As much as we in the fellowship of anime and manga reviewers, journalists and bloggers hate to admit it—what with our constant efforts to educate the masses about anything other than “;Naruto”; in an attempt to drive up the sales numbers on those other series beyond “;meager”;—there's no denying that “;Naruto”; is the engine driving the anime and manga industries at the moment.

It's for good reason: The story of an up-and-coming young ninja and his cohorts finding their way in the world is certainly entertaining ... that is, whenever it's not drifting into pointless story arcs, as the anime did for long stretches before manga creator Masashi Kishimoto caught up and advanced the story's time line several years in what's now known as the “;Naruto Shippuden”; reboot.

For about as long as there's been a rabid “;Naruto”; fan base, though, there's been equally as rabid a “;Naruto”; underground fan translation, or “;fansub,”; community. These are the people who continue to translate scans of the manga chapters as they appear in Weekly Shonen Jump or add subtitles to recorded broadcast feeds, both straight from Japan, and post them to the Internet within hours or days of their release.

While the officially licensed and translated material has sold well, the hardest of the hard-core fans are getting their latest “;Naruto”; fixes online for free.

So it's with great interest that I've been watching as U.S. publisher Viz; Japanese companies TV Tokyo, Shueisha and Pierrot; and digital online video provider Crunchyroll have announced a series of initiatives that no doubt are aimed straight across the bows of Internet pirates.

You could call it “;Naruto Nation II,”; for Viz's strategy toward the end of last year that saw three volumes of the manga released in each of four months to advance the story into “;Shippuden”; territory. This time, though, not only will there be more manga—11 volumes will be released between February and April, taking the series up to volume 44—but much more anime will be available online as well.

  Starting Jan. 8, Crunchyroll's paid monthly subscribers will be able to watch the latest, English-subtitled episode of “;Naruto Shippuden”; every week at http://www.crunchyroll.com ... one hour after it airs in Japan. For people averse to paying anything for their anime, the free versions of those weekly episodes will begin appearing Jan. 15 at Crunchyroll, fellow streaming Web video sites Hulu (www.hulu.com) and Joost (www.joost.com), and Viz's official “;Naruto”; Web site (www.naruto.com).

Viz will also be uploading the first eight episodes of “;Naruto Shippuden”; to the “;Naruto”; Web site on Jan. 8 and adding eight-episode blocks weekly until the archive has caught up to the most current episodes.

The anime initiative is all well and good, what with the virtually limitless storage space of the Internet, but I have to wonder what this will mean for the rest of the manga industry. The greater space needed for “;Naruto,”; a guaranteed best-seller, at bookstores assures that there will be less space for other titles ... and less of a chance for those niche titles to be picked up on an impulse purchase.