Naruto’s Funniest Senju Death Wasn’t Kishimoto’s Call

Anime-only changes can be great, but sometimes they faceplant. Case in point: Studio Pierrot turned one of Naruto's saddest backstories into something that plays like a comedy cutaway. Nawaki's death should hit like a gut punch. In the anime, it kind of lands like a bit.

In the manga: a deliberate blank space

Masashi Kishimoto never shows how Nawaki dies. We only get the setup: the day after his 12th birthday, after Tsunade gives him their grandfather's necklace, he heads to the front lines and never returns. Tsunade gets the news later and is wrecked. Leaving the moment off-page makes the world feel random and dangerous, and fans have long kicked around theories that his end might not have been an accident at all. It reads like a choice — keep it messy, keep it ominous.

In the anime: tragedy staged like slapstick

Studio Pierrot fills in that blank with an original scene, and it is... not the vibe. Nawaki sprints forward doing the full Naruto run, there is a sudden explosion, and his necklace arcs through the air and drops right at Orochimaru's feet like a sight gag. Moments earlier he is buzzing about becoming Hokage; seconds later Orochimaru is telling Tsunade his body could not even be recovered. The tonal whiplash is wild, and the staging makes the whole thing look unintentionally funny.

"I'm sorry but Nawaki's death was so funny"

That fan reaction pretty much sums up why this one lingers. Pierrot has added plenty of good anime-only moments to Naruto over the years, but every so often they swing big and miss, and this is one of the infamous misses people still bring up.

Why it clanks instead of crushes

When the manga leaves a death offscreen to sell the danger of war, dropping in an action beat with a neat little necklace button undercuts it. You can feel the intent — make it more dramatic — but the execution plays like parody. Keeping closer to Kishimoto's framing would have let the emotion do the heavy lifting.

Other Naruto anime detours that overcooked it

• Kakashi vs. Obito in Shippuden: the repeated, mega-sized Raikiri blasts and outsized chakra beams that were never in the manga — big, loud, and weirdly less powerful.
• Obito's Sharingan awakening: the so-called blood rain moment goes so heavy on the melodrama that it tips from moving to overwrought.
• Neji's death and the series' broader slow-motion habit: leaning on slo-mo and extra effects that aim for epic but sand down the impact.

Quick Naruto refresher

The original Naruto anime is a Studio Pierrot production that premiered on October 3, 2002, ran 220 episodes, and lives in the action/adventure/fantasy lane. It still rates well — roughly 8.02/10 on MyAnimeList and 8.4/10 on IMDb — and if you want to revisit (or rubberneck the Nawaki scene yourself), all episodes are streaming on Crunchyroll.