CVM SEKAI ANIME DIRECTORY
Naruto Movies, OVAs & Specials
Eleven theatrical movies, a shelf of licensed specials, and one honest answer to the question fans actually ask: where does each story fit, and does canon expect you to know it?
How to Use This Guide
Bottom line: most Naruto movies are optional side stories, but optional does not mean worthless. The films preserve specific versions of the cast, experiment with settings the weekly anime could not afford every Sunday, and expose what the franchise thought fans wanted at each point in its life. The Last is the major exception. That movie is a story bridge tied to the main ending, so tossing all eleven films into one filler bucket would be lazy and wrong.
Each entry separates official premise from viewing advice. “Canon status” describes whether the main manga and later franchise continuity depend on the story. “Best placement” is a practical spoiler and cast-fit recommendation, not a claim that every side movie occupies a clean week on Team 7’s calendar. Naruto continuity was not built to make all theatrical detours click together like LEGO. Sometimes the honest answer is “watch here because the clothes, teammates, powers, and spoilers fit best.”
MOVIE DIRECTORY
Start with the films, not a wall of text
Each card uses its own WordPress image, jumps to the full directory entry, and gives you a licensed route before you commit two hours.
Showing all 23 entries.
The Original Naruto Movies
FILM 1 · 95 MINUTES · ANIME-ORIGINAL SIDE STORY
Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow
Team 7 receives what sounds like celebrity babysitting duty: escort actress Yukie Fujikaze while her film crew works in the Land of Snow. Yukie is not simply a difficult star, the snow country is not simply a pretty location, and the armored Snow ninja waiting for her are not interested in autographs. The mission becomes a fight over a stolen homeland, a frightened heir, and a ruler who treats technology and chakra armor as permission to own everybody beneath him.
Best placement: after original Naruto episode 101 and before Sasuke leaves Team 7. Sasuke is present, Sakura is still in her early-series role, and Kakashi leads the familiar four-person unit. The movie is not required manga continuity, but the film is a useful first look at Naruto operating outside the village while confronting an adult who has survived by refusing hope. Official route: check VIZ’s current watch-or-own listing for licensed streaming, digital, and disc options in your region.
FILM 2 · 95 MINUTES · ANIME-ORIGINAL SIDE STORY
Legend of the Stone of Gelel
Naruto, Sakura, and Shikamaru start with a lost-ferret mission and end up in a fight over Gelel, a mineral with enough power to turn somebody’s “utopia” speech into a mass grave. Temujin believes Master Haido can build a peaceful world. The surviving clan that once guarded the stone knows what Haido’s dream costs. Gaara and Kankurō enter the conflict from the Sand side, which gives the movie a better political shape than “Naruto finds another glowing object and yells at it.”
Best placement: during the post-Sasuke filler era of the original series, after the Sasuke Recovery Mission and before the time skip. The roster already assumes Sasuke is absent, while Naruto and Sakura have not yet become their Shippuden selves. The story is anime-original and not required for the manga timeline. Still, Gelel’s stolen-resource politics make the movie worth discussing because Haido sells conquest in the language of peace, a trick real empires have loved for centuries.
FILM 3 · ANIME-ORIGINAL SIDE STORY
Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom
Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, and Rock Lee escort spoiled Prince Michiru and his son Hikaru home to the Land of the Moon. A circus purchase, an extravagant holiday, and a royal family that can buy nearly anything make the opening look unserious. Then the group reaches a kingdom under coup rule. Money cannot substitute for courage, and inherited office cannot substitute for public duty. Michiru has to become responsible for people who cannot simply leave when leadership fails.
Best placement: late in original Naruto, after viewers know Rock Lee well and before the time skip. The mission lineup belongs to the anime-only stretch, so the film does not fit the manga chronology as a required event. The movie works best as a leadership file. Naruto does not teach Michiru to become a shinobi. He teaches a sheltered adult that love without sacrifice is just expensive affection.
The Naruto Shippuden Movies
FILM 4 · 94 MINUTES · ANIME-ORIGINAL SIDE STORY
Naruto Shippuden: The Movie
Priestess Shion can foresee death, and one of her visions shows Naruto dying while protecting her. Her job is to reseal the demon Mōryō before his spirit reunites with a buried body and an army of stone soldiers. Shion’s fatalism gives Naruto exactly the kind of sentence he cannot tolerate: your ending is already decided. He responds with the emotional subtlety of a brick through a window, but the argument matters. Prophecy can describe danger without owning the choices made inside danger.
