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Back in 2023, one of the biggest stories in the anime world was that we were getting new episodes of Naruto to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the anime’s debut. The planned release date of September 2023 came and suddenly Pierrot, the studio that made Naruto, Boruto, and a host of other anime over the years, pulled the episodes to “improve quality.” Now, almost two years later, we’re wondering what the heck is going on with the 20th Anniversary Naruto episodes.

It isn’t unusual for anime studios to pull a project, even at the last minute, if they think it won’t meet expectations. For an anime as iconic as Naruto, those expectations are understandably very high, so we took the initial delay as meaning that Pierrot was holding off until the episodes were up to their usual standard. However, we’re over 18 months into the delay, and they haven’t revealed anything at all.

We were all kind of looking to AnimeJapan at the end of March, which always has big news drops for the anime industry, to be when they finally confirm when the new Naruto episodes would be coming out. However, it came and went with nothing about the Naruto Anniversary episodes even mentioned. It is genuinely beginning to feel like they are never going to be released, which is wild because there is still such a loyal fanbase for Naruto, even after all these years.

There is still plenty of time for Pierrot to bring the Naruto 20th Anniversary episodes out in 2025, possibly two years after the original release date back in September 2023, but it is certainly looking more likely that something has gone very wrong with their production.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba
• 2025 is the year One Punch Man season 3 finally adapts the cosmically weird Monster Association Arc and I can't wait