimately convinced by his team, and he decides to go and treat it purely as an assignment.

On the train to the city they run into a much older Ao, last seen during Ten Tails' attack on the Shinobi Alliance HQ. He seems to have narrowly survived the explosion, and has been undergoing recovery and physical therapy since the end of the war. Thanks to Katasuke's research, he has a prosthetic left arm and leg, and a craniofacial prosthetic covering his right eye, cheek, and ear. The right side of his face is heavily scarred (it's impossible to tell whether he still has the Byakugan, as his eye is covered). Boruto recalls his field trip to Kirigakure in his Academy days.

Their conversation is overheard by Kashin Koji, who is sitting behind them with a briefcase of some sort under his seat. Kashin Koji has a conversation with Ao and we learn that Ao has been working for Kara, and used his access to Katasuke (actually a former Kusagakure shinobi) to place him under a genjutsu and steal information on the Scientific Ninja Tools. Kashin Koji departs, telling Ao that he left a case with weapons to use against them. Ao remarks that this will be his first battle in 16 years.

So, first takeaway is the pretty unambiguous confirmation that the anime (or more likely the novels) are canon.

Second is that Ao survived. My first thought was that it's weird we didn't hear about him, but then I realized that they never really touched on the aftermath of the war. Considering that he's from a country that was rarely explored in the series and has been out of commission all this time, it's not like he would have had a presence in the Blank Period, either.

Third is that Ao is a sleeper agent working for Kara. Presumably an Outer. Was he always a member, or was he approached in the years after the Fourth War? He's a Kiri Anbu member, which means everything about him could easily be a lie. If he was involved with Kara, maybe that's why he sought out to obtain a Byakugan. Or maybe they approached him because he had one. With the ongoing anime arc set in Kiri, I'm actually beginning to wonder if they'll retroactively foreshadow this in the new arc by showing that someone's pulling Shizuma's strings.

Fourth is someone in-universe finally stating, definitively, that it's been 16 years since the Fourth Great Ninja War. Couple that with the recent confirmation that the anime/novels are set 15 years after the war and we know that roughly a year has passed between them. All we really need is Himawari's actual birthdate and we can estimate character ages with near certainty.  