Best placement: after the Kazekage Rescue arc and before the story moves too deeply into Sasuke’s next phase. The costumes, techniques, and team relationships fit early Shippuden. The movie is not required manga continuity, and Shion’s mission does not become a later series obligation. Watch for the franchise testing a larger theatrical scale: armies, ritual spaces, monster animation, and a heroine whose social isolation mirrors Naruto’s without copying his exact childhood.
FILM 5 · ANIME-ORIGINAL SIDE STORY
Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Bonds
Flying ninja from the Land of the Sky attack Konoha in retaliation for an older war, while healer Shinnō and his student Amaru appear to offer help. Revenge, medical authority, and a creature that feeds on negative emotion turn the rescue story into a lesson about how easily pain can be harvested by somebody who calls exploitation progress. Sasuke also returns under Orochimaru’s orders, giving Naruto a temporary battlefield reunion that the main plot would never allow this cleanly.
Best placement: after the early Shippuden reunion with Sasuke but before Sasuke learns the full truth about Itachi. The movie is anime-original, and its Naruto-Sasuke cooperation cannot be inserted into manga chronology without visible seams. Those seams do not erase the fun. Bonds gives fans a contained version of the partnership they miss, then reminds us that shared combat rhythm is not the same as repaired trust.
FILM 6 · ANIME-ORIGINAL SIDE STORY
Naruto Shippuden the Movie: The Will of Fire
Four kekkei genkai shinobi disappear from four major villages, leaving the Land of Fire under suspicion and the shinobi world close to another war. Kakashi leaves Konoha because his body has become part of a plan to stop Hiruko, a former Leaf ninja who steals bloodline abilities. Naruto hears “necessary sacrifice” and immediately recognizes the old institutional habit of solving crises with one more disposable person.
Best placement: after viewers understand Kakashi’s history with Obito and before the Fourth Shinobi World War dominates the timeline. The film is anime-original, but its central argument belongs squarely inside Naruto: does the Will of Fire mean protecting the village by surrendering yourself, or protecting the people the village keeps asking to die quietly? The movie’s answer is emotionally satisfying even when its continuity fit is optional.
FILM 7 · ANIME-ORIGINAL TIME-TRAVEL STORY
Naruto Shippuden the Movie: The Lost Tower
Missing-nin Mukade reaches the ruins of Loran and breaks the seal on the Ryūmyaku, a deep chakra source that throws Naruto into the city’s past. Loran is still alive there, Queen Sara is young, and her trusted adviser is quietly turning people into labor for his puppet empire. Naruto joins a Leaf team led by a blond shinobi whose identity is obvious to the audience long before the movie permits Naruto to understand what stands in front of him.
Best placement: after the Pain arc, once Minato and Naruto’s parentage are known. The story is not required manga continuity, and its memory rules keep the time travel from rewriting the series. The emotional placement matters more than the calendar placement. Naruto meets his father in a form he cannot fully keep, while Sara learns that inherited power means very little if the workers holding up her city have disappeared beneath it.
FILM 8 · 100 MINUTES · ANIME-ORIGINAL SIDE STORY
Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Blood Prison
Naruto is framed for an attack on the Raikage and sent to Hōzuki Castle, where warden Mui controls prisoners with a chakra-sealing technique that punishes escape and resistance. The prison is built around discarded people, village bargains, and the Box of Ultimate Bliss, a weapon powerful enough to make every authority involved suddenly forget what human rights look like. Ryūzetsu enters from a Hidden Grass faction trying to keep the box sealed and brings the story’s sharpest moral consequence.
Best placement: after Naruto has learned Sage Mode and before the war chronology becomes too crowded. The movie is anime-original, and the conspiracy used to imprison Naruto does not sit comfortably inside normal village accountability. That discomfort is part of the watch. VIZ’s licensed release also includes the animated short Chūnin Exam on Fire! Naruto vs. Konohamaru!, so keep the feature and bonus short listed as separate works instead of pretending the disc extra is another movie chapter.
FILM 9 · 98 MINUTES · ALTERNATE-REALITY SIDE STORY
Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie
Naruto and Sakura are trapped in a Limited Tsukuyomi world where familiar personalities, family structures, and loyalties have been rearranged. Naruto receives the living parents he has wanted all his life. Sakura receives the independence she thought she wanted after growing frustrated with her own parents. The fantasy does not merely reverse classmates for comedy. The world finds the exact emotional hunger in each teenager and builds a cage that looks like fulfillment.
