Naruto Coloring Pages

Naruto is the loud, lonely kid who swore he would become Hokage, the leader of his village, and a whole generation grew up watching him get there. These Naruto coloring pages follow him through the training and the everyday moments more than the big battles, with his team and his rivals close by.

Naruto Uzumaki has most of the pages. He stands on a tree branch with his arms crossed, ties on his headband with the spiral showing on his back, walks straight up a tree trunk, runs across the surface of a river, meditates on a rock, holds a spinning sphere of wind in his palm and stands on a giant summoned toad. Between missions he eats ramen at the noodle bar, serves rice balls beside a teapot, carries a bundle of scrolls through autumn leaves, walks a puppy under paper lanterns, visits a festival stall full of paper cranes, sits on a hospital windowsill, hangs upside down from a branch, stands in deep snow in a heavy cloak, and crouches on the stone faces above the village. A chibi Naruto poses with two teammates.

His friends and teachers are here too. Sasuke stands back to back with Naruto, both making hand signs. Sakura heals a small bird. Kakashi reads his little book under a tree and crouches on a rooftop at night. Team Seven, Sasuke, Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi, poses together on a porch. Rock Lee stretches before practice and balances on one hand on a training post. Kiba tracks through the grass with his big dog Akamaru, Jiraiya fishes from a pier, and Gaara sits quietly in a field beside his gourd. Kurama, the nine-tailed fox, sleeps curled up in a clearing. The Hidden Leaf Village spreads below its carved stone faces, masked ninjas cross a rope bridge, leap through bamboo, stand under a waterfall and dig in a garden, and a mandala of leaves and kunai surrounds the Leaf symbol.

Believe it: the story in a few lines

Naruto began as a manga by Masashi Kishimoto in 1999 and became an anime in 2002. Naruto is an orphan who carries the nine-tailed fox sealed inside him, which is why the villagers keep their distance and why he has whisker marks on his cheeks. He fails the ninja academy exam, then scrapes through, and is placed in Team Seven with Sasuke, the gifted and silent rival, and Sakura, under their teacher Kakashi. The story follows him from that team to the war that ends the series, and it continues with his son in Boruto.

The heart of it is friendship with former enemies: Gaara, who carried a tailed beast like Naruto, becomes his closest ally, and Naruto spends years trying to bring Sasuke home.

Getting the ninja colors right

• Naruto: spiky yellow hair, blue eyes, three whisker lines on each cheek, and an orange jumpsuit with dark blue on the shoulders and collar.
• The headband is a dark blue cloth with a steel plate engraved with the Leaf symbol. Color the plate light gray and leave a strip of white for the shine.
• Sasuke: black hair with a blue tint, dark eyes and dark blue clothes.
• Sakura: pink hair and a red top.
• Kakashi: silver-white hair, a dark mask over his lower face and the green flak vest of a Leaf ninja.
• Rock Lee: glossy black bowl cut, thick eyebrows and a green jumpsuit with orange leg warmers.
• Gaara: red hair, a red mark on his forehead and a tan gourd on his back.
• Kurama: orange-red fur with black around the eyes and ears.

Hand signs to try while coloring

Ninjas in the series cast their techniques by making a quick chain of hand signs, each one named after an animal of the Chinese zodiac: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, bird, dog and boar. On the back-to-back page, Naruto and Sasuke each hold up two fingers of one hand, the half-sign ninjas use to focus before a technique. Children love learning a few signs and firing them off in order. A good game is to color the pages, then call out a sequence and see who can make the signs fastest.

Quick ninjas and busy village scenes

The easiest pages keep one figure large with an open background, like Naruto tying his headband and the ninja under the waterfall. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Naruto tying his headband
• Ninja under a waterfall
• Kurama asleep

The detailed ones fill the page with rooftops, lanterns and leaves, like the village and the rooftop at night. Lots of detail begins with:

• Kakashi on a rooftop
• The Hidden Leaf Village
• Leaf village mandala

Print and fold a headband

The Leaf symbol on the mandala page is the right size to become a paper headband plate. Color it gray, cut out the circle, glue it onto a strip of dark blue paper or felt long enough to go round a head, and staple or tie it at the back. Hand them out at an anime birthday party along with the Team Seven page, and every guest graduates from the academy on the spot.

Printing a ninja squad

The pages are free PDFs drawn on A4 at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" makes the drawing about six percent smaller so that every spike of hair fits. The printing guide points to the setting. Add to pack turns a whole team into one file. More heroes of the genre are in the anime coloring pages, the One Piece coloring pages, the Goku coloring pages and the Gojo coloring pages.