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NARUTO -ナルト- 疾風伝
A grown-up ninja returns home to save a friend - and ends up saving the world.
Two and a half years after leaving the Hidden Leaf Village to train with the legendary Jiraiya, Naruto Uzumaki comes home taller, stronger and no less loud. His goal has not changed: bring back Sasuke Uchiha, the teammate who walked away in search of power. But the world has moved on without him. The Akatsuki, a black-cloaked organization of rogue ninja, has begun hunting the nine tailed beasts sealed inside human hosts - including the fox sealed inside Naruto himself. Reunited with Sakura under a new squad leader, Naruto is pulled into a widening conflict that reaches across the five great ninja nations. Along the way the series digs into the histories behind its villains, the cost of the shinobi system, and the cycle of hatred that keeps producing orphans like Naruto. As alliances form and old secrets surface, Naruto must master the power inside him and decide what kind of leader the world actually needs.
Naruto Uzumaki returns to the Hidden Leaf Village after years of training abroad, determined to rescue his former teammate Sasuke. Instead he finds a criminal syndicate called the Akatsuki collecting the nine tailed beasts - monstrous chakra entities sealed inside human hosts, Naruto among them. Team 7 reassembles under a new captain, and the hunt for Sasuke becomes entangled with a threat to every ninja village.
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Episodes 1-32
Naruto returns to the Hidden Leaf visibly older and stronger, only to learn that Gaara, now Kazekage of the Sand, has been abducted by the Akatsuki. Team 7 races to the desert alongside Chiyo and Team Guy, leading to Naruto's furious duel with Deidara and Sakura and Chiyo's battle against Sasori. The arc introduces the Akatsuki's extraction ritual and the human cost of it.
Episodes 33-112
With Sasuke still missing, a rebuilt Team 7 adds the unsettling artist Sai and captain Yamato, and tracks Orochimaru's network to the Tenchi Bridge for a brief, crushing reunion. The focus then turns to the immortal Akatsuki pair Hidan and Kakuzu, whose attack costs the Leaf a beloved jonin and pushes Naruto into developing an entirely new signature technique.
Episodes 113-151
Sasuke assembles his own team, Hebi, to hunt his brother, while Naruto searches for clues of his own. Jiraiya infiltrates the Hidden Rain and confronts the Akatsuki's leader, a fight whose outcome reshapes the series. The arc climaxes in the storm-lit duel between Sasuke and Itachi, and the revelation of what really happened to the Uchiha clan.
Episodes 152-175
Pain's six bodies invade the Hidden Leaf, flattening the village and forcing Naruto into the fight of his life after he completes sage training on Mount Myoboku. Hinata's intervention, Naruto's near-loss of control to the Nine-Tails, and an encounter with the Fourth Hokage lead to a confrontation resolved less by force than by argument about how to break a cycle of revenge.
Episodes 176-260
As the Akatsuki's remaining leadership declares a Fourth Great Ninja War, the five Kage convene and Sasuke crashes the summit as a wanted criminal, severing his last ties to his old team. Naruto travels to the Island Turtle to confront the hatred inside himself and master the Nine-Tails' power with help from Killer B, while the allied nations mobilize.
Episodes 261-478
Reanimated legends are turned against the Allied Shinobi Forces, the Ten-Tails is revived, and Naruto fights beside a resurrected Fourth Hokage and a reunited Team 7. The war exposes the identity of the masked man, the origins of the Sage of Six Paths, and the ancient goddess Kaguya, before ending in a long-delayed final clash between Naruto and Sasuke at the Valley of the End.
Episodes 479-500
The closing episodes adapt the post-war novels and side stories: Kakashi's term as Sixth Hokage, Sasuke's wandering investigation, Shikamaru's trials, and the courtship arc leading to Naruto and Hinata's wedding. Lighter in tone and largely free of combat, these episodes let the surviving cast settle into adulthood and set up the generation that follows.
Episode 133
Itachi Pursuit and Sasuke vs. Itachi
Jiraiya's infiltration of the Hidden Rain ends in a battle he cannot win, told with flashbacks to his students and his writing. A quiet, devastating payoff for the mentor who shaped both Naruto and the villain he faces.
Episode 138
Itachi Pursuit and Sasuke vs. Itachi
The conclusion of Sasuke's duel with Itachi, staged in driving rain with Amaterasu and Susanoo at full scale. The final gesture between the brothers reframes everything the series had established about the Uchiha massacre.
Episode 166
Pain's Assault on Konoha
Hinata steps between Naruto and Pain in a fight she has no chance of winning, finally saying aloud what she has felt since childhood. The moment triggers Naruto's most frightening loss of control in the series.
Episode 175
Pain's Assault on Konoha
Naruto's debate with Nagato over pain, peace and inherited hatred closes the arc without another punch, and his return to the ruined village gives him the recognition he had chased since episode one.
