The Current Big Anime - Naruto

Naruto is the next major export from the country that brought the Dragonball Z, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh phenomena. The show, a shonen about a boy ninja, is a massive success still airing in Japan even now, and has found substantial success in the American market, helping in the spur of a resurgence in Ninja-Vogue.

Naruto itself began in 1999 as a manga series in Shonen Jump, written by Masashi Kishimoto. Kishimoto's Naruto was an enormous success, finding ample market share in an already crowded field. Naruto was first produced for television in 2002 and has been on the air ever since. The show later premiered in the US in 2005. Since its debut, Naruto has spawned 220 episodes and three movies in Japan, and continuously airs new episodes even now each week.

The show itself is about Naruto, a precocious adolescent ninja in training in the Hidden Village of Konoha. Orphaned as a child, Naruto also happens to be the vessel for an evil spirit defeated by the last leader of the village, the Fourth Hokage. His powers are at first limited, but when unleashed, he has full control of all the chi harnessed by that evil spirit, the nine-tailed cat demon. Once he reaches a certain age, Naruto graduates from ninja school and is taken as one of three team members by Kakashi with his peers Sasuke (a heated rival) and Sakura (his hopeless love interest). The three are sent on various missions and compete in Chunin (the next rank) exams together.

The show is a series of fantasy infused ninja style fights, but running through it is a strong comedic vibe, always making jokes at Naruto's and his opponents' expense. The dynamic between Naruto and his friends especially is a source of humor throughout the show.

The first series of the show covers the majority of the manga up to this point, including their graduation, rise in strength, Chunin exams, the invasion of the village, and the fight to return Sasuke to the village. After the main storylines concluded however, the show turned to a series of filler episodes which lasted for over a year while waiting for the manga to get sufficiently ahead again, as most animes are derived from the manga on which they are based. The show itself will often cover more than one manga chapter, so it quickly catches up and surpasses it.

However, on February 15, the new series of Naruto premiered (titled Hurricane Chronicles) taking place after a time skip of some months into the future and finally taking back up the story of the manga chaptes. The show in the interim had been showing side stories and mini story arcs unrelated to Kishimoto's manga.

As a manga, Naruto is Viz's most popular product, volume 7 of which won a Quill award this last year for best Graphic Novel. The show airs in multiple countries now and in Japan was named as one of the top 20 animes, its run becoming comparable to that of Dragonball Z, surpassing 200 episodes and going strong. Few shows or mangas in Japan right now rival Naruto in popularity or longevity, and none in its international appeal, a massive hit no matter which country you look at.