Naruto Shares New 20th Anniversary Poster

Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto is one of the most popular franchises to come out of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump, and the franchise is still flourishing to this day with numerous light novel spin offs and the major Boruto: Naruto Next Generations sequel manga and anime. The franchise is celebrating its monumental 20th Anniversary this year, and is getting ready for a huge event in Japan.

Dubbed NARUTO to BORUTO THE LIVE, this special event commemorating 20 years of both Naruto and Boruto will be gathering fans for fun events featuring the cast of the series and look backs at through some of the biggest moments of the series thus far. To cap it off, anime character designer Tetsuya Nishio (who has been with the anime since it began in 2002) has drawn a slick poster for the event and you can check it out below.

Taking place on October 5-6 at the Makuhari Messe Event Hall in Chiba Prefecture in Japan, this 20th Anniversary celebration will feature live performances from famous bands who’ve contributed to the series’ opening things over the years like KANA-BOON (which should sound familiar as their “Silhouette” as taken on a whole new life of its own through memes). There will also be a special live-episode reading featuring Junko Takeuchi (Naruto Uzumaki), Nana Mizuki (Hinata Uzumaki), Yuko Sanpei (Boruto Uzumaki), Noriaki Sugiyama (Sasuke Uchiha), Shie Nakamura (Sakura Uchiha), Kokoro Kikuchi (Sarada Uchiha), Ryuichi Kijima (Mitsuki), and Kensho Ono (Shikadai Nara).

The official Twitter account for the event shared a special trailer for the celebration as well, and you can check it out below:

Can you believe it’s been 20 years since Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto began? When did you jump onto the series? Let us know in the comments!

Originally created by Masashi Kishimoto for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1999, Naruto follows a young ninja, with a sealed demon within him, that wishes to become the leader of his home village. The series ran for 700 chapters overall, and was adapted into an anime series by Studio Pierrot and Aniplex that ran from 2002 to 2017. The series was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations which is set several years after the events of the original Naruto story and features the children of many of its key characters such as Naruto and Hinata.