Naruto (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  The anime series Naruto opens on Naruto Uzumaki, a young orphan ninja who wants nothing more than recognition from his peers.

  His dream is to become the Hokage, the leader of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Nobody around him takes that dream seriously at first.

  Behind the television series stands Masashi Kishimoto's manga, which ran from 1999 to 2014. The anime would eventually stretch across hundreds of episodes, a pile of films and a long list of side stories.

  Several questions run through the story of that adaptation. How did one manga turn into two long television series? How did a Japanese show reach North American screens, and what did broadcasters change along the way? Why did critics argue so sharply over it? And how did a way of running borrowed from the show end up in a warning from the U.S. Air Force?

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• 2. Two Series, One Story

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  Hayato Date directed both halves of the Naruto anime, which Studio Pierrot animated and Aniplex produced. The first half kept the manga's title and aired on TV Tokyo from the 3rd of October 2002 to the 8th of February 2007. It ran for 220 episodes. The first 135 adapted Part I of the manga. The remaining 85 were original episodes built on plot elements the manga had left out.

  Tetsuya Nishio designed the characters when the manga became an anime. Kishimoto himself had asked that Nishio be given the job. The show did not vanish after its first run. Beginning on the 29th of April 2009, TV Tokyo reran it on Wednesdays and Thursdays. By the fourth week of September 2009 the rerun was down to Wednesdays only. That version was remastered in HD with new 2D and 3D effects. A separate announcement on the 1st of June 2017 said an HD remaster would debut on Japanese television on the 24th of June, starting from the first episode.

  Naruto: Shippuden picked up the story directly and covered Part II of the manga, when Naruto is a teenager. It aired on TV Tokyo from the 15th of February 2007 to the 23rd of March 2017 and ran for 500 episodes. On the 8th of January 2009, TV Tokyo began airing new episodes by internet streaming for monthly subscribers. Each streamed episode appeared online within an hour of its Japanese release and carried English subtitles.

  A set of four brand-new episodes, meant to mark the original anime's 20th anniversary, was scheduled for the 3rd of September 2023. In August of that year, the premiere was postponed.

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• 3. Crossing the Ocean

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  On the 10th of September 2005, the English dub of the first series began airing on Cartoon Network's Toonami block in the United States. It finished on the 31st of January 2009, after 209 episodes. The dub also played on YTV's Bionix block in Canada, on Jetix in the United Kingdom and on SABC 2 in South Africa.

  Viewers who preferred the original voices had options too. Hulu, Joost and Crunchyroll all aired the first series online with Japanese audio and English subtitles. On the 2nd of January 2009, Viz began streaming subtitled Shippuden episodes on the series' website. The lineup mixed episodes that had already aired with new ones arriving from Japan.

  The Shippuden dub took a more tangled route. It premiered weekly on Disney XD on the 28th of October 2009 and ran up to episode 98 on the 5th of November 2011. After Disney XD dropped it, Viz picked up with episode 99 in December 2012 on its streaming service Neon Alley. Episodes 99 through 338 premiered there uncut before the service closed on the 4th of May 2016.

  Meanwhile, Adult Swim's Toonami block began airing Shippuden weekly on the 5th of January 2014. It started over from the first episode and kept the series on air until September 2024.

  On the 25th of August 2017, Starz announced that it would offer episodes of the original series on its Video on Demand service starting on the 1st of September 2017.

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• 4. Cuts and Discs

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  American broadcasters sometimes edited the first series. They trimmed references to alcohol, Japanese culture and sexual innuendo, along with the appearance of blood and death. The DVD editions kept the uncensored visuals. One cut scene was the accidental kiss between Naruto and Sasuke, which fits a long trend of removing anything that hints at a homosexual relationship.

  Viz released the English dub of the first series on DVD on the 28th of March 2006. The first 26 volumes held four episodes each, and later volumes held five. Uncut box sets gathered 12-15 episodes apiece, varying with the story arc.

  Shippuden reached Japanese shelves on Region 2 DVD with four or five episodes per disc, grouped into four series of releases by story arc. The first North American DVD arrived on the 29th of September 2009. Only the first 53 episodes came out as single volumes, and the run stopped with volume 12 on the 10th of August 2010. Boxed sets began with the first season on the 26th of January 2010. In the United Kingdom, Manga Entertainment released its first collection on the 14th of June 2010.

  In 2024, the label Anime Limited issued a Collector's Blu-ray edition of each series in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

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• 5. Films and Side Stories

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  Eleven theatrical films followed the television shows. The first three belong to the original series and the other eight to Shippuden. Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow came out in 2004 and sent Team 7 to protect the actors during the shooting of a film. In 2005, Legend of the Stone of Gelel put Naruto, Shikamaru and Sakura in the middle of a war between the Sunaga village and a large force of armored warriors. It skipped theaters in the United States and went straight to video.

  The Lost Tower, from 2010, sends Naruto 20 years into the past. There he finds the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, his father, alive. Road to Ninja in 2012 has Tobi send Naruto and Sakura to an alternate universe, where they learn about companionship and parenthood. Kishimoto created its story planning and character designs.

