Manga Series of Naruto

Naruto premiered in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine in 1999. The first 238 chapters are known as Part I, and constitute the first part of the Naruto storyline. Manga chapters 239 to 244 comprise a gaiden series focusing on the background of the character Kakashi Hatake. All subsequent chapters belong to Part II, which continues the storyline in Part I after a two and a half year time gap. The English adaptation of the Naruto manga is licensed by Viz and serialized in Viz's version of Shonen Jump. To compensate for the gap between the Japanese and English adaptations of the manga, Viz implemented its "Naruto Nation" campaign, where it released three volumes a month in the last four months of 2007 in order to close said gap. Cammie Allen, Viz's product manager, commented that, their main reason for the schedule was to catch up to the Japanese release schedule to give their readers a similar experience to that of Japanese readers. A similar campaign is planned for 2009, with eleven volumes from Part II of the series being released between February and April in order to catch up to the Japanese serialization. Starting with the release of volume forty-five in July, Viz will begin releasing Naruto on a quarterly basis.

As of May 2009[update], 46 tankōbon have been released by Shueisha in Japan, with the first twenty-seven tankōbon containing Part I, and the remaining nineteen belonging to Part II. The first tankōbon was released on March 3, 2000, with the forty-fourth released on November 4, 2008. In addition, several tankōbon, each containing ani-manga based one of the Naruto movies, have been released by Shueisha. In Japanese, Shueisha has also released the series for cell-phone download on their website Shueisha Manga Capsule. Viz has released 30 volumes of the English adaptation of the manga. In addition, Viz Media released all twenty-seven volumes in a boxed set, thus constituting the entirety of the Naruto storyline before Part II on November 13, 2007.