WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Chapter #57, “Eida,” of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations by Masashi Kishimoto, Mikio Ikemoto, Mari Morimoto and Snir Aharon, now available in English from Viz Media.
Boruto Chapter #57 featured the debut of Eida, a character teased in the previous chapter and hotly-anticipated by fans. But while the Kara cyborg's reveal does spell important developments for the series’ near future, Eida herself is a bit disappointing so far.
Eida’s newly-revealed abilities are powerful enough to be a threat against even Kage-level shinobi. She has a form of clairvoyance that allows her to see any events happening around the world in real-time. She can also view past events from any location, as long as they happened after she was born. This ability is why Code called her “she who knows everything in the world.”
Eida possesses a second passive ability over which she has no control. Just by being near her, any man or woman will immediately be captivated by her. This results in them becoming hopelessly infatuated with Eida, losing all will to cause her any harm even if they previously wanted to. Eida is impossible to fight. Nobody can resist falling in love with her, with the exception of her own blood relatives and Otsutsuki.
Although it’s an incredibly powerful ability, Eida hates it and resents Amado for granting it to her. According to Eida, it has robbed her of feeling any form of true love. Since almost everyone is enamored by her ability, there’s no way she can be sure that someone with feelings for her actually would have fallen for her on their own or if the emotions were manufactured by her ability.
Her conundrum is understandable, but what makes Eida disappointing is how her entire character seems to be based around this dilemma. The Naruto franchise isn’t known for having the best written or developed female characters and, from what we’ve seen of her so far, Eida might join the series’ ranks of weakly written women.
Her two abilities already make her one of the most powerful characters in play right now, and that’s even without taking the body modifications Amado made on her into account. But despite her power, all Eida is concerned with is finding her perfect “prince”
Eida was reawakened by Code, who wanted information on how to disable his power limiters. While she wasn’t able to help with that, but the two join forces anyway to capture Boruto and Kawaki, both part Otsutsuki, for different reasons. Code plans to feed Boruto to the Ten-Tails and cultivate a new Divine Tree while Eida hopes to begin a romance with Kawaki. Her ability won’t work on him since he once possessed and was changed by the Karma.
Eida and Code seem like they'll be the series’ main antagonists moving forward and, although they both wield enough power to be counted as very real threats, Code definitely stands out as having the more consequential goal. Characters with unconventional personalities are a big part of why fans enjoy manga but with Eida, her motivations seem less like a personality quirk and more like a stereotypically written woman. Compared to Code, who’s burdened with almost single-handedly carrying on the will of the Otsutsuki and stands to achieve god-like power should things go his way, Eida’s search for a lover seems trivial.
