What Is Naruto Gaiden: The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring?
Five months after Naruto ended, Kishimoto returned to Weekly Shonen Jump with a short sequel. Naruto Gaiden ran from April 27 to July 6, 2015: ten chapters plus an epilogue, published in English in Jump's digital edition alongside Japan. It was collected as a single volume, released in Japan on August 4, 2015 and by Viz on January 5, 2016.
The story belongs to the next generation, and specifically to Sarada Uchiha, Sasuke and Sakura's daughter, who doubts the truth of her own family after finding an old photograph of her father's Taka teammates. Her search pulls in Chocho Akimichi, a mysterious boy with Sharingan eyes named Shin, and Naruto himself, now Seventh Hokage, in a story that works as both a family mystery and a handover ceremony.
Gaiden is the hinge between the two eras of the franchise. It proves the adult cast in their new roles, introduces the children who will headline Boruto, and answers the one question the main series finale deliberately left hanging: what kind of parents its heroes became. The Library shelves it as the epilogue of the 72 volumes rather than the start of the sequel's own shelf.
Gaiden and Boruto
Boruto began as a 2015 film, then became a manga drawn by Mikio Ikemoto under Kishimoto's supervision, later with Kishimoto returning to write it. Gaiden predates all of that and is entirely Kishimoto's hand: his art, his pacing, his characters. Readers who want the sequel era exactly as its creator first imagined it start with these ten chapters, which is why Gaiden is cataloged with the main series and not with Boruto.
A one-volume bookend
Because it is one slim volume with a short print window in the middle of the franchise's biggest media moment, Gaiden tends to be collected as a set with the finale materials around it: volume 72, the Retsu no Sho theater book from The Last, and the Zai no Sho from the Boruto film. Together they document the twelve months in which Naruto ended and restarted at the same time.