What was the Naruto announcment? Jump Festa 2023 Naruto stage leaves fans beyond disappointed

Naruto Shippuden (Image via Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha)
Naruto Shippuden (Image via Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha)

With Narutop99 and other announcements, Naruto has disappointed fans at Jump Festa 2023. Fans at the venue and home were waiting for some indication about the teasers regarding a continuation that had been released till the event. However, no such information was revealed.

During the event, voice actors for Naruto and Boruto took the stage carrying cards containing information. Yuko Sanpei (Boruto), Junko Takeuchi (Naruto), and Noriaki Sugiyama (Sasuke) were the ones to make an appearance.


Narutop99 and other reveals at Jump Festa 2023

What is Narutop99?

Choosing to reveal the announcements in the form of scrolls, the first one contained Narutop99. It is a popularity poll that is slated to be held on a global scale. This will be the first global scaling voting poll for the series. Fans were urged to trend the tag #Narutop99 on Twitter.

The poll allows fans to vote for their favourites from over 450 characters. Narutop99 will allow them to cast one vote a day until the end of January 2023. The top 20 characters will be specially drawn by author Masashi Kishimoto. The one who receives the maximum number of votes will feature in a new short manga that is set for release in 2023. Also, Naruto will be free to read on all major manga platforms starting today for those interested in reliving the series.

The second announcement was made through another scroll and spoke of a music event. Naruto The Live will be held in 2023 - a music concert featuring artists such as FLOW, Kana-Boon, and many others (to be announced) will play themes from the series. Tickets are up for sale starting today.

Naruto the Gallery was also mentioned. Standing in Akihabara, Tokyo, the exhibition began on October 10, 2022, to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the series. It will run till January 31, 2023, and features artwork from Kishimoto and everything Naruto.


Announcements from Naruto at Jump Festa 2023 leave fans dismayed

(Image via Jump Festa 2023)
(Image via Jump Festa 2023)

To say that the announcements from the Naruto stage disappointed fans would be an understatement. Countless were hoping for some sort of revelation about a reboot of the original or maybe a new series, but nothing came to light. Instead, Narutop99 and a live music concert were announced at Jump Festa 2023.

The event hardly concluded, and fans took to social media to share their discontent.


All in all, the event disappointed fans to a high degree. Many waiting for a 20th Anniversary reboot were left hanging as the stage announced a popularity poll and a music concert instead. Fans online complained that the hype was fake, given that they were made to wait over two months for nothing.

The only thing that redeemed the event was the announcement of a Sasuke Retsuden anime adaptation. With it, Boruto was finally going to kick off the Code Arc and introduce Daemon and Eida.


Be sure to follow for more anime updates and manga news as 2023 progresses.

This article was modified on Thursday, August 07 at 4:00 PM.