Naruto is the tale of Uzumaki Naruto, a young ninja in training living in the village of Konoha. Ignored and ridiculed by all the villagers Naruto, an orphan spent his life alone, playing pranks to gain the attention of the villagers. What separated him from the rest was the fact he had a demon nine tailed fox sealed within him, that many ninja’s had died fighting.

Originally Naruto was a pilot manga drawn by Masashi Kishimoto. It was very different to what the manga would become but still had common things that would see their way into the regular manga, like Naruto wearing his trade mark jumpsuit, having the nine tails sealed within him and the Ichiraku ramen stand. In 1999 Kishimoto begin his full length manga series in Weekly Shonen Jump. Still running to this day there are over 200 chapters and has recently moved into its second part, similar to the transition DB made to DBZ.

In the manga Naruto dreams of becoming a skilled ninja and eventually the Hokage, leader of the village and strongest ninja, so that all the villages will finally acknowledge his existence. After failing to graduate from the ninja academy Naruto is tricked by one of the higher level ninjas, named Mizuki, into stealing a forbidden scroll. Mizuki plans to kill Naruto and take the scroll for his own ends but with the help of his teacher Iruka and a technique Naruto learned from the scroll that would be come his signature move, Naruto was able to defeat Mizuki and earn Iruka’s respect. As a sign of this respect Naruto is given Iruka’s head protector, the sign of a ninja, and allowed to graduate to become a gennin.

From then on Naruto becomes part of team 7 lead by Hatake Kakashi, the legendary copy ninja and highly skilled jounin. His gennin teammates are Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura. Sasuke last of his clan is the number one rookie of his year group and is seen by Naruto as his rival, although sasuke does not see this at first. Sakura is Naruto’s secret crush although she is only interested in sasuke. Many more characters have been introduced as the manga has continued such as villains like Zabuza, Garra and most importantly the main enemy the sannin Orochimaru. Thankfully many more allies have been introduced like Hinata, Kiba and Rock Lee.

The manga could be described as a fighting manga with the heavy influence on ninja skills and techniques and sometimes long fighting scenes. This of course means the series is compared to other fighting manga like Dragon Ball and Yu Yu Hakusho. However it goes way beyond that, with well developed characters and a truly epic story where the writer isn’t afraid to leave you hanging (the 200 chapter wait of Kakashi’s back story is an example) all add to the suspense and must read feel of the series. The manga quickly gained a popular following.

On 3rd October 2002 Naruto made its debut as an anime. Running weekly on TV Tokyo Naruto became an instant hit and to date has well over 100 episodes. Its blend of martial arts fighting, ninja techniques, great comedy and interesting character and plot developments has lead to a large fan base with many seeing this as becoming the next DBZ. Its success has spawned tons of merchandise including Gashapon figures, replica head protectors, mugs and much more. Naruto has made his way onto many different home consoles to including 2 PS2 games, 3 Gamecube games and many GBA games. PSP and DS games are also in the works. As yet none of these games have made it over to the US or UK but recent developments will soon change that.

The Naruto anime was once a licensing mystery here in the English speaking world with many rumours being thrown around as to who would get the rights. In the end on February 15th 2005 it was announced that ShoPro entertainment had acquired the licence for the US rights to Naruto anime. ShoPro is a part of Viz and has been the distributor of such series as Inuyasha. With the Inuyasha dub being of high quality the same is expected of the Naruto dub but only time will tell. The manga has been licensed by Viz for and is printed in the US version of Shonen jump at a about 3 chapters a month and then released in graphic novel form soon after. TV rights for the US have been aquitred by Cartoon Network but are to be shown in their Toonami block not adult swim so expect edits.

Recently a number of UK websites have found been stating that talks are already in the works for the anime and games to be released over here on TV and DVD but as yet nothing concrete has been stated. The Naruto PS2 games are confirmed to be on their way to the states courtesy of Bandai but the Gamecube and GBA titles remain a mystery.

Naruto is set to become bigger then DBZ once the English dub is released though it isn’t known yet if it will be able to stand on its own merits as a truly great series for kids and adults or be seen in the West as another anime fad in the same way Pokemon was.