In the diverse world of manga/comics fan discourse, two franchises that are rarely mentioned in the same breath are Boruto and Star Wars. On the surface, this circumstance seems reasonable. Boruto is a story about a young ninja figuring out life as the son of village leader Naruto, who is also a ninja of some repute. Star Wars is a complex, multi-level saga stretching thousands of years in a galaxy far away. However, a closer read of both stories reveals huge similarities between two key villains.
The connection between Boruto and Star Wars arises from Isshiki Otsutsuki in Boruto and Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. The similarities between both characters are too deep to ignore - in fact, fans could be forgiven for concluding that Isshiki is essentially a Sith Lord.
Isshiki is an alien being who arrived on Earth a long time ago, from a galaxy or dimension far away. The Otsutsuki clan only travel in pairs, and so Isshiki arrived with a subordinate named Kaguya. However, Kaguya betrayed Isshiki and left him for dead. As his life was quickly expiring, a monk named Jigen happened across Isshiki’s body. Before dying completely, Isshiki transferred his essence into Jigen, who became his vessel. However, Jigen’s body was not the most ideal vessel to maintain his essence. Accordingly, Isshiki commanded him to search for and identify a perfectly compatible vessel for Isshiki to subsequently possess.
Isshiki’s story is the mirror image of how Emperor Palpatine cheated death, right down to his ability to project his essence into vessels. Due to the Rule of Two, Sith also only operate in pairs, with the master preying on their apprentice, who usually betrays them in search of power. In both cases, the search for a perfect vessel required organization and experimentation. Through Jigen, Isshiki created the organization known as Kara, which worked to achieve his desires including finding a better vessel than Jigen. Palpatine likewise maneuvered to become Chancellor, then Emperor, to gain the resources he needed to enact his will and maintain his essence. Through his puppet Snoke, Palpatine established the First Order to focus on achieving his plans, and it is clear that Isshiki and Palpatine never considered Jigen or Snoke more than temporary instruments of their will.
In regard to experimentation, in both cases, the experiments tended to end with the subjects dying or being permanently changed for the worse. Jigen had Kara purchase 15 orphaned children who were then experimented on to determine whether their bodies were compatible with Isshiki’s genetic code. He also hired top scientists to help with the work. For Palpatine, his initial idea was to find another being who would be compatible with his dark Force essence. This led him to focus on finding Force-sensitive children and testing them before moving on to other means.
The similarity of their actions in two fundamentally different stories is so extreme, fans could imagine Isshiki is a Sith who entered the world of Boruto by accident. Given the breadth of Star Wars' universe in both space and time, with many unknowns in the depths of space, it could well be that the world of Naruto and later Boruto has had some significant interactions with the Sith, and that Isshiki Otsutsuki is a forebear of Emperor Palpatine himself.