AMINE AND MANGA

Viz Media has licensed the manga and anime for North American production. Viz has been publishing the series in their Shonen Jump magazine, and as well as the indidividual volumes. The anime series began airing in the United States and Canada in 2005, and later in the United Kingdom and Australia in 2006 and 2007, respectively. The films, as well as most OVAs from the series, have also been released by Viz, with the first film premiering in cinemas. The first DVD volume of Naruto: Shippuden was released by Viz in North America on September 29, 2009, and it started broadcast on Disney XD in October of the same year.

The manga was first published by Shueisha in 1999 in the 43rd issue of Japan's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. Currently, the manga is still being serialized with fifty-one tankōbon volumes released so far. The manga was later adapted into an anime, which was produced by Studio Pierrot and Aniplex. It premiered across Japan on the terrestrial TV Tokyo network and the anime satellite television network Animax on October 3, 2002. The first series lasted 220 episodes, while Naruto: Shippuden, a sequel to the original series, has been airing since February 15, 2007. In addition to the anime series, Studio Pierrot has developed six movies for the series and several original video animations (OVAs). Other types of merchandise include light novels, video games and trading cards developed by several companies.

Naruto (NARUTO—ナルト—, romanized as NARUTO) is an ongoing Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. The plot tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and aspires to become a Hokage, the ninja in his village that is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of all. The series is based on a one-shot comic by Kishimoto that was published in the August 1997 issue of Akamaru Jump.

Naru Nanao (七尾 奈留, Nanao Naru) (pseudonym) is a female Japanese artist from Okinawa, Japan. Nanao's choice of her pseudonym stems from the Circus' game Aries; one of the characters was named Runa Nanao (七尾 留奈, Nanao Runa). She is a free illustrator and thus is not affiliated with one single company; she is primarily a character designer. She began working with video game developers in 2000, but she is most well known for providing original character design for three heroines in the original D.C.: Da Capo visual novel by Circus released in 2002. Other works include Canvas 2: Niji Iro no Sketch, Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two., and Sola. At one point, she only went by her given name Naru. She is the supervisor of her dōjinshi circle known as "Ice and Chocolate" (あいすとちょこ, Aisu to Choko^?). She often collaborates with another circle named "Poteneko" (ぽてねこ). She even provided the front-cover illustration for the Comiket 70 catalog for August 2006.