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.
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 has sold over 100 million copies in Japan. Serialized in Viz's Shonen Jump magazine, Naruto has become one of the company's best-selling manga series. The English adaptation of the series has also appeared in the USA Today Booklist several times and volume 11 won the Quil Award in 2006. Reviewers from the series have praised the balance between fighting and comedy scenes, as well as the characters' personalities, but have criticized it for using standard shōnen plot elements.
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Kishimoto's first work as a manga artist was Karakuri (カラクリ), which he submitted to Shueisha in 1995. This earned him the Weekly Shōnen Jump's monthly "Hop Step Award" in 1996, granted to promising new manga artists. This was followed in 1997 by a pilot version of Naruto (NARUTO－ナルト－), published in Akamaru Jump Summer. In 1998, Kishimoto premiered as a Weekly Shōnen Jump artist with a serialized version of Karakuri in Weekly Shōnen Jump, but it proved unpopular and was canceled soon after. In 1999, a serialized version of Naruto began publication in Weekly Shōnen Jump and quickly became a hit. Naruto is still ongoing, with more than 52 volumes and just over 50 released in English, and has sold over 100 million copies in Japan and over 4 million copies were sold in the US[5] followed by over 93 million copies worldwide (outside Japan and United States) as of volume 36, also being adapted into two successful anime series. The Naruto manga series has become one of Viz Media's top properties,[6] accounting for nearly 10% of all manga sales in 2006.[7] The seventh volume of Viz's release became the first manga to ever win a Quill Award when it claimed the award for "Best Graphic Novel" in 2006.[7] In 2009, Kishimoto designed an extra costume for the video game character Lars Alexandersson for Tekken 6, and in 2010 this character appeared in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 as part of a special cross-promotion.[8] In 2010, Kishimoto also produced a one-shot baseball manga, Bench (ベンチ Benchi), as part of Jump's "Top of the Super Legend" project, a series of six one-shot manga by famed Weekly Shōnen Jump artists, also including Sorachi Hideaki, Konomi Takeshi, Usuta Kyosuke, Akimoto Osamu, and Akira Toriyama.
In his interviews and exclusively in the Naruto manga, he commonly mentions his deceased plant, Ukki-kun.[9] According to Kishimoto, the first time he had an office plant, due to missing the country atmosphere, he fed it undiluted plant food. He continued purchasing several other plants afterwards, but many of them perished
