Naruto’s 2027 Return With New Anime Is Officially The Start Of An Era

It’s been a rough few years for the Naruto fandom. After the Boruto: Naruto Next Generations anime ended in 2023, the franchise’s animated future was left up in the air. Meanwhile, though Studio Pierrot announced new episodes of Naruto in March 2023, those have consistently failed to materialize. With Boruto: Two Blue Vortex’s anime nowhere in sight and with no official word on the new Naruto episodes, it’s been a strange three years for the world’s most popular ninja franchise.

Then came a ray of hope. According to the series’ broadcast Network in Japan, TV Tokyo, Naruto is returning in 2027 to celebrate the original anime’s 25th anniversary. Though details have been vague, TV Tokyo has promised “new games and videos” to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary. While that is far from the concrete announcement of a new series that many had hoped for, it still seems abundantly clear that some sort of new Naruto anime is coming in 2027.

We see the 25th anniversary as the beginning of a new stage, and we have several projects planned to capture that. New projects, including videos and games developed with new partners, are planned for 2027 and beyond.

Of course, the natural question many are left with is what, exactly, does “new videos” entail. The most likely answers are the two most obvious ones. It seems likely that either Naruto’s 4 episodes will finally premiere in 2027, or that Boruto: Two Blue Vortex’s much-rumored anime will finally begin production.

Regardless, while it’s still not clear what TV Tokyo means with their announcement, what is clear is that 2027 is the beginning of a new era for Naruto.

Naruto’s Anime Needs A New Era

Though Naruto is undeniably beloved, it was also made in a much different time. From 2002 to 2017, Naruto and then Naruto: Shippuden ran week to week with very few interruptions. As if that wasn’t enough, Naruto also released one new movie every year from 2004 to 2015 (only skipping 2013). In addition to those core releases, there was the Naruto spin-off anime, Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals, that ran from 2012 to 2013, and the Boruto anime that ran from 2017 to 2023.

All of this meant that Naruto was an absolute fixture in the anime world for more than two decades. While the franchise certainly slowed down its pace just a touch in the Boruto era, Naruto was still seeing more anime episodes air every year than almost every other major series. In 2019, Demon Slayer released 26 episodes. That same year, Boruto released 50.

While that definitely provided fans with a steady stream of anime to watch every week, the results weren’t always great. Notably, Naruto: Shippuden has an abundance of filler, with 206 of the series’ 500 episodes being non-canon anime original stories.

Boruto was arguably worse. Though some of the series’ filler episodes are technically canon, many of them are side stories, meaning they don’t advance Boruto’s main plot at all. The result is that 70% of Boruto is filler.

Naruto’s Next Anime Is Going To Completely Reinvent The Franchise

While no official word has been said on what the next Naruto anime will look like, the current state of the anime industry makes it unlikely that Pierrot will return to the franchise with the same firehose approach that defined much of the series’ animated releases.

This can most clearly be seen in how Pierrot handled the release of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War. While the original Bleach anime suffered from many of the same filler problems as Naruto, Thousand-Year Blood War shows a markedly different approach. Better animation, better pacing, and an improved story have all made Thousand-Year Blood War a critical darling and a moment of relief for fans of the beleaguered franchise.

A Naruto series without the burden of weekly releases could be just the reinvention that the series needs. By focusing on quality rather than quantity, Pierrot can set Naruto up for success and earn it the high critical praise that Masashi Kishimoto’s signature ninja franchise always deserved.

First Film

Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow

Latest Film

Boruto: Naruto the Movie

First TV Show

Naruto

Latest TV Show

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

First Episode Air Date

October 3, 2002

Cast

Junko Takeuchi, Maile Flanagan, Noriaki Sugiyama, Chie Nakamura, Kazuhiko Inoue, Nana Mizuki, Hideo Ishikawa, Yûko Sanpei

Naruto is a franchise spawned from the manga series penned by Masashi Kishimoto that began in 1999. Generating several tv series, games, movies, and more, Naruto follows the exploits of a young outcast ninja harboring the spirit of a demon fox who seeks to become the Hokage, the leader of his ninja village, to break the stigma against him. Upon the conclusion of the initial series, Naruto expanded into Boruto, following many series protagonists’ children and returning faces.