No. of episodes 35 | ||
The first season of the Naruto anime series is directed by Hayato Date, and produced by Studio Pierrot and TV Tokyo. The episodes were released in North America by Viz Media, and on Europe and South America by Warner Bros. Television. Based on Masashi Kishimoto's manga series, the season follows Naruto Uzumaki living in the Hidden Leaf Village, attempting to gain everyone's respect and determined to become the next Hokage. He joins up with Team 7, a squad assigning to complete every missions.
The first season ran from October 2002 to May 2003 on TV Tokyo. It was also released with the English version from September 2005 to May 2006. It was shown on Cartoon Network's Toonami and YTV's Bionix programming blocks. In Japan, the season was collected in both VHS and DVD format. A total of twelve volumes were released by Sony Pictures Entertainment within 2003 from January 1 to December 3. Episodes from this season were released on nine DVD compilations by Viz Media between March 28, 2006 and February 20, 2007, with two compilations of thirteen and twelve episodes released for the first season. The first of these compilations was nominated at the American Anime Awards for best package design. In 2009, Viz released two other DVD boxes containing episodes 1-25 and 26-52, respectively.
Five pieces of theme music are used for the episodes; two opening themes and two closing themes in the Japanese episodes and single an opening theme and ending theme in the English ones. The two Japanese opening themes are "Rocks" (R★O★C★K★S) by Hound Dog, used for the first twenty-five episodes, with the rest using "Haruka Kanata" (遥か彼方, lit. Far Away) by Asian Kung-Fu Generation. The two closing themes are Japanese pop singer Akeboshi's "Wind" and "Harmonia" by Rythem, used for the first twenty-five and remaining episodes respectively. The opening and ending theme for the English airing is "Rise" by Jeremy Sweet and Ian Nickus, with an instrumental version played as the closing theme.