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The story
On October 11, a brand-new collaboration anime between the hit manga NARUTO and the manga Ninku was announced on the special NARUTO stage at New York Comic Con 2026. Supervised by Masashi Kishimoto and Koji Kiriyama, the project will be a completely new four-episode story in which young Naruto and the rest of Team 7 find themselves lost in the world of Ninku. On 5ch, pairing the globally famous NARUTO with Ninku — a manga so obscure that “even most Japanese people barely know it” — sparked surprised reactions, and the thread spun off into talk of fond Ninku memories, the differences between the original manga and its anime adaptation, and the power gap between the two series’ signature moves.
On October 11, the latest news on a brand-new NARUTO anime was revealed at the “NARUTO: What’s Next?” special stage at New York Comic Con 2026.
The stage announced that a new collaboration anime between NARUTO and Ninku is currently in production as a four-episode series. Supervised by Masashi Kishimoto and Koji Kiriyama, it will tell a completely new, original story in which young Naruto and the rest of Team 7 find themselves lost in the world of Ninku.
Denfaminico Gamer
Source: news.denfaminicogamer.jp / Original article here
What people said
But Ninku, the series that inspired it, even most Japanese people barely know, right?
They were both in Shonen Jump, so why the gap…
Series that ran around the same time, like Slam Dunk and YuYu Hakusho, at least stayed known because they kept coming up one way or another.
The thing about Ninku is the main character's a frog…
And the art style's pretty idiosyncratic too, so it's not for everyone.
Not many people truly know Ninku anymore.
I really loved Ninku's ending theme, 'Demo Ashita wa Yattekuru' (Still, Tomorrow Will Come).
even though its track record doesn't seem all that impressive.
The premise sounded interesting, but the content was trash and the art was trash.
The editors kept forcing pushes to save it, but there was no fixing that one no matter what they tried.
but I don't really picture them meshing well.
Well, I can kind of imagine how it'll turn out though.
That's because the original manga is just plain boring.
but I barely remember any of it.
Same with Midori no Makibao — I remember it existed,
but I've forgotten what actually happened in it.
But since the characters' eyes had no highlights, I feel like it landed better with older kids than younger ones.
Honestly, back then anime songs were actually sung by dedicated anison singers, and that was a good thing.
Naruto's just wall-to-wall artist tie-in songs.
YOASOBI's 'Idol'
'Bling-Bang-Bang-Born'
Demon Slayer
Jujutsu Kaisen
Isn't that 'Yani Neko' thing (a viral meme cat song/video) blowing up too?
I love this one illustration.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Ninku ran in Weekly Shonen Jump in the 1990s and was also adapted into an anime, created by Koji Kiriyama. It’s well known that NARUTO creator Masashi Kishimoto has repeatedly named it as an influence, but compared to contemporaries like Slam Dunk and YuYu Hakusho, it’s far less widely recognized today. In the thread, comments like “even most Japanese people barely know it” and “not many people truly know Ninku anymore” stood out, and the main focus of discussion became the sheer contrast between the globally popular NARUTO and the domestically obscure Ninku. Posters also repeatedly pointed out that the anime adaptation’s content and setting differed from the original manga at the time, suggesting that even fans who watched it back then have hazy, inconsistent memories of it.
*This article was compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “NARUTO x Ninku new anime announced! Completely new story supervised by Kiriyama and Kishimoto in production as a 4-episode series.”
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