Toonami and YTV Broadcast

On 10 September 2005, Naruto had its hour-long premiere in the U.S. on Cartoon Network's Toonami. The first and second episodes were shown from 9:00 - 10:00, and an hour-long encore was shown from 10:00 - 11:00PM. The first episode of Naruto premiered in Canada on YTV on 16 September 2005.

On Saturday, December 31, 2005, Toonami aired a special "Naruto Year's Eve" marathon from 2:30 - 11:00PM.

Leading up to the series' English-language premiere, many fans expressed fears that it would receive a treatment similar to that of One Piece, which was heavily edited and Americanized to a TV-Y7 rating for broadcast in North America. Surprisingly, Naruto was aired with a TV-PG rating in the U.S. and a PG rating in Canada.

Many elements that were expected to be edited out of the broadcast version were intact, such as language not normally heard on Toonami and YTV (such as "You pervert!", "That's bull!" and "This sucks!"), references to alcoholism and mild sexual situations, Japanese cultural differences (including food and Japanese writing), and even blood in some battles. The uncut broadcast of Dragon Ball Z featured many of these same elements, but they are still rare among Toonami's other series. In addition, the opening music for the show was significantly changed but the background music during the episodes remained the same.

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