Momoshiki’s Plan: A Different Take on the Divine Tree
Momoshiki Otsutsuki was Boruto’s first antagonist—at least in the Boruto manga. His grand plan was to take the tailed beasts’ chakra and use it to cultivate his many Divine Trees. This process differed from what we’ve seen before, as it didn’t require using an actual Ten-Tails.
Was Momoshiki’s Defeat Truly Part of His Plan?
This plan, however, didn’t come to fruition since Momoshiki lost his battle against Naruto, Sasuke, and Boruto. This defeat spawned a theory that Momoshiki planned for this outcome, but is that true? The answer is a bit more nuanced.
This theory stems from the fact that many find it hard to believe Boruto—at the tender age of 12—could defeat this evolved version of Momoshiki. On one hand, some people use this to downplay Momoshiki’s strength to absurd levels. On the other hand, some argue that it highlights Momoshiki’s intelligence, suggesting that he allowed this to happen to gain access to Boruto’s body. Then, some believe Boruto is poorly written, and the inconsistent power scaling doesn’t make sense.
People need to understand that the power scaling doesn’t necessarily make sense; rather, Momoshiki isn’t as strong as people thought he was, and the opposite is true for the people who fought him.
Naruto and Sasuke’s Role in the Battle Against Momoshiki
For instance, the Naruto who fought Fused Momoshiki was nowhere near his full power. Before the fight, Naruto had already used a significant amount of his and Kurama’s chakra to contain the attack at the stadium, ensuring the villagers wouldn’t get hurt. In Six Paths Sage Mode, Naruto uses his and Kurama’s chakras, even in his avatar state. Naruto was knocked unconscious after expending so much chakra to contain the blast (a blast he could have easily countered, as stated by Sasuke).
Remember, this was an attack created using the chakra Momoshiki stole from the tailed beasts and then amplified—it’s not something he could make at will. After this, Momoshiki absorbed Kurama’s chakra for hours during the battle, with Naruto resisting the entire time. This added to Naruto’s fatigue since extracting a tailed beast’s chakra is known to shorten the user’s lifespan and cause significant physical strain. This is why Naruto was crying out in pain during the extraction.
It’s clear that Naruto was barely standing and barely conscious when Sasuke saved him. Moreover, Momoshiki absorbed over 50% of Kurama’s remaining chakra after the initial attack at the stadium. This means the Naruto who fought Fused Momoshiki was heavily fatigued and had less than 50% of Kurama’s chakra. Despite this, Naruto could still go toe-to-toe with Momoshiki in the anime and even won their brief one-on-one tussle. In the manga version of the fight, Naruto outright demolished Momoshiki.
Base Naruto also blocked and reacted to Fused Momoshiki’s attacks in the manga. However, this was somewhat toned down in the anime adaptation, where Momoshiki outshined him. It’s important to note that Fused Momoshiki wasn’t using his full power against this version of Naruto, as he could contend with a far more potent version of Naruto in other instances.
Yes, Momoshiki did slam the Kurama avatar, but this was a less-than-50%-powered Kurama, so it doesn’t mean much compared to a hypothetical full-power Naruto. Additionally, one could argue that Fused Momoshiki wasn’t at full power either. Base Momoshiki had expended a lot of chakra during the Chunin Exams, and Kinshiki was already weakened before their fusion. So, we haven’t seen a full-power version of Fused Momoshiki either.
The main issue with the “Momoshiki was weakened” argument is that he still got beaten even after healing his body using the chakra from the scientific ninja tool and consuming the chakra pills he created with half of Kurama’s remaining chakra.
Ultimately, none of this matters when determining Momoshiki’s mindset and whether he planned to lose. We know he can see the future—or at least a future—which we’ll revisit later. It’s possible that he foresaw a future where he would give Boruto the Karma seal and take over his body.
There’s even an instance where he seemingly looks at Boruto with his Byakugan and says, “You seem to be shouldering an interesting fate,” implying that he saw what would happen to Boruto.
The Limitations of Momoshiki’s Future Vision
It is important to note that Momoshiki doesn’t see the future in its entirety. This is implied in Chapter 75 of Boruto: Naruto’s Next Generations when he said that Boruto Uzumaki saw the same future fragments that he could see. He refers to them as a “tableau,” a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or history.
There’s also the fact that Momoshiki outright says that he can’t see his fate, which means that whatever future he saw when he looked at Boruto couldn’t have shown him that he would take over Boruto’s body with Karma. That would be a blatant contradiction. Even the future he peered into about Boruto “losing everything” didn’t show Momoshiki as being part of that future, which is why he goes on to say that even he doesn’t know why it happens. All he knows is that he sees a future where everyone turns against Boruto, which he wants to use against him to take over Boruto’s body after he disappears.
It is evident that Momoshiki doesn’t see the future in detail, as even in Chapter 75, he is confused about what Eida’s Shinjutsu is. He later realized it was Omnipotence. If Momoshiki could see the future in detail, why wouldn’t he know why Boruto loses everything? Why wouldn’t he have known that Eida has Omnipotence? Why was he surprised that they were able to defeat Isshiki? Why was he surprised that Boruto’s clone was a decoy to land his Rasengan?
There’s also the fact that when Momoshiki perished, he was trying to overpower Boruto’s Rasengan and failed to do so. His dialogue then was, “This can’t be… me, defeated.” No, he didn’t say that to deceive anyone since he whispered it to himself in the middle of a roaring Rasengan and the destruction of the environment. No one heard him say this, nor did he intend them to listen to it, given that he whispered.
