Naruto’s next anime is a trip into another manga’s world. At New York Comic Con on Saturday (Oct. 10), the “NARUTO: What’s Next?” panel announced NARUTO×NINKU, a four-episode “TV Anime Limited Series” from Studio Pierrot in which Team 7 gets lost in the universe of Koji Kiriyama’s 1990s ninja manga Ninku, Anime News Network reports.
The setup, per the official synopsis that Anime Trending published: Kakashi can’t join a mission, so Naruto becomes acting leader, and the trio wander into another world where they meet a frog-faced boy named Fūsuke. Junko Takeuchi returns as Naruto, with Noriaki Sugiyama as Sasuke, Chie Nakamura as Sakura and Kazuhiko Inoue as Kakashi. Rica Matsumoto comes back to voice Fūsuke, as she did in the 1995-96 Ninku TV anime. The teaser quotes Naruto’s creator, and ANN transcribes the line:
Without Ninku, there would be no Naruto. I wanted to read more of Ninku, so I started drawing Naruto.
Masashi Kishimoto, in the NARUTO×NINKU teaser, Anime News Network
Both creators supervise. Noriyuki Abe, who directed the Ninku anime and was chief director on Boruto, directs, and Tetsuya Nishio is the character designer and chief animation director. The music is split three ways between Yasuharu Takanashi, -Yaiba- and Yusuke Honma, a pairing of the Naruto Shippuden sound with the Ninku one, Hypebeast notes. Watch the teaser below.
There is more. The panel also announced Naruto Shadow Rising, a new manga drawn by Kishimoto himself, and PROJECT RASENGAN, a roadmap for new manga, anime, card and game projects teased into 2029, according to Hypebeast. A worldwide release of the Naruto Mobile game was confirmed, too.
No release date has been set for NARUTO×NINKU, and ANN notes it is unclear whether it is the four-episode project announced for the anime’s 20th anniversary and delayed in 2023. Anime Corner says it is. Studio Pierrot is streaming the first five Ninku episodes free on its YouTube channel in the meantime, and more news on Shadow Rising and Naruto Mobile is due at Jump Festa 2027 on Dec. 19 and 20.
- Format
- Four-episode “TV Anime Limited Series”
- Studio
- Studio Pierrot
- Director
- Noriyuki Abe
- Release
- No date announced
- Next news
- Jump Festa 2027, Dec. 19–20
