When Does Naruto Shippūden Season 21 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is Naruto Shippūden about?

Naruto Shippuden picks up where its predecessor left off, following a teenage Naruto back to the Hidden Leaf Village after two and a half years of training, and immediately raises the stakes by introducing the Akatsuki, a collection of rogue ninja who are genuinely threatening in a way the original series rarely managed. This is the continuation for people who grew up with Naruto and wanted the story to grow up with them. It is darker, the fights hit harder, and the emotional weight of the central rivalry between Naruto and Sasuke becomes the spine of something that, at its best, is genuinely moving.

The tone sits somewhere between epic myth and teenage melodrama, and that tension is both the show's strength and its recurring problem. When Shippuden is firing, particularly during arcs like the Chunin Exams fallout or the Pain invasion, it delivers action sequences and character payoffs that feel earned after hundreds of hours of investment. But the show is also 500 episodes long, and a significant chunk of that runtime is filler, including stretches of recap episodes and side stories that would test anyone's patience. The pacing is, charitably, uneven.

Critics and audiences have largely forgiven those flaws, and the 8.7 on IMDb across over 200,000 votes suggests the show retains a fierce and loyal fanbase. The response is less "prestige television" enthusiasm and more the devotion that comes from a show being part of someone's formative years. That emotional attachment is real, and it shapes how the series is discussed more than any objective accounting of its faults.

What the show does better than most long-running shonen anime is make individual characters feel like they matter beyond their role in the next fight. Shikamaru in particular gets storylines that carry genuine grief. The war arc in the final stretch overstays its welcome badly, but the smaller moments between people who have known each other since childhood carry a weight that keeps viewers watching long past when a more ruthless editor might have called it done.

Is Naruto Shippūden renewed or cancelled?

Why did Naruto Shippūden end?

Naruto Shippūden ran for a decade and 500 episodes, which is itself the explanation for why it ended. The show was an adaptation of Masashi Kishimoto's manga, and when the manga concluded in November 2014, the anime's source material was essentially gone. The production had already spent years managing that problem with filler arcs, some of which were lengthy enough to test even the most patient fans. Once the manga wrapped, there was only so much runway left.

The final stretch of the anime adapted the manga's ending, and by March 2017 the story had simply been told. This wasn't a cancellation or a network pulling the plug. TV Tokyo had carried the series since 2007 alongside its predecessor, and Shippūden had been a reliable fixture of their programming for years. But long-running shonen adaptations tied to a source manga don't really have an open-ended future once that manga finishes. The story has a conclusion, and the show follows it there.

The timing also made sense commercially. Boruto: Naruto Next Generations launched in April 2017, essentially the week after Shippūden ended, carrying the franchise forward with a new generation of characters. So the ending wasn't really an ending for the broader Naruto universe, just a handoff. Shippūden concluded because its story was finished and its successor was ready.

Naruto Shippūden Season 21 Release Date

Best & worst episodes

Naruto Shippūden seasons

Naruto Shippūden trailer

Where to watch Naruto Shippūden

HulustreamCrunchyrollstreamCrunchyroll Amazon ChannelstreamApple TV StorebuyGoogle Play MoviesbuyFandango At Homebuy

Naruto Shippūden latest news