The English version of the series was released in North America by Viz Media, and began airing on September 10, 2005, on Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block in the United States.
The 220 episodes that constitute the series were aired between October 3, 2002, and February 8, 2007, on TV Tokyo in Japan.
The episodes are based on the first twenty-seven volumes in Part I of the manga, while some episodes feature original, self-contained storylines. The series was directed by Hayato Date, and produced by Pierrot and TV Tokyo. The series centers on the adventures of Naruto Uzumaki, a young ninja of the Hidden Leaf Village, searching for recognitions and wishing to become the ninja by the rest of the village to be the leader and the strongest of all. Naruto is an anime series based on Masashi Kishimoto's manga series of the same name.
