What Are the Naruto Retsuden and Shinden Novels?

The Itachi Shinden books, a two-volume story of Itachi's life before the massacre, are the line's most translated and discussed entries, written by Takashi Yano with Kishimoto illustrations. They expand the massacre's buildup from inside Itachi's generation and were adapted into a Shippuden anime arc, one of the few novel adaptations the anime attempted. Sasuke Shinden followed Sasuke's post-war travels, and the Shinden label also carried a Naruto volume on the new era's dawn.

Retsuden arrived in 2019 as a deliberate trilogy: Kakashi Retsuden, set on a mission in a distant land; Sasuke Retsuden, in which Sasuke and Sakura infiltrate an astronomy institute and meet dinosaurs, a premise whose reception turned the book into a social media phenomenon; and Naruto Retsuden, bringing the threads home as Naruto faces a chakra illness. Jun Esaka wrote the trilogy, with Kishimoto art, and the Sasuke volume later received a manga adaptation in Shonen Jump Plus, drawn by Shingo Kimura, which ran in English as Sasuke's Story.

The novel program's structure is the documentation point. Hiden told the post-war gap character by character, Shinden reached back and outward to the two Uchiha brothers, and Retsuden folded the adult cast into one shared plot. Together the three lines, all under Shueisha's Jump j Books label, form a prose shelf of more than a dozen volumes that the anime and manga timelines braid around.

English publication has been partial and slow, with Viz releasing selected Hiden and Shinden volumes and the Sasuke Retsuden story reaching English mainly through its manga adaptation. Japanese first editions of the novel lines are therefore the complete shelf, and the Library documents the lines in Japanese order, noting English availability volume by volume.