Best placement: after the Five Kage Summit material and before the central war revelations overtake the viewing experience. The film is not the main timeline, but Masashi Kishimoto’s direct story and design involvement makes the character exercise more deliberate than a random alternate-universe special. The best question is not whether every reversed personality is hilarious. The best question is why grief can make a false home feel safer than the real people still waiting for you.
The Canon Bridge
FILM 10 · CANON EPILOGUE BRIDGE · ESSENTIAL
The Last: Naruto the Movie
Two years after the Fourth Shinobi World War, the moon is falling toward Earth, Toneri Ōtsutsuki has targeted Hinata, and Hanabi is taken into a conflict tied to Hamura’s descendants. The mission gives Naruto a problem his usual emotional vocabulary cannot punch through: he has to understand the difference between loving attention, loving an idea, loving food, and loving a person who has consistently seen him. Hinata also has to act under coercion without becoming a prize passed between men.
Best placement: after Naruto Shippuden episode 493 and before the wedding stories in episodes 494–500. Unlike the earlier theatrical side stories, The Last functions as the canon bridge between the war-era ending and Naruto and Hinata’s adult family life. VIZ describes the movie as the final chapter of Naruto’s story and a series epilogue. Fans can debate the romance writing all day, but skipping the movie creates a real narrative hole that the wedding arc assumes somebody else filled.
The Boruto Movie
FILM 11 · CANON STORY WITH A LATER TV RETELLING
Boruto: Naruto the Movie
Naruto is Hokage, Boruto is furious that the village receives more of his father than the family does, and the Chūnin Exams become a stage for scientific ninja tools, public cheating, and an Ōtsutsuki attack. Sarada wants Naruto’s office. Mitsuki carries a parentage reveal like casual gossip. Sasuke becomes Boruto’s teacher, which sounds like revenge against Naruto until the relationship starts forcing father and son to see one another more honestly.
Best placement: after the Naruto ending and the next-generation setup stories. Viewers following the Boruto television anime can watch the movie before the anime’s expanded Chūnin Exams retelling, or skip the film and watch episodes 51–66 for the longer version. The movie’s central events belong to franchise continuity, but the later series adaptation revises and expands them. Watching both is useful for adaptation comparison, not mandatory homework.
Licensed OVAs & Specials
Naruto has accumulated promotional shorts, festival animations, disc bonuses, and side adventures across decades. This shelf stays deliberately smaller than fan-made “complete OVA” lists because a title does not enter the directory until a licensed or official receipt confirms what the work is. No mystery upload with a translated title gets canon status because somebody added “OVA” to a thumbnail.
OVA / SPECIAL · ANIME-ORIGINAL MISSION
Mission: Protect the Waterfall Village!
Team 7 escorts Shibuki to the Hidden Waterfall Village, but Kakashi is recalled before Suien and his rogue ninja move against the village’s Hero’s Water. Shibuki carries a famous father’s reputation without his father’s nerve, and Naruto recognizes the ugly pressure of being measured against an inherited story. VIZ also published a separate 200-page novelization by Masatoshi Kusakabe with art by Masashi Kishimoto. The book adapts the special; the novel is not another lost television episode.
Best placement: during early original Naruto, while Sasuke remains on Team 7 and before the Chūnin Exams permanently widen the power scale. The animation is an optional side mission, and the existence of a licensed novelization does not magically make every event manga canon. Watch for village leadership, public courage, and the franchise’s early interest in leaders who inherit symbols before they earn trust.
ANIMATED SHORT · LICENSED MOVIE BONUS
Hidden Leaf Village Grand Sports Festival
Naruto tries to reach a bathroom during Konoha’s athletic festival and discovers that every teammate, rival, animal, and badly timed emergency can become a boss battle when your digestive system has declared war. The short is broad physical comedy, not a secret missing arc. VIZ identifies the animation as part of the licensed original-movie triple-feature package, which gives the title a clean home without inventing continuity importance.
Best placement: anytime after the original series has introduced the wider Konoha cast. Familiar faces are the joke engine, so the short becomes funnier when viewers can recognize the crowd. Canon status is optional promotional comedy. Nobody needs to explain how a bathroom crisis affects the Fourth Shinobi World War, and thank goodness for that.
