‘Naruto’ Hit Big New Sales Milestone

The Naruto franchise has just hit a big sales milestone, as it’s now being reported that the manga series has sold 235 million copies worldwide! That figure (reported via Anime News Network) preserves Naruto’s place as the no. 3 bestselling manga of all time, coming in just behind the Dragon Ball franchise (240M), while still being ridiculously outpaced by the sales of One Piece (440M).

In Japan, Naruto is listed as having sold 140M copies of its manga, with another 95M being sold overseas. That’s a pretty healthy balance, which only goes to further demonstrate how popular the Naruto franchise has gotten with a global fanbase.

Masashi Kishimoto’s work on Naruto has been praised for its visual splendor and deep story arcs, which took the characters (and subsequently the readers) on an epic journey, over the course of fifteen years. Watching young hothead Naruto Uzumaki grow from a rascally little adolescent ninja into the Seventh Hokage of the Hidden Leaf is probably one of the most full-formed character lifetimes that we’ve seen, and the franchise has successfully made the jump to a whole new era, thanks to the new Boruto: Naruto Next Generations manga and anime series. Despite a slow start to carving out a lane for itself, Boruto is now achieving some big success, having recently been ranked as the no. 3 most profitable anime in Japan!

While Boruto is carrying the Naruto franchise on into a new era of success, Kishimoto has been gearing up for his next creative push, which will come in the form of a new manga series set in the sci-fi genre. We don’t yet have any idea what the series will be about, and no publication date has been officially set; however, fans are keeping fingers crossed to see something from it by the time 2018 closes.

As for Boruto: the anime series is particularly exciting for fans right now, as we finally are catching up to the events of the original Boruto: Naruto The Movie that introduced Naruto’s young son, as well as the new generation of the Hidden Leaf shinobi. As Boruto begins to step into more serious matters and cooler power-ups, fans are keeping fires lit for the original flash-forward sequence that opened the series. That teaser sequence saw Hidden Leaf in ruins, and an older, scarred, and much more somber and powerful version of Boruto battling with an equally powerful foe, seemingly for the fate of Hidden leaf. The promise of that destination will ensure even more manga sales and anime ratings, as fans invest in another epic and exciting ninja coming-of-age-tale. Could Naruto eventually outsell Dragon Ball? We’ll see…

How many of you fans have been with Naruto since the beginning? Let us know your story in the comments!

Boruto airs new sub episodes weekly on Funimation and Hulu.