With Naruto anime celebrating its 20th anniversary, the anime announced that it will release four new episodes as part of its celebration. Following that, on Sunday, July 23, the anime's official website revealed that the new episodes will begin premiering on Sunday, September 3, 2023.
The announcement about the anime was initially made back in March 2023. After that, it is only now that the anime has received a confirmed release date. As part of the announcement, the anime revealed a new key visual, featuring the original Team 7 from the Naruto anime.
Naruto anime confirms release date for special episodes with a key visual
As previously announced, Naruto anime is set to return with four new special episodes as part of the anime's 20th-year celebration. With that, the series' official website finally revealed that the Naruto anime is set to premiere on September 3. The anime will air one episode each on Sundays at 5:30 pm JST on TV Tokyo-affiliated Japanese television networks.
In addition, the website released a key visual alongside the announcement. The key visual features the original Team 7 from the Naruto anime, i.e., Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi.
As part of the announcement, the website also revealed the opening and ending theme songs and their artists. The anime's opening theme song will be performed by FLOW. This song will be "GO!!!" from the original anime, but it will be redone by the band. As for the ending theme song, it will be a cover of ORANGE RANGE's "Viva☆Rock"!
How fans reacted to the announcement
Fans were glad to see that FLOW was returning for the Naruto anime as it had been some time since they had listened "GO!!!." Thus, upon learning that the band was set to remake the song, fans were left elated as they could not stop themselves from expressing their excitement about the same online.
Fans had previously noticed how FLOW was making cover songs of music by other artists. With this announcement, it finally made sense to them.
However, the truth is that the anime is yet to announce what these four special episodes will entail. Thus, fans were having doubts about what they should be expecting from the upcoming anime. One fan even expressed how they would be disappointed if the anime only reanimated the old episodes.
Meanwhile, other Naruto fans were overly excited about the anime's return as they had been wanting to watch it again. Since many fans did not like Boruto anime, they were glad that Naruto was returning with new special episodes. They even believed that the four new episodes could end up being better than Boruto's entire run.