ANIMATED SHORT · LICENSED MOVIE BONUS
Chūnin Exam on Fire! Naruto vs. Konohamaru!
Konohamaru enters a Chūnin Exam where Naruto becomes his opponent, turning their older-brother rivalry into an official test with rules Naruto is fully capable of forgetting at the worst moment. The matchup works because Konohamaru no longer wants symbolic recognition from Naruto. He wants to beat him inside the institution both of them once treated as somebody else’s gate.
Best placement: during Shippuden after Konohamaru has grown into a working shinobi and before the war swallows ordinary promotion stories. VIZ verifies the short as a special feature on the licensed Blood Prison release. Treat the animation as bonus continuity and character comedy, not proof that every exam detail has a permanent slot in the manga timeline.
ANIMATED SHORT · GAME-BONUS COMEDY OVA
Sunny Side Battle!
Itachi attempts to cook Sasuke a perfect fried egg, and the mission receives the visual seriousness normally reserved for assassination. That mismatch is the entire engine. Domestic care becomes a technique sequence, while Sasuke's impossible standards and Itachi's persistence turn breakfast into a tiny alternate universe where brotherhood can exist without a clan massacre sitting in the room.
Watch it only after Itachi's complete history is known, because the comedy depends on the emotional weight it refuses to explain. This is a game-bonus comedy OVA associated with Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution, not main continuity and not evidence that the brothers enjoyed a secret peaceful morning. The egg is funny because canon denied them ordinary time. The short briefly gives it back without pretending tragedy disappeared. Official game record.
ANIMATED SHORT · CANON EPILOGUE
The Day Naruto Became Hokage
Naruto's inauguration should be the public reward for a lifetime of fighting to be recognized. Instead, family chaos, Boruto and Himawari's argument, and Himawari's newly awakened Byakugan remove him from his own ceremony. Konohamaru transforms into Naruto to protect the event, creating a ridiculous substitution that also exposes how public institutions keep moving when the person at the center cannot.
Watch it after Shippuden and before the Boruto road. The animation adapts Kishimoto's official movie-book manga chapter, giving it a firmer continuity relationship than a routine promotional short. The comedy works because the consequence is not cruel. Naruto gets the office, the family, and the village he wanted. He also learns that fulfillment does not arrive as a flawless photograph. Licensed release receipt.
PICTURE DRAMA · SCHOOL-UNIVERSE PARODY
Shippu! Konoha Gakuen Den!
Naruto and the Shippuden cast are recast inside a school universe where uniforms, clubs, crushes, and delinquent energy replace ninja ranks. The format is a picture drama rather than a standard animated episode, so still images and voice performance carry the parody. Familiar personalities survive the setting change, which lets the joke test how much of a character remains recognizable after the world around them is removed.
Watch it after the early Shippuden cast is familiar. Aniplex's official Japanese DVD record verifies the picture drama in the Kazekage Rescue home-video release. It is not ninja-world continuity and should not be filed as an OVA just because fans use that label for every bonus animation. The format is part of the receipt, babes. A school parody is allowed to be exactly what it says on the box. Official Aniplex DVD record.
ANIMATED SHORT · MOVIE DVD BONUS
Naruto, the Genie, and the Three Wishes, Believe It!
Naruto finds a bottle containing a genie and immediately discovers that three wishes become a group-management disaster when his friends can reach the same magic. The short compresses the cast into competing wants, misunderstandings, and escalating visual nonsense. Nobody needs a world-ending villain because unlimited desire plus zero meeting etiquette will destroy an afternoon just fine.
Treat it as an anime-original comedy short and place it alongside The Lost Tower home-video release. Aniplex's official movie DVD page verifies the bonus animation. It is not a canon mission and does not need a timeline conspiracy. Its tiny cultural joke is universal: abundance does not end conflict when people still have to decide whose wish counts first. Official Aniplex movie-DVD record.
JUMP FESTA SPECIAL · ANIME-ORIGINAL
Find the Crimson Four-Leaf Clover!
Konohamaru searches for a rare four-leaf clover because he believes it can help him win Kaede's affection before she leaves the village. Naruto joins him, turning a child's romantic shortcut into an early lesson about effort, embarrassment, and letting somebody matter without controlling the outcome. The mission is small enough for Konohamaru's age, which is precisely why it works.
