Naruto Shippuden the Movie 7: The Last
THE LAST NARUTO THE MOVIE (The Last: Naruto the Movie)
- Action
- Adventure
- Fantasy
- Romance
- Episodes
- 1
- Duration
- 1 hr 52 min
- Aired
- Dec 6, 2014
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Two years after the Fourth Great Ninja War, peace has settled over Konohagakure—until Sixth Hokage Kakashi Hatake discovers an ominous new crisis: the moon is steadily drawing closer to Earth, threatening catastrophic destruction.
As panic mounts, a new enemy emerges. Toneri Ootsutsuki attacks and kidnaps Hanabi Hyuuga, Hinata’s younger sister, forcing Konoha to act fast. Kakashi sends a handpicked squad—Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, Shikamaru Nara, Sai, and Hinata—on a rescue mission that quickly turns perilous as setbacks and unexpected trials complicate their pursuit. With the world on the edge and bonds under strain, Naruto finds himself fighting not only to save Hanabi and stop the looming disaster, but also to confront feelings that reshape what he’s willing to risk.
Otaku Consensus
The Last: Naruto the Movie is best understood as a franchise epilogue that succeeds when Tsuneo Kobayashi and Studio Pierrot prioritize emotional closure, older character staging, and the long-delayed Naruto-Hinata arc over standard mission mechanics. Its strongest reputation comes from filling the emotional space around the manga’s final chapters, with Yasuharu Takanashi’s score and the movie-scale fights giving the ending a ceremonial weight. The recurring criticism is legitimate: the central threat is often judged as simplistic, even filler-like, compared with the character work carrying it.
Why You Should Watch
Watch The Last if you want Naruto’s battle-shounen payoff to land as a relationship drama rather than another escalation ladder. Tsuneo Kobayashi and Studio Pierrot frame the film like a franchise epilogue: older character designs, movie-scale taijutsu bursts, and Yasuharu Takanashi’s familiar musical language are used to make the cast feel settled, not rebooted. It is especially rewarding for viewers who cared about Hinata’s long-running emotional thread and wanted the final manga-era gaps to feel lived-in. It scratches the same itch as Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods as a post-saga victory lap, but with a much stronger romance engine. If you want canon-flavored closure without committing to another long arc, this is the Naruto movie that most directly answers what the characters became after the war.
Key Characters
- NNaruto Uzumaki
Presented in an older post-war phase, Naruto is written less as a loud underdog and more as a public hero being pushed into emotional adulthood.
- HHinata Hyuuga
Hinata receives one of her most foregrounded franchise roles here, with the film treating her long-running feelings as the emotional spine rather than background texture.
- SSakura Haruno
Sakura stands out as the team member most willing to name the emotional subtext directly, giving her a mature supporting role in a story built around romantic clarity.
- TToneri Ootsutsuki
Toneri connects the film to the Ootsutsuki side of Naruto mythology, making him less a village-level rival than a figure tied to the franchise’s lost-civilization lore.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
Studio Pierrot’s film production leans into larger, cleaner action staging than a weekly TV episode, which aligns with the fan refrain that the animation and fights are among the movie’s clearest strengths.
- 2
The film makes romance its structural center, an unusual move for Naruto’s theatrical run; multiple reviews single out the Naruto-Hinata development as the point of the movie rather than a subplot beside the battles.
- 3
It functions as an epilogue bridge around the manga’s final stretch, with reviewers noting that it fills in emotional blanks left by the closing chapters instead of operating like a disposable side adventure.
- 4
Yasuharu Takanashi returns as composer, giving the movie continuity with the sound of Naruto Shippuden while adapting that musical identity to a more reflective, end-of-era tone.
- 5
The character-design and animation-supervision chain is unusually concentrated: Hirofumi Suzuki and Tetsuya Nishio are both credited for character design and as chief animation directors, helping keep the older cast designs consistent.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- The Last is the seventh Naruto Shippuden movie and was released in Japan on December 6, 2014, after the Fourth Great Ninja War material had positioned the franchise for an epilogue-style story.
- Fun fact 2
- Masashi Kishimoto is credited as the original creator, while Tsuneo Kobayashi directed the film for Studio Pierrot, keeping the movie under the core Naruto production umbrella rather than treating it as a disconnected spin-off.
- Fun fact 3
- The film’s storyboard credits include Kouichi Arai and Hiroyuki Yamashita, with the latter also known among Naruto fans for high-impact action work within the broader franchise.
- Fun fact 4
- Its reception profile is strong but not universal: MAL lists a 7.8 score from 444,558 votes, while AniList records a 76/100 score and 2,510 favourites, matching the split between epilogue praise and plot skepticism.
- Fun fact 5
- AniList tags it with Heterosexual at 73% and Primarily Adult Cast at 60%, which reflects how different its focus is from early Naruto: the film is less about academy-age rivalry and more about adult relationships after the main war.
Studios
- Studio Pierrot
