Is The Last: Naruto the Movie Canon?
The Last opened in Japan on December 6, 2014, weeks after the manga ended, and it was marketed from the start as something the earlier films were not: a chapter of the story itself. Its events sit in the gap the manga deliberately left open, between chapter 699 and the epilogue of chapter 700, two years after the war, and they resolve the one thread the manga had deferred for fifteen years: Naruto and Hinata.
Kishimoto's involvement is the evidence. He supplied the original story concept and the character designs, and he supervised the script closely enough that the production treated his role as chief story supervisor rather than the courtesy credit earlier films carried. The film's director was Tsuneo Kobayashi of Studio Pierrot, but the story beats, including the Hyuga clan history it reveals, were built to Kishimoto's plan and were later treated as settled fact by the sequel era.
The production wrapped the claim in a physical object: audiences at Japanese screenings received Retsu no Sho, an official databook made for the film, extending the databook line. The Last also became the highest-grossing Naruto film to that date, a record it held until the Boruto film passed it the following summer.
Why it matters on the shelf
Canon status changes what the film is on the shelf. The nine standalone films are parallel adventures; The Last is a missing chapter, and the Boruto film continues directly from it. A collection organized by story rather than by format places The Last between the volume 72 materials and the Gaiden volume, exactly where its two-year gap sits in the chronology.
The Road to Ninja contrast
Road to Ninja (2012) is the near miss: Kishimoto contributed its story concept too, and it is beloved, but it unfolds inside an alternate world generated by a genjutsu, so its events cannot sit in the main chronology. The Last needs no such escape hatch. Nothing in it is undone when the credits roll.