Naruto x Ninku puts Kishimoto's hidden mentor on screen

Naruto turned a birthday into a roadmap. On Saturday, October 10, which is Naruto Uzumaki's birthday, the sold out "NARUTO: What's Next?" stage at New York Comic Con dropped a stack of announcements in front of roughly 3,000 people, according to VIZ Media's press release. The headline is a new four episode anime called NARUTO x NINKŪ. Around it: a franchise plan called Project Rasengan, a worldwide date for the Naruto Card Game, a global release for a Naruto mobile game, and a teaser saying Masashi Kishimoto is working on a new Naruto manga.

The crossover is the piece that surprised me most, because it is not a crossover with anything most Western fans would guess. Ninku is Koji Kiriyama's ninja manga from the early nineties, and Kishimoto has never been shy about what it meant to him. On the official NARUTO x NINKŪ page, he says it plainly: "Without NINKŪ, NARUTO would not exist." He goes further, too, calling Ninku's hero Fūsuke "Naruto's secret mentor."

This is not a brand team stapling two logos together. It is a creator paying back the comic that made him want to draw.

What the anime is

The premise is light and very classic Naruto. Kakashi hands Team 7 a mission he cannot go on himself, so Naruto gets named acting leader and is, predictably, extremely fired up about it. On the way, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura end up lost in another world, where they meet a frog faced boy named Fūsuke. That is the setup from the official synopsis, and it is all I want to know going in.

The staff list is the real tell. VIZ says Kishimoto and Kiriyama are supervising the whole story. Noriyuki Abe, who directed the original Ninku anime and Boruto, is directing, and Tetsuya Nishio, the character designer on both Ninku and Naruto, is back as character designer and chief animation director. Anime News Network reports Abe is in the director chair. Per the Ninku series record, Abe directed that 55 episode Ninku anime for Fuji TV from January 1995 to February 1996. So the same director is coming back to the same kid roughly thirty years later. That kind of continuity is rare, and it is the reason I trust this more than a random collab short.

One open question. ANN points out that Naruto announced four brand new anniversary episodes back in 2023, then delayed them a week before their debut to improve quality, and nothing has been said since. This new project is also four episodes. Nobody official has connected the two, so I will not either, but the number is hard to ignore.

Everything from the panel, and what is still missing

That table is from the VIZ release and the official site's roundup. The pattern is obvious once you lay it out: one thing has a real date, and it is the card game.

The card game is the sleeper

I am a card game person, so this is the part I keep rereading. VIZ says players pick a leader and build a team of shinobi around that character, and that the game is meant to capture the mind games and ninjutsu tactics of the series. The opening lineup is three starter decks led by Naruto, Sasuke, and Gaara, plus a first booster called "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!" There is an early playmat, a Premium Card Collection vol.00, and, most interesting to me, a spring campaign handing out 1 million demo decks worldwide. Free decks at that scale are how you build a local scene before a single booster hits a store. The official roundup has the same lineup.

Gaara as a launch leader is a fun pick, too. Naruto and Sasuke were automatic. Gaara says the designers are thinking about rivals and fan favorites from the start, not just the two names on the cover.

How to meet Fūsuke before the crossover

• Start free. ANN reports Studio Pierrot is streaming the first five Ninku episodes on its YouTube channel right now.
• The full anime is 55 episodes, aired January 1995 to February 1996, with an original story and characters that are not in the manga.
• The manga is short. Weekly Shōnen Jump ran it from June 1993 to September 1995, collected in nine volumes. A sequel, Ninku 2nd Stage: Story of Etonins, ran in Ultra Jump from 2005 to 2011 across 12 volumes.
• There is an old dub. The 26 minute Ninku: The Movie got an English dub on VHS from Media Blasters in 1998, and later a DVD paired with the Yu Yu Hakusho movie.

Anime and Jump nostalgia has been everywhere this fall, from LEGO's first Dragon Ball Icons set to Ranma 1/2 Season 3 on Netflix. And it was a big NYCC for card games, with Wizards showing Magic's Darkhold Destiny the day before. Naruto x Ninku is the smallest announcement of the bunch on paper. Four episodes, no date. It is also the one with the most heart, and I would watch a teaser about a creator thanking his hero over a release date any day.

How we made this: researched and drafted with AI assistance. Sources are linked in the piece.