Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals

Kenji Taira's Rock Lee no Seishun Full-Power Ninden takes the bowl-cut taijutsu specialist from Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto and drops him into a gag comedy. Lee cannot use ninjutsu, genjutsu, or kenjutsu, so his existence hinges on physical training and stubbornness. Taira builds short skits around that premise, following Lee, his Team Guy colleagues Neji Hyuga and Tenten, and their mentor Might Guy through daily routines and minor adventures. The jokes come from Lee's earnestness meeting ordinary situations, and from the rest of the cast reacting to him.

The manga began in the debut issue of Shueisha's Saikyo Jump on December 3, 2010. Saikyo Jump was a new magazine at the time, and the spin-off ran there rather than in Weekly Shonen Jump, which carried the parent series. Chapters were later collected into tankobon volumes. The work is a parody side-story, not a continuity-bearing entry in the Naruto timeline, and it treats the 'springtime of youth' ethos that Lee and Guy share as material for comedy rather than melodrama.

An anime adaptation from Studio Pierrot, directed by Masahiko Murata, premiered on TV Tokyo on April 3, 2012. It ran 47 episodes in Japan and kept the original Naruto voice cast. Crunchyroll simulcast it, an English dub aired on Neon Alley in fall 2014, and the show later reached Netflix India on July 24, 2020, as well as Prime Video and Tubi. A tie-in Nintendo 3DS game, Naruto Powerful Shippuden, arrived in March 2013 and borrowed the spin-off's chibi character designs. [edit]