Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!

A dozen years earlier, the fearsome Nine-Tails fell upon the hidden village of Konohagakure, and though many shinobi died fighting it, the Fourth Hokage stopped the rampage by sealing the beast inside a newborn boy, giving his own life to do so. In the present, that boy has grown into Naruto Uzumaki, a troublemaker who has just splashed graffiti across the faces carved into the Hokage Rock. The village scorns him, yet he soaks up even angry attention, having no family or friends after years of mistreatment.

For all his boasts about one day becoming Hokage, Naruto cannot manage a simple clone, and that failure keeps him from graduating the Academy. His instructor Mizuki tempts him with a shortcut: swipe the Scroll of Seals, master one of its hidden jutsu, and a pass will follow.

After Naruto makes off with the scroll, Iruka Umino tracks him down, and the boy pieces together that Mizuki set him up. When Mizuki demands the scroll, Iruka warns Naruto to hold onto it, exposing the lie. Mizuki lashes back by revealing the secret the village has kept, that the Nine-Tails was sealed inside Naruto at birth and is the reason everyone hates him, even claiming Iruka should loathe him most because the beast killed his parents.

Iruka rejects that cruelty, saying he never held the beast's rampage against the child and that, having craved attention himself as an orphan, he understands Naruto's pain. Moved by his teacher's faith, Naruto unleashes the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique he just learned and overwhelms Mizuki. Impressed by the difficult jutsu, Iruka ties his own forehead protector onto Naruto, telling him he could truly reach the rank of Hokage someday.

The premiere skips its usual opening sequence, showing only the title after the prologue while the theme plays during the chase over the defaced Hokage Rock. In the anime, Shikamaru, Ino, and Sakura appear seated behind Naruto during the clone exam, whereas the manga placed unnamed students there. The English dub first went out under a TV-Y7-FV rating that was never used again for the series, and its edited version removed the blood from Iruka's nosebleed. The episode adapts chapter 1 and opens the Prologue: Land of Waves arc, airing in Japan on October 3, 2002, and in English on September 10, 2005.