Naruto and The Future of the UK Anime Industry

Today sees probably the most important event the UK anime community has seen for many, many years; Naruto is launching on Jetix at 8pm. The glorious success or shameful failure of Naruto on UK TV will shape the future of the UK community- success means more anime on TV, more DVDs, more magazines, more fans, more everything; the unthinkable prospect of Naruto’s failure will mark the end of the so-called “glory days” and see the UK community slump back into a decadent, poor-to-mediocre existence; an industry that scratches its living off of the hardcore DVD buyers. If Naruto fails to bring in the viewers for Jetix, you can forget about seeing anime on a high profile TV channel for a long time.

For those who are unaware of the Naruto franchise, all you really need to know is that it is a massive media phenomenon on the same level as Dragonball Z. It has the potential to become a trail blazing success story for the UK community, with its coming of age, action packed story effortlessly able to stretch across generations and appeal to viewers young and old.

Since debuting in Japan during 2002, Naruto has developed a sprawling worldwide fan base of rabid fans. Every week hundreds of thousands of anime fans downloaded episodes of this show and quickly it became obvious that Naruto out of every other anime currently being produced could hook in so many new fans. Now the time has come to see whether the anime industry’s prodigal son has what it takes to revolutionise a country.

Naruto airs on Jetix UK at 8PM; as both a devoted fan of this show and excited supporter of the UK anime community, I urge you to check it out- or at the very least, cross your fingers and hope for its success. If you didn’t already twig, it’s important.