
Early on, the Naruto anime quickly became incredibly popular, successfully bringing Masashi Kishimoto’s manga to life. However, the manga eventually fell behind the anime’s production schedule, forcing the animation studio, Pierrot, to create original stories to maintain weekly releases. For many years and across hundreds of episodes, these original additions were produced, and while some were enjoyable, many didn’t measure up to the quality of the source material. More recently, Studio Pierrot shifted to a less rushed production schedule, and this has ultimately benefited the Naruto anime.