Directed by Hayato Date and produced by Studio Pierrot and TV Tokyo, the Naruto anime adaptation premiered in Japan on TV Tokyo October 3, 2002, and ran for 220 episodes until its conclusion on February 8, 2007. [26] [27] The first 135 episodes are adapted from the first twenty-seven volumes of the manga, while the remaining eighty episodes are filler episodes that utilize plot elements not seen in the original manga. [28]
Viz has licensed the anime series for broadcast and distribution in the Region 1market. [26] The English adaptation of the anime began airing on September 10, 2005. [29] The episodes have been shown on Cartoon Network's Toonami, YTV's Bionix and Jetix UK's programming blocks. [26] The DVD series is being released by Viz beginning March 28, 2006. [30] While the first 26volumes contain four episodes, since volume 27each DVD has five episodes. [31] Uncut editions are compiled in DVD Box Sets, each containing 12-15 episodes, with some variation based around story arcs. [32] In the American broadcast, references to alcohol, Japanese culture, sexual innuendo, and even blood and death were sometimes reduced for the broadcast, but left in the DVD editions. [33] Other networks make additional content edits apart from the edits done by Cartoon Network, such as Jetix's more strict censoring of blood, language, smoking and the like. The series has also been licensed to the websites Hulu and Joost to air them online in Japanese with English subtitles.
