Naruto (—ナルト)

overview

Naruto (Japanese: —ナルト—) is an ongoing Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. The plot tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and dreams to become the Hokage, the ninja in his village who is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of all. The series is based on a one-shot comic by Kishimoto that was published in the August 1997 issue of Akamaru Jump.

The manga was first published by Shueisha in 1999 in the 43rd issue of Japan's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. Currently, the manga is still being serialized; sixty-three tankōbon volumes have been released so far. The manga was later adapted into an anime, which was produced by Studio Pierrot and Aniplex. It premiered across Japan on the terrestrial TV Tokyo network and the anime satellite television network Animax on October 3, 2002. The first series lasted 220 episodes, while Naruto: Shippuden, a sequel to the original series, has been airing since February 15, 2007. In addition to the anime series, Studio Pierrot has developed eight movies for the series and several original video animations (OVAs). Other types of merchandise include light novels, video games and trading cards developed by several companies.

Viz Media has licensed the manga and anime for North American production. Viz has been publishing the series in their Shonen Jump magazine, and as well as the individual volumes. The anime series began airing in the United States and Canada in 2005, and later in the United Kingdom and Australia in 2006 and 2007, respectively. The films, as well as most OVAs from the series, have also been released by Viz, with the first film premiering in cinemas. The first DVD volume of Naruto: Shippuden was released by Viz in North America on September 29, 2009, and it started broadcast on Disney XD in October of the same year. Viz Media will begin streaming both series on their upcoming streaming service Neon Alley this fall.

Naruto is one of the best-selling manga series of all time having sold more than 126.5 million copies in Japan alone. Serialized in Viz's Shonen Jumpmagazine, Naruto has become one of the company's best-selling manga series. The English adaptation of the series has also appeared in the USA Today Booklist several times and volume 7 won the Quil Award in 2006. Reviewers from the series have praised the balance between fighting and comedy scenes, as well as the characters' personalities, but have criticized it for using standard shōnen plot elements.

Manga

Naruto premiered in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine in 1999.The first 238 chapters are known as Part I, and constitute the first part of the Naruto storyline. Manga chapters 239 to 244 comprise a gaiden series focusing on the background of the character Kakashi Hatake. All subsequent chapters belong to Part II, which continues the storyline in Part I after a three year time gap. Besides the regular Naruto manga, a spin-off series focused in the character of Rock Lee started being published in Shueisha's Super Strong Jump since December 2010.

The Naruto manga is serialized in North America by Viz Media in their manga anthology magazine Shonen Jump, with the first chapter of the English adaptation published in the January 2003 issue. To compensate for the gap between the Japanese and English adaptations of the manga, Viz implemented its "Naruto Nation" campaign, where it released three volumes a month in the last four months of 2007 in order to close said gap. Cammie Allen, Viz's product manager, commented that, their main reason for the schedule was to catch up to the Japanese release schedule to give their readers a similar experience to that of Japanese readers. A similar campaign was planned for 2009, with eleven volumes from Part II of the series being released between February and April in order to catch up to the Japanese serialization. Starting with the release of volume forty-five in July, Viz began releasing Naruto on a quarterly basis.

As of November 2011, 58 tankōbon have been released by Shueisha in Japan, with the first twenty-seven tankōboncontaining Part I, and the remaining thirty belonging to Part II. The first tankōbon was released on March 3, 2000. In addition, several tankōbon, each containing ani-manga based one of the Naruto movies, have been released by Shueisha. In Japanese, Shueisha has also released the series for cell-phone download on their website Shueisha Manga Capsule.

Viz has released 59 volumes of the English adaptation of the manga with the first being published on August 16, 2003. In addition, Viz Media released all twenty-seven volumes in a boxed set, thus constituting the entirety of the Naruto storyline before Part II on November 13, 2007. On May 3, 2011, Viz started collecting the series in format in which each volume contains three from the original format.

Anime series Naruto

Directed by Hayato Date and produced by Studio Pierrot and TV Tokyo, the Naruto anime adaptation premiered in Japan on TV Tokyo October 3, 2002, and ran for 220 episodes until its conclusion on February 8, 2007. The first 135 episodes are adapted from the first twenty-seven volumes of the manga, while the remaining eighty episodes are original episodes that utilize plot elements not seen in the original manga. Beginning on April 29, 2009, the originalNaruto anime began a rerun on Wednesdays and Thursdays (until the fourth week September 2009 when it changed to just Wednesdays) in HDTV with new opening and ending themes under the name Shōnen Hen (少年篇?, "Youth Version").

Episodes from the series have been published in DVD. The first DVD series has been the only one to be collected in VHS format. There are a total of five series, with each of the including four episodes per volume. The series has also been collected in a series of three DVD boxes during 2009. The newest DVD series is Naruto The Best Scene which collects scenes from the first 135 episodes from the anime.

Viz licensed the anime series for broadcast and distribution in the Region 1 market. The English adaptation of the anime began airing on September 10, 2005 and finished on January 31, 2009, with 209 episodes aired. The episodes have been shown on Cartoon Network's Toonami (United States), YTV's Bionix (Canada) and Jetix's (United Kingdom) programming blocks. Beginning on March 28, 2006, Viz released the series on DVD. While the first 26 volumes contain four episodes, since DVD volumes have five episodes. Uncut editions are compiled in DVD Box Sets, each containing 12-15 episodes, with some variation based around story arcs. In the American broadcast, references to alcohol, Japanese culture, sexual innuendo, and the appearance of blood and death were sometimes reduced for the broadcast, but left in, in the DVD editions.Other networks make additional content edits apart from the edits done by Cartoon Network, such as Jetix's stricter censoring of blood, language, smoking and the like. The series has also been licensed to the websites Hulu, Joost, and Crunchyroll, which air episodes online with the original Japanese audio tracks and English subtitles.The last Naruto episode aired on YTV's Bionix block on December 6, 2009 at 12:30am ET.

Adopted form wekipedia