Naruto Watch Order: Filler to Skip

How much of Naruto is actually filler?

Naruto ran 220 episodes from 2002 to 2007. Naruto Shippuden ran 500 more from 2007 to 2017. That is 720 episodes across a fifteen-year television run.

Of those, roughly 91 in the original series and 203 in Shippuden are anime-original — 294 filler episodes, about 40.8%, leaving around 426 episodes of manga-canon story. Both halves land near the same rate despite airing a decade apart, which tells you this was a structural condition of how the show was made rather than one bad patch.

For scale: Dragon Ball Z, the series usually held up as the benchmark for padding, ran 291 episodes with a filler rate generally put somewhere in the high thirties to low forties. Naruto is in the same territory, and by most counts slightly worse.

Why does Naruto have this much filler?

Studio Pierrot animated Masashi Kishimoto's chapters faster than he could write new ones. That is the whole explanation, and it is a structural problem for any long-running series adapted in near real-time rather than after the source material is finished.

The alternative was going on hiatus every time the anime caught up. Instead Pierrot produced original content to buy Kishimoto time — repeatedly, in waves, across both series. We've written more broadly about why anime have filler episodes and the production economics behind it, because Naruto is the most extreme example of a pattern rather than a one-off failure.

Where the filler actually sits in the original series

This is the part worth knowing, because the original series has by far the cleanest skip in the franchise.

Roughly the first 135 episodes are canon-dense. They carry the Land of Waves arc, the Chunin Exams, the invasion of Konoha, the search for Tsunade, and the Sasuke Retrieval arc — which is to say, everything the original series is actually remembered for. There are a handful of scattered anime-original episodes inside that run, but nothing you need to plan around.

Then episodes 136 to 220 are almost entirely filler. That stretch runs after Sasuke's departure and before Shippuden picks up the story, and it is the single largest uninterrupted block of anime-original content in either series. If you do nothing else in this guide, skip it. It costs you 85 episodes and no plot.

Where the filler sits in Shippuden

Shippuden is harder, and it's worth being honest about why. The filler doesn't sit in one block you can jump over. It arrives in stretches between canon arcs — sometimes a couple of episodes, sometimes twenty or more — which means there's no single instruction that covers it the way "skip 136 to 220" covers the original series.

The rough shape: the canon spine runs through the Kazekage Rescue arc, the pursuit of Itachi, Jiraiya's story, Pain's assault on Konoha, the Five Kage Summit, and then the Fourth Great Ninja War, which occupies most of the back half. The filler collects in the gaps between those, plus one long anime-original run in the 400s while the manga finished.

Why this guide doesn't print an episode-by-episode list

You'll find plenty of pages that publish a comma-separated list of canon episode numbers. Be careful with them. We checked several against each other while writing this and they disagree, sometimes badly — and the failure mode is asymmetric.

If a list wrongly marks an episode as filler, you skip a canon episode and quietly lose part of the story. A list that's 90% right still breaks your watch. Given that, publishing a precise-looking list we couldn't independently verify would be worse than publishing none.

What we'd actually recommend: use the one high-confidence skip above for the original series, then for Shippuden keep a maintained community filler tracker open alongside your watch. Those get corrected when they're wrong, which a static list in an article never does.

How many episodes do you actually need to watch?

Around 426 of the 720. Skipping filler correctly removes close to 300 episodes — over 40% of the runtime — without dropping a single plot beat.

Put in hours, at roughly 23 minutes an episode, that's the difference between about 276 hours and about 163 hours. More than four working weeks of viewing time, recovered.

Is any of the filler worth watching anyway?

A genuine minority of it, yes. The filler that tends to get defended is the character-driven kind — stretches built around side characters who get comparatively little room in the main story. Fans who'd already bonded with the cast often found real value in simply spending more time with them, even in stories that go nowhere.

Treat that as a bonus for people who love these characters enough to want more, not as homework. If you're watching for the story, none of it is required.

Do you need to watch the original series before Shippuden?

Yes, without exception. Shippuden is a direct continuation set two and a half years after the original series ends, following Sasuke's defection, and it assumes complete familiarity with the cast, their relationships, and everything leading up to the timeskip. There is no legitimate way to start at Shippuden.

What about Boruto — is that required too?

No. Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is a separate sequel following Naruto's son. It's an optional follow-up if you want to keep going after the main story ends, not homework before or during it.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of Naruto is filler? About 40.8% across both series — roughly 294 filler episodes out of 720 total, leaving around 426 episodes of manga-canon content.

Can I skip straight to Naruto Shippuden without watching the original series? No. Shippuden continues directly from the original series' ending, two and a half years later, and assumes full familiarity with the cast and the events leading to the timeskip.

Which Naruto episodes are the biggest single skip? Episodes 136 to 220 of the original series. That stretch runs after the Sasuke Retrieval arc and is almost entirely anime-original, making it the largest uninterrupted block of filler in the franchise.

Is any Naruto filler actually good? Some of it. Side-character-focused filler in particular is well regarded by longtime fans, but none of it is required to follow the story.

Do I need to watch Boruto? No. Boruto is a separate sequel following Naruto's son. It's optional viewing after the main story, not a prerequisite.

Want something shorter after all that?

Even trimmed, 426 episodes is a commitment. If you want the opposite experience, we've written about short, completed anime with no filler at all, and our anime recommendation quiz will match something to your mood tonight rather than your next six months.