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Naruto Gets Crossover Anime With Ninku Franchise

The "NA RUTO: What's Next?" panel at New York Comic Con announced on Saturday more information about the new television anime "limited" series teased last month. The new anime is a crossover anime with Koji Kiriyama's Ninku ninja manga titled NARUTO×NINKŪ.

The panel explained that Ninku inspired Masashi Kishimoto to create Naruto, and as the below teaser video quotes from Kishimoto, "Without Ninku, there would be no Naruto. I wanted to read more of Ninku, so I started drawing Naruto." 

Kishimoto and Kiriyama are both supervising the completely original story of the anime. In the story, Naruto is serving as acting captain of Team 7 as Kakashi cannot go with them. Then Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura accidentally wander into the world of Ninku.

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations chief director and Ninku anime director Noriyuki Abe is directing the crossover anime. Tetsuya Nishio, who worked on both the Naruto and Ninku anime, is the character designer and chief animation director.

The event also revealed collaboration key visual, as well as celebration illustrations from both manga creators.

Junko Takeuchi and Noriaki Sugiyama, the voice actors of Na ruto and Sasuke in the anime, appeared at the panel, along with Pierrot Films executive producer Yoshihiro Tominaga.

Kiriyama's Ninku manga ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1993 to 1995 and had nine compiled volumes. The manga inspired a television anime by Studio Pierrot in 1995-1996 that ran for 55 episodes. The Ninku Knife no Bohyō film debuted in 1994, and the separate Ninku the Movie opened in 1995. The Ninku Second Stage: Eto Nin-Hen sequel manga launched in Shueisha's Ultra Jump magazine in 2005, and ended in 2011. The manga has 12 volumes.

Leading up the new crossover anime airs, Studio Pierrot is now streaming the first five episodes of Ninku for free on its YouTube channel.

The Naruto anime had announced four "brand-new" episodes in 2023 to commemorate the anime's 20th anniversary, with a plan for those episodes to air weekly starting in September 2023. However, a week prior to their planned debut, the episodes were delayed to improve their quality. There has been no new news about those four episodes since August 2023, and it is currently unclear if this newly announced crossover anime is related to that delayed project.

Kishimoto launched the Naruto ninja manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1999, and ended the series in November 2014. The manga has spawned the Naruto and Naruto Shippūden television anime series, original video anime (OVA) projects, several anime films, spinoff manga, the Boruto sequel manga and anime series, a series of novels, stage plays, and video games.

Lionsgate is producing a Hollywood live-action film adaptation of the manga. The official website for the Naruto franchise announced on July 10 that the live-action film project had begun a global casting search for the main characters Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, with casting for other characters to come at a later date. Charles Melton (Riverdale, Beef) is "in final negotiations" to play the mentoring ninja Kakashi Hatake in the film. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Spider-Man: Brand New Day) is directing the film, and is also producing the film through his company Hisako alongside Jeyun Munford. Arad Productions' Avi Arad, Ari Arad, and Emmy Yu as well as Jeremy Latcham are listed as producers.

Source: "NARUTO: What's Next?" panel livestream