Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-3279282-20171016184901/@comment-734582-20171020093528

The Wikia Editor wrote: Actually, Pakura did not appear in The Will of Fire. They used the same character design, but the character was supposed to be someone else. Well the Anime IS in the somewhat unusual position that they got to plan it this time. Naruto wasn't intended as a huge hit manga and the anime came as a result of it's popularity. But in the current situation, they very much had the time to plan this. To get some sort of roadmap of what kind of story they'll do for the coming 5 years. So the current Anime is definitely planned more than the random after-the-fact Naruto filler.