Summary
Naruto was created by manga author Masashi Kishimoto in 1999. The shonen battle manga tells the life story of Naruto Uzumaki, a young boy whose body serves as a prison for the Nine-Tails, a powerful beast who once almost completely destroyed the village of Konohagakure. Consequently, Naruto is shunned by the people of the village, but he nonetheless aspires to win their respect and trust by becoming the Hokage, the leader of the city's ninjas. The series was a massive hit when it first debuted and was considered one of Weekly Shonen Jump's "Big Three," a title used to refer to the manga magazine's three most popular franchises of the era, which also included Eiichiro Oda's still on-going One Piece and Tite Kubo's Bleach. The series has since sold over 250 million copies worldwide and is now one of the top 10 best-selling manga ever created. An anime adaptation produced by studio Pierrot premiered in 2002 and was followed up with Naruto: Shippuden, which adapted the second half of Kishimoto's manga, in 2007. Kishimoto's original manga concluded its story in 2014, but the series received a sequel series, entitled Boruto: Naruto Next Generations in 2016. The sequel tells the story of Naruto's rebellious teenage son, Boruto, and is set more than a decade following the original story's finale. The sequel series was originally written by Ukyo Kodachi, who wrote the stories for several of the franchise's animated movies, but Kishimoto took over writing duties for the sequel after its 13th volume. The franchise has also expanded with several spinoffs, a series of tie-in novels, and a line of video games from publisher Bandai Namco. The English editions of Kishimoto's manga are distributed by publisher VIZ Media, while Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden anime are available for streaming from a variety of services, including Crunchyroll, Netflix and Hulu. The Boruto anime is still on-going and is available on Crunchyroll.
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