Naruto: Shippuden is an anime television series mainly adapted from Part II of Masashi Kishimoto's original Naruto manga series, with exactly 500 episodes. It is set two and a half years after the original series in the Naruto universe, following the teenage ninja Naruto Uzumaki and his allies. The series is directed by Hayato Date, and produced by Pierrot and TV Tokyo. It began broadcasting on February 15, 2007, on TV Tokyo, and concluded on March 23, 2017.[1][2]
On January 2, 2009, Viz Media and Crunchyroll provided eight English subtitled Naruto: Shippuden episodes on the official Naruto website.[3] Later the following 2 weeks, Viz began providing subtitled versions of the latest Naruto: Shippuden episodes a week after they first aired in Japan, with a new episode being added to the Naruto website each subsequent Thursday.[3] On July 24, 2009, Viz Media announced that the series would be released on the iTunes Store.[4] The first DVD release of the series in North America was released on September 29, 2009.[5] The English dub of Naruto: Shippuden made its US premiere on Disney XD on October 28, 2009.[6][7][8]
Naruto: Shippuden stopped airing on Disney XD on November 5, 2011, after 98 episodes.[9] The English dub was streamed on the Neon Alley web channel from its launch in October 2012, and beginning December 29 of the same year with episode 99, dubbed episodes premiered every week until March 25, 2016, after 338 episodes, about a month before Neon Alley's closure. Adult Swim's Toonami programming block began airing the anime from the beginning on January 5, 2014, restarting from Episode 1, in an uncut format.[10] The network started showing never before aired dubbed episodes at the 339th episode mark by May 2021 to September 2024.[11]