  The Last, from 2014, has Naruto and his companions trying to stop the moon from colliding with Earth. It ties up loose ends in the series' mythology and centers on Naruto and Hinata. Kishimoto served as chief story supervisor, story writer and character designer. Boruto: Naruto the Movie followed in 2015 and focused on the next generation, mainly Boruto Uzumaki. He trains with Sasuke Uchiha, his father's best friend and former rival. Kishimoto was chief production supervisor, screenwriter and character designer there.

  The 12 original video animations run from adventure to comedy. In Naruto, The Genie, and The Three Wishes!!, from 2010, Naruto opens a bottle at the beach and finds a genie. Hashirama Senju vs. Madara Uchiha, from 2012, has Tobi narrating the origin of Konoha, and it shipped with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations. A 2005 short pitting Jonin against Genin came on a bonus disk with the PlayStation 2 game Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3. Sunny Side Battle!!!, from 2014, shows Sasuke dreaming of his brother Itachi making him breakfast over and over until it is perfect.

  The last of them, The Day Naruto Became Hokage, arrived in 2016. Naruto is officially the Seventh Hokage, yet he misses his own ceremony because of an incident at the Uzumaki Residence.

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• 6. Soundtracks

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  Musashi Project and Toshio Masuda composed and arranged the music for the first series. Naruto Original Soundtrack came out on the 3rd of April 2003 with 22 tracks. Naruto Original Soundtrack II followed on the 18th of March 2004 with 19 tracks. The third volume arrived on the 27th of April 2005 with 23. Two Best Hit Collection albums, released on the 17th of November 2004 and the 2nd of August 2006, gathered the opening and ending themes. Naruto in Rock, released on the 19th of December 2007, chose eight tracks from the series.

  The English broadcast needed a theme of its own. Jeremy Sweet performed the theme for the Cartoon Network version. He was a former Saban Entertainment composer who had worked on themes for Power Rangers and on the English adaptation of Dragon Ball Z. Ian Nickus, another former musician from that company, co-composed it.

  Shippuden turned to Yasuharu Takanashi and his musical unit, Yaiba. Their Naruto Shippūden Original Soundtrack I, II and III were released in 2007-2009 and 2016. In 2008, Naruto All Stars collected 10 original songs, remixed and sung by characters from the series.

  For one final collection of themes planned for late 2017, Aniplex began surveying fans about which Naruto and Shippuden themes to include.

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• 7. Reception

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  By 2019, Viz Media had sold more than 3 million Naruto anime home video units, and the series was the top digital streaming performer on Hulu. It became one of Viz Media's top-earning franchises. For TV Tokyo, it was the top-earning anime franchise by gross profit until Pokémon passed it in 2011 and Yo-kai Watch in 2015. Strong overseas and domestic sales drove that position. In 2020, it was the third most watched series in the United States, and Shippuden ranked several times among the most watched in Japan.

  Critics split on the first series. Mike Hale of The New York Times judged it much better than American animation aimed at children. At THEM Anime Reviews, Christina Carpenter felt Kishimoto's art style translated poorly into animation. Her colleague Derrick Tucker thought the best of the visuals left "little to be desired." Theron Martin of Anime News Network and Tucker both felt there were too many fight scenes. Justin Rich argued the opposite, that the fights were the show's most important and enjoyable element. Carpenter praised the characters, though she found most of them fairly typical. Hiroshi Matsuyama named the 133rd episode a favorite, for the action between Naruto and Sasuke and for its emotional weight.

  Shippuden drew warmer notices. David C. Jones of Activeanime saw improved animation. Carl Kimlinger of Anime News Network found a more serious tone, a better balance of comedy and drama, and more interesting digressions from the main plot. The pacing of the first episodes was called slow, but the way the characters' interactions developed earned praise. Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times ranked Shippuden the third best anime on his Top 10.

  IGN placed the original anime 38th in its Top 100 Animated Series. A TV Asahi popularity poll in September 2005 placed Naruto seventeenth. The first DVD compilation released by Viz earned an American Anime Awards nomination for Best Package Design. At Crunchyroll's inaugural Anime Awards in 2017, the fight between Naruto and Sasuke received a Most Popular "Other" mention in the Best Fight Scene category. A year later, Shippuden was nominated for Best Continuing Series.

  In 2011, readers of Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition voted Naruto the 29th top video game character of all time.

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• 8. The Naruto Run

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  The Naruto run, also called the ninja run, copies how the anime's characters sprint, leaning forward with both arms stretched out behind the back. It became popular in 2017, when groups around the world organized events to run like Naruto characters. Many chose anniversaries of the series for the occasion.

  On the 27th of June 2019, Matty Roberts posted a satirical Facebook event called "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us." In it he told readers to meet at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate their entry. He added: "If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets." The post quickly became an Internet meme. Nevada law enforcement and the U.S. Air Force responded with nationwide alerts and warnings telling people not to go to Area 51.

  Roberts closed his post with a joke: "Let's see them aliens."

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