Hawkeye2701 wrote:
Over all, I've liked this mission and all, but I do feel that it's too much of a rehash of the Zabuza arc with nowhere near as interesting villains. These two aren't going to leave anything close to as much impact and I'm kinda sad about that.
True. Zabuza and Haku taught Naruto and team 7 a very big lesson. The truth about the darkside of the noble and honorable shinobies, people always dreamt to become. But that was because it was the non peace era or prior to the fourth Shinobi war, where actual peace has been achieved. Naruto's story revolved around the broken shinobi system, which made good guy into bad guys, friends into foes, shinobi into monsters. It was a time where if you were a bad guy, that means it was only because of the system and the life you had to deal with. By each arc, he learned more about how disrupted everything was. Even his best friend was a prime victim of that system, as well as he himself.
Zabuza and Haku were good guys that had no other choice but to bent to the way of shinobi at that time. It was because of all that, that Naruto learned a lesson from them, and from all the other ones he'll eventually meet.
While Boruto's story revolves around the fixed up system, where if you're a bad guy, then it's because you're a jerk. Shin, Momo, Kinshi, that Shark boy( Don't remember his name), the cannibal guy, and These two guys, all are just jerks who are power hungry. With that, they also lack backstory. So the only reason they are jerks, are because they just were born as one. While in contrast, Sasuke, Madara, Obito, Nagato, Kabuto, Zabuza all were dearly effected by the system. Even Oro the jerks of all Villains in Naruto, was shaped into that type of a guy by the experiences he saw in life. His reason might be flawed compared to the others. But it was directly because of the system. Hence why interventions by Sasuke and interventions by Naruto proved to restore all those guys back into how they would be, if the system was right.
Now the only villain that had a good reason was Sumire, but she her reasons stemed from the time of the broken system. And this Ao, we don't know much about him and his reasons.
But to be fair, Zabuza and Haku somehow showed Naruto the value of friendship(by Sasuke sacrificing himself) and the same with teamwork. These two guys(those ex shinobies) also taught Team 7(Of Boruto) the value of teamwork. But in a totally different way.
This is just my own opinion, though.