u/borutoisbestboy

The anime community is currently buzzing with news about upcoming information regarding the Naruto franchise, specifically the four special episodes announced back in 2023.

While their release was delayed to improve quality, reliable insiders like SugoiLite report that production was actually completed in August 2025, with a release targeted for late 2026, possibly around September or October.

Many wonder why these four episodes took so long to make, but the answer lies in a massive structural shift within Studio Pierrot as they transition from an exhausting weekly pipeline to a high-quality seasonal format.

Proper pre-production takes years, involving budgeting, booking top-tier staff well in advance, scheduling, and storyboarding, which ultimately guarantees a better final product.

Furthermore, this team has been simultaneously working on Boruto, meaning these four episodes are strategically designed to reignite interest in the franchise right before a massive marketing campaign in 2027 that will include a new Boruto anime announcement, spin-offs, games, and merchandise.

To understand the studio's internal dynamics, one must look at its distinct production lines, each with different budgets and goals.

While the Tominaga team working on Bleach: TYBW under the "Pierrot Films" marketing label is relatively young and inexperienced compared to others, and the Hotta and Isogai teams handle their respective stable projects, it is Koichi Machiyama's team that remains the undisputed powerhouse behind Naruto and Boruto.

This is the team responsible for industry-peaking episodes like 65, 166, 175, 189, 204, 217, 218, 292, and 293. The production issues Boruto faced in 2022 and 2023 were solely due to the production committee forcing this incredibly talented team to juggle too many outside projects, leading to severe physical and moral burnout and the anime's eventual hiatus.

Now, fully rested and shifted to a seasonal schedule, they are poised to deliver animation that will easily surpass both Bleach and Black Clover.

Skeptics often point to the troubled production of One Punch Man Season 3 by J.C. Staff as a cautionary tale, but the situations are fundamentally different.

Unlike J.C. Staff, which takes on dozens of projects with a smaller staff, Studio Pierrot now limits itself to two or three major projects a year and actually sits on the production committee, giving them a voice to prioritize quality over rushed deadlines dictated by companies like Bandai Namco.

Furthermore, OPM suffered because they had to replace their director with Shinpei Nagai, who specializes in romance and comedy rather than action, whereas Pierrot has a deep roster of elite in-house action directors.

Finally, the narrative that legendary animators like Hiroyuki Yamashita and Chengxi Huang have abandoned Boruto for Bleach is completely false; their contributions to TYBW were merely brief cameos, a common practice even during the weekly Boruto run.

Simply put, nothing Yamashita animated for Bleach comes close to his masterful direction in Boruto episode 189, and Huang's work on Bleach pales in comparison to his legendary Boruto episode 65.

The core staff remains firmly attached to Naruto and Boruto, and the extended wait is not a sign of production hell, but rather a meticulous preparation phase that will allow the franchise's return to set a completely new standard of quality in the anime industry.