Now, another contingent doesn’t believe Momoshiki planned this because he saw the future but because he saw Boruto’s Jougan. Aside from the fact that this doesn’t make sense for the Boruto manga—since Boruto never used the Jougan in that fight—why would Momoshiki need to do any of this to get Boruto’s Jougan?
People fail to realize this, but implanting a Karma seal doesn’t require the death of the Otsutsuki. He could have implanted the Karma seal like Jigen did to Kawaki or Isshiki to Jigen. Both of those things happened while the Otsutsuki were still alive. He could have gone about his business and allowed it to extract over time. Alternatively, he could have abducted Boruto and imprisoned him in another dimension while that happened. He didn’t need to die to get the Jougan.
In fact, his death makes it less likely, as he doesn’t have control over the vessel, and Boruto could literally die at any point in time, which would also kill Momoshiki. So, I refuse to believe that Momoshiki has such a low IQ that he thought this was a better plan. I would much rather believe that he lost and Boruto was him, so he planted the Karma seal.
From a power-scaling perspective, it does make sense that the Rasengan Naruto overpowered Momoshiki gave to Boruto. Naruto’s attack potency is more significant than Momoshiki’s, even in his weakened state, when concentrated into a single attack like the Rasengan. Boruto was also amped to some degree since the power passed through his body to enhance the Rasengan. Combining that with Boruto’s power, we can see why the attack damaged Boruto but still had the strength to win the clash, ultimately destroying Momoshiki.
Some still argue that Momoshiki was playing 5D chess, which once again stems from his ability to see the future. However, as I pointed out earlier, Momoshiki only sees bits of the future and cannot see his future, which limits his ability.
Momoshiki also doesn’t fully understand how the future works. I had a conversation the other day with another Boruto content creator about the differences between how Amado and Momoshiki operate. He believes that Amado makes a lot of assumptions and lacks evidence, so you can’t believe what he says, whereas Momoshiki is a bit more informed since he sees what he thinks.
This belief stems from Amado assuming that Eida’s Tenseigan ability was a Shinjutsu acquired from Shibai’s cells when it was instead a manifestation of Omnipotence—the ability she did receive from Shibai. I disagreed with this because Amado didn’t just assume that the charm ability was Shibai’s. Based on his other experiments, he concluded that he awakened new abilities after receiving Shibai’s cells.
It is logical to conclude that the ability awakened after being implanted with those same cells also came from those cells, thus not a baseless assumption. The same thing applies to Momoshiki as well. He saw bits of the future and assumed that it was definitely going to happen. This assumption comes crashing down in Chapter 80 of Boruto: Naruto’s Next Generations when Boruto doesn’t succumb to his despair.
That happened because Momoshiki doesn’t understand the mechanics of how the future works in this universe. Koji explained it in Boruto: Two Blue Vortex Chapter 16: the more people know the future, the more the nature of that future changes. Once you see the future, you can no longer act the same as before you knew it. Instead, it will branch in complex ways, making it even more challenging to predict, to the point of negating the advantage of foreseeing the future. He even went as far as to say that knowing the future leads to the act of destroying it.
So, in a sense, Momoshiki’s knowledge of the future has already changed. He then told Boruto about the future multiple times, which means that more people now know that future, which, of course, leads to the future changing even more.
Did Momoshiki Plan His Death?
So, why would Momoshiki do this? Why would he continue interfering by trying to abduct Kawaki after the Isshiki fight or kill Naruto during the Code fight? By the way, we can’t even say that he saw that he was supposed to do those things because he said that he was surprised they could defeat Isshiki, allowing him to do what he did.
Again, Momoshiki can’t see his fate, so how would he have seen that he was supposed to do this? It doesn’t make sense. So, it is evident that Momoshiki was acting in the moment. If that’s the case, he clearly doesn’t understand how the future works. If he did, he wouldn’t be doing things that aid in destroying the future he saw—unless he’s stupid or stupid, which doesn’t appear to be the case since he’s portrayed as knowledgeable.
This is also a problem in and of itself since Momoshiki claims to know every Shinjutsu, which should include prescience. So, if Momoshiki knows what prescience is—the ability to see all possible futures—why wouldn’t he know that multiple possible futures exist? He shouldn’t be surprised that the future could change or that another future could manifest based on him knowing about it or telling Boruto Uzumaki about it. Yet, for some reason, he was.
So, it seems like Momoshiki knows of prescience, but he doesn’t really understand how the future functions. This would explain why he did the things that he did.
So, if someone says that Momoshiki is playing 5D chess and planned his death because he saw a future that couldn’t possibly have been shown to him—since he himself said that he couldn’t see his own fate—nor did he do it for the Jougan (which he could have easily gotten without needing to die, putting him at the mercy of humans until he’s able to resurrect), all of this doesn’t make sense.
It will only make sense if you assume that Momoshiki is the most low-IQ character in the history of fiction, which is not the case.
So, do I think Momoshiki planned his death? The answer is no—100%. That did not happen. He lost. If you’re intrigued by the layers of mystery surrounding Momoshiki’s actions and the evolving dynamics in Boruto’s story, now is the perfect time to dive into the Boruto Two Blue Vortex chapters. With high-stakes battles, shocking revelations, and intense character development, the latest chapters promise to keep you on the edge. Don’t miss out on the next thrilling phase of Boruto’s journey!
