Naruto for the UK (and Italy)

Date: 2005 February 27 08:23

Posted by Azure

Tucked away on a news item on Anime News Service is the news that Naruto could be heading to the UK! According to ANS ‘Besides the USA the animation's debut in the EU sphere also advances with telecasts planned for Britain and Italy’. This means that Naruto isn’t confirmed for UK and Italian fans but talks are underway. It also appears that merchandise and other Naruto franchises including the incredibly popular Naruto games might be heading this way far sooner than we thought! What’s interesting is that it’s TV Tokyo that made the announcement and not a European or American company. This may mean that the Japanese have finally sat up and started to take note of the way their titles are handled abroad. It’s thought that the very reason Naruto took so long to get licenced was Japanese awareness of it's popularity abroad.

Full Story

ANS post as follows:

On Friday in Japan TV Tokyo announced the global launch of popular anime 'NARUTO'. The work is scheduled to broadcast in prime time on the major American cable channel Cartoon Network from September. A video game and the toy merchandising blitz are scheduled to be developed on a large scale in the American market coinciding with the debut. Advance reviews for Naruto in the United States are very good. CN was chosen as the platform for broadcast because it reaches such a wide audience of the projected target demographics. Besides the USA the animation's debut in the EU sphere also advances with telecasts plannd for Britain and Italy. The broadcast licensing agreement includes these countries final stages of production are underway there. Naruto has to-date broadcast in eight countries including Taiwan and Hong Kong. Commercialization of the property has been a huge success in Asia. Advance reviews have been high within fan, media, and the business circles within each country according to TV Tokyo. In the past the network cultivated the foreign rollout for properties such as Pokemon and Yugi-oh!