Hey, Otakus!

There’s a lot of Anime to be excited for this spring. So many titles that it’s impossible to cover them all in time. Over the next few letters, we’ll touch on the ones to be most excited about!

Also, there have been some updates on a new Naruto Live Action movie that is set to come out sometime between 2026 and 2028, with 2026 being the earliest possible release date.

Here’s what’s on today’s agenda:

• Mushoku Tensei season 2 part 2 is set to start airing on April 8th.

• Destin Daniel Cretton has been chosen as the Director for a new Naruto Live Action Movie.

• A look into Naruto, one of the most loved Anime of all time.

Mushoku Tensei’s highly anticipated part 2 is finally upon us.

If you haven’t heard of Mushoku Tensei, which is very unlikely, it starts off as a relatively normal Isekai. The main protagonist, Rudeus Greyrat, was a NEET who never left his home. One day, when he finally did leave, he got hit by a truck while trying to save a young girl from suffering the same fate.

He was reborn with pretty good magical ability, but the reason Mushoku Tensei is so loved is because of their approach to the protagonist becoming powerful. We see entire episodes based on his life as a baby and young child. He starts off not even being able to read the language and slowly grows over the course of the first season.

This is a stark difference from normal isekai, which usually skip over the small bits of growth that really make characters feel real.

Rudeus also grows up as just a normal commoner on farmland. His parents come from some money, but refuse to even really talk about it that much until way later in the story

Destin Daniel Cretten was chosen as the Director for a new Naruto Live Action movie.

Not much is known about this movie yet, not the title, not the era of Naruto it is set in, practically nothing.

Fans, however, rejoice at this news. Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto himself said “I have found him to be an open-minded Director who was willing to embrace my input.”

Naruto fans are hoping this means that they will follow in the steps of the new One Piece Live Action series, in which Eiichiro Oda was part of the production every step of the way.

Anime is really hard to translate into Live Action.

As everyone has seen countless times, many Anime fail miserably as Live Action shows or movies. This is almost always due to directors taking the original plot and trying to either modernize it or change it for a different audience.

For instance, the Live Action Death Note movie from 2017, which almost all fans of the original Anime absolutely despised. This was almost completely due to the characters being nearly opposite of what they originally were, combined with the fact that the director tried to westernize it.

Regardless of if you like Live Action or not, this new Naruto project is certainly something to keep your eye out for.

Naruto is one of the most iconic Anime of all time. Why?

Speaking of Naruto, one of the most common characters you see outside of the Anime community is Naruto Uzimaki. I think that really speaks volumes on how impactful Naruto has been to both Anime and western cartoons alike.

Even people who don’t watch Anime know Naruto. What makes it so lovable?

Naruto, like Pokemon, aired an English dub on American TV for a few years, from 2005-2009. This means a lot of Naruto fans in the U.S. most likely came from watching it as a kid on Cartoon Network. Because of this, it was popularized and normalized before other Anime became mainstream.

Since Naruto was cool before Anime was cool, a lot of Naruto fans still won’t watch mainstream Anime and stand by Naruto wholeheartedly.

Naruto is, of course, an amazing Anime that is beloved by many. At its core, the Anime is about personal growth. No one is a monster. No one is unsavable. Everyone suffers and learns and grows, and when everyone comes together and relies on each other, personal growth happens.

For it to be such a silly Anime at times, making everything from fart jokes to adult jokes, the core of the Anime is solid and everyone who watched the Anime and loved it are completely valid.

Fun Fact:

Did you know that in the fourth episode of Solo Leveling the voice actor for Sung Jin-Woo’s Japanese version, Taito Ban, screamed so harshly and so loudly that after the final take for the scene he was recording that he coughed up blood?

This is coming from an inside interview from IGN with the English VA, Aleks Le. Apparently the role of Sung Jin-Woo is so vocally straining, it caused Taito Ban himself to cough up blood.

An Otaku’s Commentary

Thanks for the nice comment!