You're probably thinking...."WHAT!?"
In an interview with Naruto Meigen Shu, Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto explained that Naruto was originally meant to be a story about a boy named Naruto who cooked ramen.
Naruto is one of the most infamous shonen anime and manga franchises, that also has a hearty amount of hit games, movies, and sales worldwide altogether.
The story is about ninjas, chakra, and an alternate world where ninjas have a dominant part in the world's society, with different nations across their world dominated by ninja protection and ways.
Naruto is a boy who vowes to one day become the leader of his village, who has mysterious powers inside of him due to his sealing with a legendary nine-tailed fox monster inside of him since he was a baby.
The story progresses as Naruto ranks up as a ninja alongside his friends and encounters many enemies.
How did a story about a boy cooking ramen end up becoming one of the most successful, action packed enormous shonen franchises?
Here's some excerpts from Kishimoto from the interview:
“Naruto wasn’t supposed to be about ninjas, it was supposed to be about a teenager named Naruto cooking ramen. But my editor of that time told me ‘It will never gonna work.’ I had to find something else and this became a story about ninjas.”
and
“Back then I loved ramen. In front of my college, there was this place called ‘Ichiraku’ where I used to eat ramen.”
I can hardly imagine the series as it is now, being only about ramen! Its not impossible to imagine an anime about food, since we have anime like Yakitate Japan and Food Wars to name just a couple- still, it would be incredibly different from the Naruto we know.
Don't forget, if you want to, you can read the whole interview that is archived here. What are your thoughts? Can you believe Naruto was almost ninja-less?
That's like Pokémon without the Pokémon.
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