General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow (劇場版 NARUTO -ナルト- 大活劇!雪姫忍法帖だってばよ!!)

Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow (劇場版 NARUTO -ナルト- 大活劇!雪姫忍法帖だってばよ!!, Gekijōban Naruto: Dai Katsugeki! Yuki Hime Ninpōchō Dattebayo!!) is a 2004 Japanese animated film and the first theatrical feature based on Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto manga. Produced by Studio Pierrot and distributed by Toho, it premiered in Japan on 21 August 2004 as a double bill with the short film Konoha no Sato no Dai Undōkai (The Hidden Leaf Village Grand Sports Festival).¹

Key fact	Detail
Japanese release	21 August 2004, distributed by Toho; a TV Tokyo 40th-anniversary work¹^•²
Main staff	Director Tensai Okamura; screenplay Katsuyuki Sumisawa; character design Tetsuya Nishio; original story Masashi Kishimoto¹
Runtime	83 minutes per Studio Pierrot and eiga.com; other listings give 85, 82, or 95 minutes¹^•³^•⁴^•⁵
Main cast	Junko Takeuchi (Naruto), Noriaki Sugiyama (Sasuke), Chie Nakamura (Sakura), Kazuhiko Inoue (Kakashi), Yuko Kaida (Yukie Fujikaze), Tsutomu Isobe (Doto Kazahana)¹
Music and theme song	Music by Toshio Masuda with the Six三四 Project; theme song "Home Sweet Home" by YUKI¹^•⁶
Reception	IMDb 6.6/10 from about 9.6K votes; Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter 85% from 25,000+ audience ratings with 0 critic reviews⁷^•⁸
Home video	DVD released 28 April 2005 by Aniplex (ANSB-2150, ¥5,170 including tax)⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, still training to become full-fledged ninja, are given a mission to escort the popular actress Yukie Fujikaze (富士風雪絵) together with a film crew to the Land of Snow (雪の国), where the final installment of her hit movie series The Adventures of Princess Gale (風雲姫の大冒険) is to be shot. Yukie is extremely headstrong and, for reasons she does not explain, refuses to go to the Land of Snow; the team brings her there more or less by force.¹^•²

On the way the group is attacked by three ninja calling themselves the Snow Ninja trio (雪忍三人衆), Nadare, Fubuki, and Mizore, who wear mechanized armor. Waiting in the Land of Snow is Doto Kazahana (風花ドトウ), who ten years earlier staged a rebellion, killed his older brother Sosetsu (風花早雪), the ruler of the Land of Snow, and seized the country. Doto seeks the hidden treasure sealed behind the "rainbow ice wall," which would give him military power surpassing the five great ninja nations, and he sends the trio to take the key, a hexagonal crystal, from Yukie, who is in fact Sosetsu's daughter Koyuki Kazahana (風花小雪). Naruto and his teammates destroy Doto's scheme, and with the treasure revealed to be a heat-generating device, the Land of Snow sees its first spring and is returned to its rightful heir, Koyuki.²^•¹

Production

The film is an original story written for the screen, not an adaptation of a manga arc, set in the Land of Snow, a country not depicted in the manga or the television series. Tensai Okamura directed from a screenplay by Katsuyuki Sumisawa, with Tetsuya Nishio handling character design, Shigenori Takada as art director, and Toshio Masuda composing the music with the Six三四 Project.¹^•⁹ A young Kakashi also appears, a point Japanese promotional material highlighted as a pleasure particular to the theatrical version.⁹

A short film, 劇場版 NARUTO 木ノ葉の里の大うん動会 (The Hidden Leaf Village Grand Sports Festival), in which the village's rookie ninja compete in a do-or-die athletic tournament, was screened alongside it.¹^•¹⁰

Release and home video

The film opened in Japanese theaters on 21 August 2004, distributed by Toho as a double feature with the sports festival short.¹ Aniplex released it on DVD on 28 April 2005 (ANSB-2150, ¥5,170 including tax), containing both the short and the feature, the YUKI "Home Sweet Home" music video, trailers, the creditless ending, and a special edition of the radio program O! NARUTO Nippon with series voice actors Junko Takeuchi and Kazuhiko Inoue; the package included a booklet of ten illustrations drawn for the film by character designer Tetsuya Nishio.⁶ A novelization by Masatoshi Kusakabe, supervised by Katsuyuki Sumisawa, was published by Shueisha under the JUMP jBOOKS label on 23 August 2004 (ISBN 4-08-703143-8, 228 pages).¹¹ In North America, Viz released the film direct to video.¹²

Reception

On IMDb the film holds a 6.6/10 rating weighted from about 9.6K user votes, with an unweighted mean of 7.0; the countries contributing the most ratings are the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Turkey.⁷ Rotten Tomatoes lists no critic reviews but records an 85% Popcornmeter score from more than 25,000 audience ratings.⁸ Reviewing the 2007 English release for ComicMix, Andrew Wheeler judged it a top-notch animated movie whose production values clearly exceed the television show, with brighter colors, fluid characters, striking backgrounds, and well-choreographed action blending CGI effects with mostly hand-drawn 2D animation.¹²

Place in the series and viewing context

The film is non-canon: it has very little to do with the main storyline and is a standalone adventure, though it is a rare early movie in which Sasuke appears, since he later leaves the team in the series.⁸ Viewer guides commonly place it after episode 101 of the original Naruto anime, before Sasuke's departure.⁸ It was followed by two further Part 1 films, Naruto The Movie 2: Legend of the Stone of Gelel and Naruto The Movie 3: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom.⁵

In the United States the film streams on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads, and free with ads on The Roku Channel, YouTube Free, and Amasian TV, and can be rented or bought on services including Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Google Play Movies, and YouTube; availability differs by country, with Netflix carrying it in France, Spain, and Brazil, Amazon Prime Video in Canada, and WOW, Sky Go, and RTL+ in Germany.⁴^•¹³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026