Naruto Creator Shares Special Crossover Visual for New Series

Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto is still one of the biggest manga and anime franchises to come out of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, and is even still enjoying the spotlight thanks to its sequel Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. With the debut of his next project coming up soon, fans are definitely hoping that Kishimoto's newest manga can reach the heights of his breakout project.

Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru will be making its official debut as a series in Shonen Jump this May, but there's a quick preview Viz Media has shown off for the series that fans can check out now. But most importantly, there's a neat crossover visual for the new series that features Kishimoto's old hero greeting the new one.

Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru will be making its official debut on May 12, and fans will be able to read it on a weekly basis through Viz Media's digital Shonen Jump magazine. Details for the plot of the new series are being kept under wraps as of this writing, but the new series will be a major departure from Kishimoto's previous work as it teases a science-fiction heavy world full of samurai.

The new series will be written by Kishimoto himself, but the illustrations will be provided by his former assistant Akira Okubo. So that may come as a surprise to those who notice how the new series stylistically shares similarities with Kishimoto's illustrative style. Nevertheless, fans get a good look at the art here as Naruto is using a summoning jutsu to accidentally summon the protagonist of Samurai 8. Maybe the two series can crossover in a greater capacity someday?

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.

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