The Naruto one-shot manga about Minato Namikaze will appear in the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in Summer 2023. Minato Namikaze was the winner of the Narutop99 (Naruto Top 99) poll held in December 2022. The results of the poll released on April 2023, with Minato receiving 792,257 votes in total. The new one-shot episode will be written and drawn by Naruto author Masashi Kishimoto.
A follow-up report to the Naruto Top 99 character poll released on May 15, 2023 in issue 24 of Weekly Shonen Jump. The report included an announcement of the upcoming one-shot. While there is no exact release date, the Naruto official website confirmed that the Minato manga will appear sometime this summer.
Masashi Kishimoto also offered thoughts about the Narutop 99 character poll. He said that he didn’t expect Minato to be so popular worldwide. He was very happy to see that Sakura remained a beloved character overseas, as she scored third on the poll. Additionally, Kishimoto revealed that he was rooting for Kurama to receive a lot of votes.
The Narutop 99 character poll was part of the 20th anniversary of the celebration of the Naruto series. Aside from Narutop 99, other Naruto polls held in the past include some of the best battles in the series. Viz Media handles the Naruto and Boruto manga localizations, and the anime is on Crunchyroll.