Episode 478
Fourth Great Ninja War
The aftermath of the Valley of the End rematch: two exhausted friends lying in the rubble, unable to move, finally speaking honestly. It resolves the rivalry that drove both Naruto series across fifteen years.
Every episode of Naruto Shippuden with its broadcast title and air date, grouped by arc. Watch links search Crunchyroll for the series.
Every character has a full profile covering their history, abilities and relationships.
Naruto UzumakiProtagonist
Sasuke UchihaRival / Antihero
Sakura HarunoDeuteragonist / Medical Ninja
Kakashi HatakeMentor / Team Leader
SaiReplacement Teammate
JiraiyaMentor
TsunadeFifth Hokage
Itachi UchihaAntagonist turned tragic hero
Pain (Nagato)Primary antagonist of the first half
Obito UchihaMasked antagonist
Madara UchihaFinal-arc antagonist
Hinata HyūgaSupporting hero / love interest
GaaraAlly / Fifth Kazekage
Killer BMentor / AllyNearly every antagonist - Nagato, Obito, Sasuke - is a victim of loss who decided the world could only be fixed by force. Shippuden repeatedly asks whether revenge can be interrupted, and makes Naruto's refusal to retaliate his defining strength.
Teachers, parents and predecessors shape the war generation: Jiraiya's writing, Minato's sealing work, Asuma's students, Itachi's hidden sacrifice. The series frames progress as something passed down imperfectly, with each generation deciding which parts of that legacy to keep.
Team 7's fracture drives the plot, but the theme extends to the Uchiha brothers, Naruto and Gaara, and the wartime alliance of rival villages. Bonds are shown as both a source of strength and the wound every villain exploits.
The Fourth Great Ninja War replaces individual duels with mass casualties, reanimated corpses of dead heroes, and child soldiers on every side. Shippuden is far grimmer than its predecessor about what shinobi systems actually do to the people inside them.
Naruto's childhood isolation is mirrored in Nagato, Obito and Gaara, each of whom chose a different response to being unwanted. The series argues that being seen by even one person is what separates a hero from a destroyer.
Konoha's founding, the Uchiha massacre and the Nine-Tails attack are all revealed to be sanitized versions of uglier events. Much of Shippuden's second half is characters uncovering what their village hid, then deciding what to do with it.
Shippuden turned a popular shonen series into a decade-long global phenomenon, running 500 episodes and becoming many Western viewers' entry point into anime through streaming and late-night television blocks. Its long-form villain backstories - particularly Pain's and Obito's - pushed mainstream shonen toward morally complicated antagonists, while its themes of loneliness, inherited hatred and chosen family gave the franchise unusual emotional staying power. Its music, fight choreography and iconic imagery remain fixtures of anime fandom.
Content notes: Frequent stylized violence, Blood and battle injuries, Character deaths, War themes and mass casualties, Child soldiers, Torture and psychological cruelty, Suicide-adjacent sacrifice, Brief crude humor.
Naruto Shippuden ran for 500 episodes, broadcast weekly on TV Tokyo from February 2007 to March 2017. It adapts the second half of Masashi Kishimoto's manga, roughly chapters 245 to 700, and is commonly split by streaming services into around twenty-one seasons.
Yes. Shippuden begins immediately after episode 220 of the 2002 series, following a two-and-a-half-year time skip during which Naruto trains with Jiraiya. The sequel assumes you know Team 7's break-up, Sasuke's defection to Orochimaru and the Chunin Exams backstory.
Roughly forty percent of the 500 episodes are anime-original filler, concentrated in long stretches during the Fourth Great Ninja War. Skipping it costs you nothing plot-wise, though some filler arcs, such as Kakashi's backstory and the Six-Tails material, are well regarded by fans.
Key canon arcs include the Kazekage Rescue, Hidan and Kakuzu, Itachi Pursuit and Sasuke's fight with Itachi, Jiraiya's confrontation with Pain, the Pain Assault on Konoha, the Five Kage Summit, and the lengthy Fourth Great Ninja War leading to Kaguya and the final Naruto-Sasuke duel.
After the war ends and Kaguya Otsutsuki is sealed, Naruto and Sasuke fight a final battle at the Valley of the End, both losing an arm before reconciling. The series closes with epilogue episodes covering Naruto and Hinata's wedding, setting up the next generation.
Yes. Viz Media produced an English dub for all 500 episodes, with Maile Flanagan as Naruto, Yuri Lowenthal as Sasuke and Kate Higgins as Sakura. The dub lagged years behind the Japanese broadcast but was eventually completed and is available on major streaming platforms.
The cast is older, roughly fifteen to seventeen at the start, and the tone is considerably darker. The focus shifts from academy-level missions to the Akatsuki, war, and the history of the ninja world, with far higher stakes, permanent character deaths and heavier political themes.
The films are mostly standalone side stories and can be skipped. The main exception is The Last: Naruto the Movie, which is treated as canon and bridges the gap between the war's aftermath and the epilogue, explaining how Naruto and Hinata become a couple.