Naruto Fans Are Trying To Fake Boruto No Longer Being Canon

On October 10,Naruto’soriginal author and illustrator announced that a new canon mangatitledNaruto: Shadow Rising is set to be released sometime in 2027. This is great news if you loveNaruto. However, if you hateBoruto, it’s incredible news—or at least, that’s what some people would lead you to believe.

FollowingNaruto: Shadow Rising’sreveal at NYCC, several posts online have attempted to twist the announcement into something else entirely: confirmation thatBoruto, Mikio Ikemoto’s ongoing sequel to Masashi Kishimoto’sNaruto, is officially no longer canon.

Now, rumors like this aren’t usually newsworthy, but this one has started to get somewhat out of hand. A viral post onXwith almost 5 million views, posted on October 14, claimed that Kishimoto outright stated that “Boruto is an alternate universe” in a 2024interview. Another post onXstated that Kishimoto “officially confirms”Borutois now non-canon, by using a video of the author from 2017.

Obviously, these quotes have been taken wildly out of context—something one of the posters onXquite brazenly admitted to. Well, I say “obviously,” yet there are hundreds of posts onX,Reddit,Instagram,YouTube, and evena fewdifferentnews sitesfrom people who have either fallen for this bullshit or are intentionally pushing this made-up rumor for engagement. It’s even led to some fans labelling Ikemoto’s manga as “Boruto GT,” a reference to the non-canonDragon Ballanime,Dragon Ball GT. 

This has resulted in a bit of a pushback elsewhere. A “Boruto Canonicity Megathread” wentliveon the r/Boruto subreddit earlier today, and content creatorselsewhereare also doing their best to debunk the fake rumor. You know things have gotten out of hand when a content creator literally named Naruto Explained has toexplaintoNarutofans that they’re being fed a lie.

But how has such an easily disprovable narrative managed to spread like this? I think there are two reasons. Firstly, yeah, some people really, really do not likeBoruto, which both explains why this rumor was made up in the first place, and also why so manyNarutofans are so keen to—ahem—believe it.

The second reason is a lot murkier.Naruto: Shadow Risingis clearly set between the end ofNarutoand the start ofBoruto, which is obvious considering that Sarada, who is 11 at the start ofBoruto, is a baby in theNaruto: Shadow Risingpromo art. There is room in here for Kishimoto to wipe the slate clean and start again—something that, yes, publisher Shueisha might be keen on consideringBoruto’ssales numbers.

This is the part that makes it murky; asof October 2025, Shueisha confirmed 10 million copies of theBorutomanga are in “total circulation in Japan.”As of 2023, the first “72”Narutobooks had sold over a combined 250 million copies worldwide, with roughly 150 million of those sales supposedly from Japan. The “72” part is important here because it means that it doesn’t includeBoruto: Naruto Next Generations’manga sales, which began in 2016.

The issue is that a lot more people buy and read manga online these days, so perhaps this doesn’t fully encapsulateBoruto’spopularity—or lack thereof. Still, it doesn’t look great, so perhaps Shueisha would prefer thatNaruto: Shadow Risingdoes renderBorutonon-canon.

To that end,Kotakuhas reached out to Viz Media,Naruto’sofficial American publisher, to confirm whether Kishimoto truly intends to decanonizeBoruto.

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