Watch it after Konohamaru's introduction and before the Chūnin Exams. The special originated through Jump Festa and later received a licensed regional DVD release in Madman's Naruto Jump Festa Collection. That release proves the animation exists and circulated legally; it does not make the story manga canon. Consider it an early Team Naruto side road with a very Konoha belief that even a crush requires hazardous fieldwork. Licensed regional-release record.
CGI SPECIAL · JUMP SUPER ANIME TOUR
Naruto: The Cross Roads
Team 7 enters a mission that looks familiar enough to lower everyone's guard, then forces Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura to operate inside a fully computer-generated version of their early teamwork. The plot belongs to their pre-Chunin Exams rhythm: Naruto pushes, Sasuke measures, Sakura tries to keep the assignment from becoming a personality contest, and Kakashi lets the children reveal exactly how unfinished their coordination still is.
Place it after Team 7 forms and before the Chunin Exams. J-Stream's corporate release verifies that Shueisha presented the roughly 30-minute special through the 2009 Jump Super Anime Tour and officially streamed the complete work from November 30, 2009 through January 31, 2010. That receipt proves the release context, not manga canon. Treat it as an anime-original experiment and a real piece of franchise production history, not a missing main-series episode. Official Shueisha streaming record.
PROMOTIONAL ANIMATION · UNIQLO DVD
Naruto x UT
This short turns Naruto and Sasuke's bond into a compact promotional animation built around movement, memory, and music rather than a new mission. Studio Pierrot created fresh animation for the release, while Aqua Timez supplied a special UNIQLO version of Mayonaka no Orchestra. Watch it after the rivalry's major revelations, because even a six-minute brand collaboration can spoil the emotional shape of a relationship if you meet it too early.
UNIQLO's December 20, 2010 corporate release verifies the original animation DVD and its January 1, 2011 distribution to early buyers of the Naruto graphic T-shirts. Call it a promotional animation or branded DVD, not a lost television episode and not manga canon. The unusual release matters: this is franchise storytelling made to travel with clothing, music, and retail culture. Naruto was already bigger than its broadcast slot, and this tiny object shows exactly how merchandising learned to sell feeling, not merely a logo. Official UNIQLO release.
GAME-BONUS OVA · ENSEMBLE COMEDY
Finally a Clash! Jonin vs. Genin!! Indiscriminate Grand Melee Tournament Meeting!!
Tsunade turns rank hierarchy into a village-wide crystal contest, sending genin, chunin, and jonin into comic ambushes where everybody wants the points and nobody wants to admit how personally they are taking a promotional tournament. Naruto's pursuit of Kakashi supplies the spine, but the pleasure is the impossible ensemble: mentors and students collide outside the clean order of an exam bracket.
Watch it after the original-series roster is familiar, not as a missing canon chapter. A licensed Play-Asia listing for Naruto: Narutimate Hero 3 verifies that the Japanese game shipped with the original-animation bonus DVD, produced by the television anime team and linked directly to the game's RPG scenario. That makes its continuity loose by design. It is an all-star game companion built to let the cast bounce off one another, and honestly, Konoha would invent a paperwork-heavy battle royal if somebody promised it counted as training. Licensed game listing.
VIDEO-GAME STORY ANIMATION · COMPARISON FILE
Hashirama Senju vs. Madara Uchiha (Storm Generations animation)
Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations gives Hashirama and Madara an animated confrontation built for the game's compressed story mode. The scene matters less as a perfect historical record than as an early production attempt to visualize the founders' collision before later manga chapters and the television anime supplied the fuller version. Watch it for how the franchise imagined myth under incomplete information, then compare it with the canon account instead of stitching both together.
VIZ's licensed hands-on coverage verifies that the game contains substantial new animation and specifically calls out the Madara-versus-Hashirama fight. Classify this as video-game story animation, not a television OVA and not an independent canon chapter. Place it after the founders' identities are clear, preferably after the war-era history, because the value is comparison. Franchises revise their own legends as source material catches up, and this is one of Naruto's cleanest receipts for that process. VIZ licensed coverage.
Official Watch and Ownership Routes
VIZ maintains licensed watch-or-own pages for the Naruto film catalog, with streaming, digital, and disc partners shown by region and current availability. Catalogs change. A service logo is a route to check today, not a blood oath that the movie will stay there forever. CVM Sekai links to the official catalog instead of sending fans toward unlicensed mirrors dressed up as convenience.
Browse the original Naruto movie catalog at VIZ
Browse the Naruto Shippuden movie catalog at VIZ
Check Boruto: Naruto the Movie at VIZ