Article date: September 4, 2001

Naruto Author: Masashi Kishimoto Manga: Volumes 1 - 9(still running) Anime:(not yet yo!)

I try not to be biased in these Hot in Japan articles and try to cover a range of tastes and interests - but this time I can't help myself.

I AM TOTALLY SO INTO THIS SERIES!!!! I am driving Karaoke-man insane - hounding him to find out when the next volume of the manga will be released. I've even started to buy Weekly Jump to find out what's going on - do you know what it feels like to have a whole carriage full of salarymen staring at you strangely because you are a gaijin girl reading a mag intended for Japanese teenage boys?

So what is it about this series that as so captivated me (among the thousands of others who are going crazy about this - evident from the huge numbers of Naruto cosplayers I came across at the Summer Comic Market) about this series? Well the characters are cool, there's ninja fighting, unrequited love, gags...

The story is based on Naruto, a rat-bag of a student studying at the Ninja Academy in his home country of Leaf. He always up to something - whether it be graffiti or pranks - which doesn't exactly make him the most popular student around...but there is another reason why Naruto is generally scorned by others in the village - something to do with a dark secret in the past, involving a demon wolf spirit and it being trapped...somewhere...

At the beginning of the first book Naruto is struggling to graduate from the Academy and become the lowest rank of ninja (Genin). But he's struggling with one kind of jutsu - the Bunshin no Jutsu, in which you clone yourself to fool the enemy. So it looks like his favourite sensei Iruka will have to fail him...a trip to the woods with a forbidden scroll and another teacher trying to kill him to get it somehow results in him finally being able to graduate and mastering Bushin no Jutsu in a spectacular way...

Naruto is ecstatic about getting his headband with the Leaf ninja symbol on it - and also about being teamed up with Sakura, his cute classmate - but unfortunately for Naruto she's only excited about being teamed up with the spunky top-ranked student Sasuke (and kinda revolted by being in the same team as Naruto - especially when he accidentally manages to kiss Sasuke before she does...)

But their new teacher Kakashi-sensei is a force to be reckoned with...even if he does fall for Naruto's old "chalk dust eraser over the door" trick...their first study with him is a test...a test that no student has ever passed before...

But somehow they manage to...

So their lives as Genin begin - at first they're all pretty excited, but soon get bored with the jobs allocated to the lowest ranked ninjas - baby sitting, cat finding etc etc.

Frustrated they beg the top dude of their ninja association Hokage-sama to give them something a bit more in the line of ninja work - he agrees and the three of them and Kakashi-sensei set off on a Rank C assignment to escort and protect a bridge builder back to his little island - an assignment which somehow turns pretty much into a Rank A one...

What happens on this assignment?

Why does Kakashi-sensei wear his headband over one eye?

Will Naruto's dream of becoming Hokage ever be realized?

Will his past affect this?

Will Sasuke ever be interested in Sakura?

And what are the strange patterns that appear on Sasuke's body have to do with his new found abilities?

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28) ARMS