What Is Kakashi Gaiden and Where Does It Fit?

The interlude follows a thirteen-year-old Kakashi, newly promoted to jonin, on a squad with the earnest, chronically late Obito Uchiha and the medic Rin Nohara, led by Minato Namikaze, the future Fourth Hokage. Kakashi at this age is the opposite of the relaxed teacher readers know: a rigid rule-follower still shaped by his father Sakumo's disgrace and suicide after abandoning a mission to save comrades.

The mission, destroying the Kannabi Bridge to cut enemy supply lines during the war with the Stone Village, goes wrong when Rin is captured. Kakashi chooses the mission over the rescue; Obito refuses, delivering the line the whole series echoes: those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum. Kakashi follows him, loses an eye defending him, and Obito awakens his Sharingan in the fight.

The rescue succeeds and immediately collapses. In the escape, falling rock crushes Obito's right side. Dying, he has Rin transplant his Sharingan into Kakashi's empty socket as a belated jonin gift, and asks Kakashi to protect Rin. The squad completes the mission; Kakashi carries the eye, the lateness habit borrowed from visiting Obito's grave, and the philosophy, for the rest of the story.

Placement is the question readers actually ask. Chronologically it sits decades before chapter 1, but Kishimoto published it as the hinge between the two halves of the manga, and it was collected in volume 27 with the end of Part I. The anime held it back until Shippuden episodes 119 and 120, so anime-first viewers meet it much later, which changes how the Obito material lands.

For collectors, Gaiden is a small object with outsized weight: six chapters, one volume's tail end, and the seed of the entire Obito and Tobi plotline. Volume 27's Japanese printings and the Jump issues of late 2004 and early 2005 that carried the interlude are the physical record, and the Kannabi Bridge team photo became one of the most reproduced images in the franchise.