Last week, the official website for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump announced that Naruto would be ending in this year’s 50th issue of the magazine out November 10. Creator Masashi Kishimoto has been hinting that the series would be winding up soon. Back in 2012 he had stated the series was reaching its climax, and would be ending in about a year and a half. Finally, that end is in sight.

Naruto follows the adventures of a boy by the same name who lives in the ninja village of Konoha. After a difficult childhood and being shunned by the people of his village, Naruto becomes a ninja and joins his fellow teammates Sakura and Sasuke to go on jobs assigned to them. Naruto is determined to earn the respect of Konoha and become the Hokage, leader of the village. Naruto started in 1999, and became wildly popular both in Japan and here in the US through fan subs of the anime and scans of manga. Viz Media licensed the manga and it joined their newly launched Shonen Jump print magazine in January of 2003. The manga was one of the first to receive an acceleration in releases as Viz released 12 volumes in 4 months to start closing the gap between US and Japanese releases. A second acceleration occurred in 2009. Viz just released volume 67, while the Japanese releases are on 71, but Viz has been releasing current chapters in their digital magazine Weekly Shonen Jump.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Naruto. I really enjoyed Part I, the first 27 volumes of the series. I liked the first 4-5 volumes of Part II, but found Naruto’s journey into emo-ness to be annoying and really not enjoyable, so I stopped reading the series with the second acceleration. I’ve read random volumes since then, and have liked some more than others. Though, this last half, with the Ninja War, has felt more like the beginning of the series, with more action and less emo, so my enjoyment has gone back up so.

Naruto has been a big part of not just Viz Media growth, but also a lot of readers have grown up and grown out of the title. But the fact that new volumes always hit the top ten sellers lists, and spends at least a couple of months on the Bookscan top 20 shows the power the franchise still has. It’s ending will leave a vacuum in Viz’s lineup that will no doubt be difficult to fill. It will also be interesting to see how readers, both new and old, react to the ending.