The Steam Ninja Scrolls: Potato Chips and the Giant Boulder!

Shikamaru reflects on the shōgi games he once played with Asuma, back before he grasped the meaning of the "king," and figures Mirai is nearly old enough to reach the answer herself. Meanwhile Mirai travels on with Kakashi, Guy, and Tatsumi toward an out-of-the-way hot spring, chatting about parents along the road. What greets them at the village is an enormous boulder wedged in its center, which an elderly woman says tumbled down the mountain a month earlier and flattened part of the town, the spring included.

Guy boasts he could clear the rock if he were two decades younger. Over drinks the locals explain they have only managed to haul off mud and sand, that nearby Yugakure is preoccupied with its own vanished young women, and that they never sought aid from the Land of Fire, assuming no one of rank would bother traveling out to them. Mirai tries to budge the boulder alone and gets nowhere.

Kakashi reveals he already summoned Chōji, who was on assignment close by, warning that any careless attempt to move the rock could trigger a lethal debris slide. Chōji arrives ravenous and short on his usual potato chips, so the roasted potatoes the innkeeper offers do little to restore him. Determined to help, Mirai and Tatsumi cook up a batch of chips from scratch. As they work, Chōji talks about Asuma, his heavy smoking and his vague way of speaking, and how he understands his old teacher better with age, recounting the day Asuma gave Team 10 their earrings.

Powered up by the finished chips, Chōji swells to giant size and, joined by the other Konoha ninja and the villagers, wrenches the boulder free by burning calories into chakra, and the spring flows once more. He tells Mirai that Asuma once posed the riddle of the "king" but, on Shikamaru's instruction, refuses to give her the answer, adding that watching her stirred up memories of his mentor. That night, soaking in the restored spring, Tatsumi confesses she has been lying to them: she is actually hunting for a spring where the living can supposedly speak with the dead.

Part of the Steam Ninja Scrolls arc drawn from the Konoha Shinden novel, the episode debuted in Japan on June 2, 2019, and in English on May 25, 2021. It uses Golden Time as its opening and Ride or Die as its ending.