VIZ Media has announced that it will give the Naruto light novels an English release.
The Naruto light novel series was originally released in Japan throughout 2018 and 2019, under the titles Sasuke Shinden, Kakashi Retsuden, Sasuke Retsuden and Naruto Retsuden. The Kakashi focused story, which now has the English title of Naruto: Kakashi’s Story--The Sixth Hokage and the Failed Prince will be the first book in the series to be released in the West, and is due out sometime in summer of 2022. The books were originally written by Junya Enoki and feature illustrations from Naruto's creator, Masashi Kishimoto.
Announcement: A new series of Naruto novels in which Naruto’s allies and enemies take center stage in fast-paced adventures, begins releasing Summer 2022 with Naruto: Kakashi’s Story--The Sixth Hokage and the Failed Prince. pic.twitter.com/TEu7kCcUqg
— VIZ (@VIZMedia) October 9, 2021
The new stories focus on the older versions of Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura and Kakashi and are set shortly after Ohtsutsuki Momoshiki's attack during the Chuunin Exams, which was seen in Boruto: Naruto the Movie. A release date was not announced for the other books in the series at this time.
Naruto was created by Masashi Kishimoto and was first published in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1999. The series quickly became one of the most popular manga in the world, and is now the fourth best-selling manga series of all time, with a worldwide circulation of over 250 million copies. The manga was generally regarded as one of Shonen Jump's "Big Three" franchises during the boom period of the early '00s, alongside Eiichiro Oda's still on-going One Piece and Tite Kubo's Bleach. The original manga ended its run in 2014, but was followed up with a sequel series, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations in 2017. The new manga was initially written by Ukyo Kodachi, who has also worked on the Macross and Fate Grand/Order franchises, but Kishimoto returned to write the series from volume 14 onwards. The anime series has just now started to adapt the story arc that marked Kishimoto's return to the franchise, and those episodes have been received with near-universal acclaim from long-time fans of the series.
The original Naruto anime and its continuation series Naruto Shippuden are available to stream on Crunchyroll. The first nine seasons of the original series are also streaming on Netflix and Hulu. Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is available for streaming on both Hulu and Crunchyroll, with the latter simulcasting new episodes of the series shortly after they are broadcast in Japan.
Source: Twitter
