In March 2023, Naruto fans were happy with the announcement of a special four-episode series to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Naruto anime. Unfortunately, the series was postponed and little information about it has surfaced since then.
As Naruto celebrated its 25th anniversary (of the manga) in September 2024, fans started to expect that a new release date would finally be announced. What exactly do we know about the special anniversary series?
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What Are The Four New Episodes About?
While the synopsis for the four special episodes hasn’t been announced, the promotional poster for this “20th anniversary series” suggests that they will take place when Naruto was still a kid (that means, during Naruto, and not Naruto Shippuden).
However, these episodes will not necessarily be chronological. They could be separate stories taking place at different times. It would be nice, for example, to have one episode set during Naruto, another one set during Shippuden, the third one in-between Boruto and Naruto, and the last one during Boruto (or the third one set during Boruto and the fourth in Boruto: Two Blue Vortex). That would be a great way to celebrate the franchise as a whole, but we will still learn what Pierrot has in mind for the series.
When Will The Special Series Be Out?
The episodes were first scheduled for September 3, 2023, but ended up delayed indefinitely, bakc in August 2023. So far, there has been no official announcement of a new release window, but rumors suggested an “early 2025 release”. However, we are already in March and no new information has surfaced.
These rumors were based on TV Tokyo’s financial reports, which seemingly suggested that a new Naruto series would be released in the 2024-2025 Japanese fiscal year (from April 2024 to March 2025). These reports also mentioned efforts to expand the franchise worldwide, which could be related to international distribution of the special series, but could also be related to licensing Naruto and Shippuden to more streaming platforms and other marketing campaigns (like the Naruto x Burger King collab that happened in France, Brazil and other countries).
Where Will It Be Available Internationally?
In 2023, the only service to confirm that it had acquired streaming rights to the series was ADN, a French streaming platform. However, it is likely that licensing negotiations have taken place over the years — in the US, VIZ usually licenses Naruto content and sells streaming rights to companies like Crunchyroll and Netflix.
Naruto’s special anniversary series, consisting of four new episodes, has no official release date yet, but fans expect it to debut in 2025.
Why Was The Series Postponed?
When the series was postponed, the official social media profile for Naruto/Boruto anime shared a note in which they alleged that they decided to postpone the series in order to “increase the animation’s quality”.
While this may indeed be a legitimate reason to do it, many fans pointed out that Pierrot was juggling too many projects at once (Naruto, Bleach and Black Clover) and decided to put all its focus on Bleach: A Thousand-Year Blood War. So, in order to work on Bleach, Pierrot allegedly put Naruto and Black Clover projects aside. Recent rumors suggest that this may indeed be true — the final season of Bleach TYWB was allegedly postponed so that Pierrot could focus on Naruto.
And What About Boruto’s Hiatus?
Boruto finished broadcasting its first part on March 26, 2023, and no news regarding Part 2 has been released yet. Back then, the series was too close to the manga, which went through a three-month hiatus later that year, and returned as Boruto: Two Blue Vortex, following a time-skip. Pierrot may announce news about Boruto after the special series airs in Japan.
Naruto and Naruto Shippuden are available to stream on several streaming services, including Crunchyroll, Netflix and Hulu.
