For the longest time, Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto has stood tall as one of the most popular anime and manga franchises. The Shonen series revolves around Uzumaki Naruto, an orphaned child living in the Hidden Leaf Village who has only one goal: to become the Hokage of Konohagakure and make the people acknowledge him.
The Shonen series takes its viewers on a rollercoaster of emotions that makes them sit at the edge of their seats. Hence, it can be stated that the Shonen series has mesmerized the hearts of millions of fans around the world with its incredible tale of ninjas, jutsus, and well-animated battles.
What if, we tell you, Kishimoto-San did not have anything in mind for the Naruto that we currently know and love? But more importantly, the franchise was initially planned to be based around demons. Sounds terrible, right?
Masashi Kishimoto’s Current Naruto Is The Result of a Failed Attempt
For several years, Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto has become the face of the anime industry. Thanks to its infectious popularity, that is not just limited to Japan but also transcended to Western countries as well. The series is easy to understand and has a thrilling dimension to it.
Thanks to its well-thought-out character sketches with complex background stories, they became so emotionally invested in the series. However, Kishimoto did not plan for the series to be based on ninjas and had a different story in mind that involved demons.
In a now-deleted interview of Kobayashi with Masashi Kishimoto, translated and shared via Narutopedia, the interviewer asked him how he came up with the concept of the series and the entire process behind it.
The mangaka mentioned that the initial story was “something uninteresting,” which later got mixed but got rejected because the publishers felt “the story is way too far from what they want.” He said,
Apparently he started out wanting to write a story about an old guy who owns a ramen shop and a young boy comes by, or something uninteresting like that. Other things also got mixed in with that like a story which was supposed to be really spectacular and it was about straightening up their lives and other emotive plots…
He showed that to his publishers but they told him the story is way too far from what they want, and Kobayashi agrees that it doesn’t have any elements befitting a weekly Shounen Jump series.
The mangaka added that he started to research other series that included Akira Toriyama’s works too. The story then featured demons, and the protagonist was a fox turned human. However, the story changed again and became what we know and love today.
He started to research other shounen series (especially Akira Toriyama, who he was a big fan of). In the end the name ‘Naruto’ came from this failed story attempt, as well as the obvious influences that made it into the actual series.
Then he made a story not about ninjas but about youkai (demons), where the main character was a fox who shape-shifted into a human. This story changed again so he made the fox demon into a human and redrew the whole thing, and submitted that version.
The mangaka emphasized that he wanted to do something different from other Shonen series of that period because a lot of them were about ninjas.
Hence, he decided to make his protagonist different and made the ninjas in his story more about “helping/protecting” than just “dying.”
The Story Behind Naruto Uzumaki’s Iconic Catchphrase
In the same interview, the interviewer asked Kishimoto-San how he came up with the iconic catchphrase “dattebayo!” The translated piece stated that he wanted the phrase to sound silly, as if some old person were saying it.
Moreover, he added that he wanted something like a speech impediment and liked the sound of the phrase; hence, he continued with it.
He decided to make a catchphrase that sounded silly that an old person etc would come out with. He also thought something that sounded like a speech impediment would be good, so decided to go with ‘dattebayo’”.
Despite the fact that the show was heavily affected by filler episodes, which caused many fans to abandon it, the Shonen series is still regarded as one of the greatest anime series of all time, with fans returning to enjoy it over and over!
Naruto can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
