Naruto Shippūden the Movie: The Lost Tower

Naruto Shippūden the Movie: The Lost Tower is the seventh film in the franchise and the fourth Shippūden feature. It opened in Japan in July 2010, reached DVD the next spring, and was released in North America by Viz Media in September 2013. Kana Nishino sings the ending theme, If.

Yamato, Naruto, Sakura, and Sai are tasked with capturing the missing-nin Mukade in the ruined desert city of Rōran. Cornered, Mukade unleashes the Ryūmyaku, an ancient underground chakra current sealed by one of Minato's special kunai, and the released power hurls Naruto and Yamato roughly twenty years into the past. Sai barely stops Sakura from being swept along too.

In the past, Naruto meets the young queen of Rōran, Sāra, and crosses paths with a masked Konoha ninja who is revealed to be Minato Namikaze, sent to stop a schemer named Anrokuzan. Minato lends Naruto one of his teleportation kunai and asks him to guard Sāra. Anrokuzan, it emerges, is Mukade himself, having arrived six years earlier and installed himself as the city's minister.

Sāra refuses to believe her minister is plotting against her until Naruto exposes the truth: the adoring crowds are puppets driven by the Ryūmyaku's chakra, and the city's men are chained inside a factory building more puppets. Anrokuzan admits to murdering Sāra's mother, the former queen, and turns into a towering puppet that repairs itself using the city's towers, shrugging off every attack.

Sāra moves to seal the Ryūmyaku and cut off his regeneration, while Minato lends Naruto his chakra to shape an enhanced Rasengan. Once the flow is sealed, Naruto lands the decisive blow and Anrokuzan plunges into the remaining chakra. Yamato saves the falling group, and Minato seals the Ryūmyaku for good. Because history must stay intact, Minato erases their memories, hinting that he and Naruto will one day meet again.

Back in the present the Ryūmyaku fades, and Naruto and Yamato return with no memory of the journey. Two decades later an older Sāra, now leading the survivors of Rōran, visits the reunited Team 7, and Naruto notices that his chakra blade has gone missing, left behind in the past.

The film shipped with print editions including an ani-manga and a light novel by Masatoshi Kusakabe, both of which confirm the older Sāra as the woman appearing in the present. Its director framed the story around children outgrowing their parents and choosing their own destinies, mirroring Sāra and Naruto's shared uncertainty. The movie also plays with series continuity, depicting Ramen Ichiraku's grand opening and an earlier, white-haired Hiruzen Sarutobi.