Naruto Voice Actor Maile Flanagan Tried To Make Naruto’s Character More Stern In Boruto

Briana Lawrence interviewed Maile Flanagan for Crunchyroll to celebrate 20 years of Naruto and had a lot of interesting questions for the voice actor. One question she asked specifically aimed at the differences between Naruto as a child and a teenager to him as an adult and parent. Boruto focuses on the next generation of characters, with Boruto, Naruto’s son, taking center stage, of course.

This provided an interesting transition for Flanagan’s portrayal of Naruto, who is usually portrayed as a child, teenager, or young adult. Flanagan addressed this by saying, “Well, I’m trying to be a little stricter. A little more emotionally strict I think. A little bit more emotionally grounded.”

Flanagan admitted that the transition from Naruto’s narrative as the main focus to the younger protagonist’s father wasn’t the smoothest. “In the first few episodes of Boruto, I won’t lie, I taught a lot. I was like, ‘Is that so?'” she shared of questioning the narrative. However, things turned fast enough for her! “Then that stopped and it became very adventurous, fun and interesting. I had to fight again, which was fantastic. And some really emotional stuff.”