Naruto fans try hard to pretend that Boruto is no longer canon
Don't believe it!
On October 10, Naruto's main writer and illustrator announced that a new canon manga titled Naruto: Shadow Rising would be released in 2027. If you like Naruto, this is great news. However, if you hate Boruto, this is incredible news - or at least, that's what some people are leading you to believe.
Following the reveal of Naruto: Shadow Rising at NYCC, several posts online attempted to turn the announcement into something else entirely: confirmation that Boruto, Mikio Ikemoto's ongoing sequel to Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto, is no longer official.
Now, rumors like this aren't usually newsworthy, but this one has gotten a little out of hand. A viral post on X with almost 5 million views, posted on October 14th, claimed that Kishimoto explicitly stated that "Boruto is an alternate universe" in an interview in 2024. Another post on X stated that Kishimoto "officially confirms" that Boruto is now illegal, using a video from the author in 2017.
Obviously, these quotes are taken wildly out of context - something one of X's posters brazenly admitted. Well, I say "obvious", but there are hundreds of posts on X, reddit, instagram, youtube, and even a few different news sites of people either falling for this crap or deliberately pushing this bogus rumor to get engaged. It even led to some fans labeling Ikemoto's manga as "Boruto" GT, a reference to the non-canon Dragon Ball anime, Dragon Ball GT.
This has led to a bit of a backlash elsewhere. A "Boruto Canonicity Megathread" popped up on the r/Boruto subnet earlier today, and content creators elsewhere are doing their best to debunk the fake rumor. You know things are out of control when a content creator called Naruto Explained has to explain to Naruto fans that they're being lied to.
But how did such a narrative, which can be easily denied, be spread in this way? In my opinion, there are two reasons. First off, yes, some people really, really don't like Boruto, which explains both why this rumor was made up in the first place, and why so many Naruto fans are so eager to — ahem — believe it.
The second reason is much darker. Naruto: Shadow Rising is clearly set between the end of Naruto and the beginning of Boruto, which is clear given that Sarada, who is 11 years old at the beginning of Boruto, is a child in the Naruto: Shadow Rising promotional art. There's room here for Kishimoto to wipe the slate clean and start over — something that, yes, publisher Shueisha might be keen to consider given Boruto's sales numbers.
This is the part that makes it dark. As of October 2025, Shueisha has confirmed that 10 million copies of the Boruto manga are in "general circulation in Japan". As of 2023, the first "72" Naruto books have sold a total of over 250 million copies worldwide, with Japan reportedly accounting for 150 million of those sales. The "72" part is important here because it means it doesn't include sales of the Boruto: Naruto Next Generations manga that started in 2016.
The thing is, more people are buying and reading manga online these days, so maybe that doesn't fully account for Boruto's popularity, or lack thereof. Still, it doesn't look great, so maybe Shueisha would rather make Naruto: Shadow Rising Boruto off-center.
To that end, Kotaku has reached out to Viz Media, Naruto's official US publisher, to confirm if Kishimoto is indeed planning to outlaw Boruto.
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