Naruto the Movie: Legend of the Stone of Gelel

The second Naruto feature, released in 2005 under director Hirotsugu Kawasaki, centers on a mysterious mineral called the Gelel Stone. A routine delivery mission drags three young shinobi into an ancient clan's tragedy, pitting them against a would-be conqueror and the disillusioned knight who serves him.

A night battle rages on a lonely shore as Sand shinobi struggle against soldiers in bulky armor, turning the tide only when Gaara and Kankuro arrive, until an armored warship opens fire and forces a retreat. Far away, Naruto, Shikamaru, and Sakura are escorting a lost ferret named Nerugui back to its owners when a knight in strange plate ambushes them. Naruto tumbles off a cliff with the knight and the animal, and a wandering caravan, the very people who hired the mission, nurse the pair back to health. The knight, Temujin, speaks only of building a utopia and urges Naruto to join him.

Temujin answers to a robed leader named Haido, who covets the Gelel Stone, a mineral so potent that wars over it once destroyed an entire civilization. Shikamaru uncovers a laboratory where captured children are fed into a machine that manufactures the armored troops. The caravan elder, Kahiko, explains that only royalty of his vanished clan can bind the stone to their bodies, and Temujin, unknowingly, is one of them, meaning he has not conquered a new land but returned to his ancestral one. A crystal shard already sits within him, tinting his eyes red.

Flashbacks reveal that Haido himself slaughtered Temujin's parents, a truth the knight finally grasps once the tyrant extracts his stone and mutates into a monster. As the souls of the sacrificed children shatter the false soldiers, Temujin repents and stands with Naruto, their combined Rasengan and Gelel power striking Haido down. The victory wrecks the mine's controls, and Temujin resolves to sacrifice himself by sealing the runaway ruins, only for a chain of Naruto's clones to drag him back. The wasteland blooms into an oasis, the children wake, and Nerugui turns up alive. His eyes restored to their natural green, Temujin sails toward his troubled homeland, trading a vow with Naruto never to give up.

Kawasaki co-wrote the 97-minute script with Yuka Miyata, and the story slots between the Mizuki Tracking and Bikochu Search missions of the series. Japanese theaters showed it on August 6, 2005, with a home release the following April, while Cartoon Network aired the English dub on July 26, 2008, ahead of a late-summer DVD.

In keeping with the franchise's habit, the film spawned several print editions, including an ani-manga version and a light novel adaptation written by Masatoshi Kusakabe. One small visual quirk sets it apart: the upper portion of Konoha's flak jackets appears in a darker shade than usual throughout the picture.