Naruto's 20th anniversary anime is revealed as a Ninku crossover, four years after the anniversary
The four episodes were due on TV Tokyo in September 2023 and were postponed. They now have a story, a director from Ninku's 1995 anime and no air date.
The new Naruto anime made for the original series' 20th anniversary has finally been identified. At New York Comic Con on October 10, the "NARUTO: What's Next?" stage revealed it as a four-episode crossover with Ninku, a 1990s Weekly Shōnen Jump series.
In the crossover's original story, a young Naruto Uzumaki gets lost in the world of Ninku while on a mission. Junko Takeuchi and Noriaki Sugiyama, the Japanese voices of Naruto and Sasuke, attended as special guests.
An anniversary that kept moving
The Naruto anime premiered in October 2002. The anniversary project's dates, from Anime Corner and Wikipedia:
- October 2022: the original anime's 20th anniversary.
- September 3, 2023: the four new episodes are scheduled to air on TV Tokyo for four consecutive weeks.
- August 2023: the premiere is postponed shortly before broadcast, so the team can further improve quality.
- 2023 to 2026: no major update for more than three years.
- October 10, 2026: the project is revealed as a Ninku crossover. No new broadcast date has been given.
The 20th-anniversary episodes were already scheduled for a year after the anniversary. They have now been unveiled four years after it, still without a date.
What Ninku is
Ninku, created by Koji Kiriyama, began serialization in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1993. It follows Fusuke, a young former member of the Ninku Corps, who uses Ninku, a martial art combining ninjutsu and karate. After a major war, he travels a troubled world searching for his kidnapped mother and fighting enemies who hunt former Ninku fighters.
Studio Pierrot turned it into a 55-episode TV anime that aired on Fuji TV from January 1995 to February 1996. Noriyuki Abe directed, Hiroshi Hashimoto handled series composition, and Tetsuya Nishio and Mari Kitayama designed the characters.
Anime Corner acknowledges the obvious problem: Ninku is far less familiar to international audiences than Naruto.
- Original manga: June 1993 to September 1995 in Weekly Shōnen Jump, nine volumes, per Wikipedia.
- Films: two short Pierrot films, Ninku: Tomb of Knives (1994, 34 minutes) and Ninku: The Movie (1995, 26 minutes), both directed by Abe.
- Sequel: Ninku 2nd Stage: Story of Etonins ran in Ultra Jump from 2005 to 2011, 12 volumes.
- Circulation: over 9 million copies.
Ninku's manga ended four years before Naruto's began, in September 1999. The two series never shared a magazine issue.
The connection is the staff
Why Ninku? Anime Corner says the link between the two series goes back decades, and the credits show how.
- Studio: Pierrot animated both Ninku and Naruto.
- Director: the crossover is directed by Noriyuki Abe, who directed the Ninku anime in 1995, according to Wikipedia.
- Character design: Tetsuya Nishio, who worked on both the Ninku and Naruto anime, is character designer and chief animation director.
- Magazine: both manga ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump.
In effect, the crossover reunites Ninku's director with one of its character designers, three decades on, under Naruto's anniversary banner.
Naruto by the numbers
- Manga: Masashi Kishimoto's series ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from September 1999 to November 2014, 72 volumes.
- Naruto anime: premiered in October 2002, 220 episodes.
- Naruto Shippuden: 500 episodes, directed by Hayato Date.
- Boruto: the sequel manga started in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2016, moved to V Jump in 2019 and continues as Boruto: Two Blue Vortex since August 2023.
Against 720 episodes of Naruto and Shippuden, four episodes is a small project. It was scheduled for broadcast in 2023, then held back for more than three years.
What is still unknown
- The air date, and whether it will still be TV Tokyo.
- How much of the 2023 version survived. The only reason given for the delay was quality; whether the episodes were reworked or rebuilt has not been said.
- Who voices the Ninku side. Only Naruto's and Sasuke's Japanese voice actors were at the reveal.
- Streaming outside Japan. No international platform has been announced.
- Whether this is everything. The "What's Next?" stage presented the crossover as the new animation; nothing else was confirmed.
Naruto's 20th anniversary was in 2022. The episodes made for it were supposed to air in 2023, were revealed in 2026, and are a crossover with a series that ended its anime run in 1996.