On September 10th, 2005, the successful anime-series "Naruto" went on the air for the first time on Cartoon Network during their "Toonami"-programme. However, to receive a lower rating for the series they had to alter several scenes of each episode.
However, the changes are rather moderate. Even though several cuts and edits seem rather strange (especially for non-Americans who probably won't see the problem with scenes where one of the characters smokes) the American TV version is still quite watchable. The blood retouchings are also not that noticeable - most of the time they just reduced the amount of blood and if you don't know the original version you probably won't notice it. Other "problematic" things (such as "mean" slurs or mentioning death) didn't have to be altered.
However, they produced a separate opening as well as separate credits for the US version (which is quite the standard for anime-releases in the USA). They are quite different and in terms of music one could describe it as a mixture of Rock and Rap.

Altered Characters: After the first run in Japan several changes were made in order to make the characters look more like in the comics. This will be mentioned, however, not always that detailed. E.g. in Episode 41 Sakura and Ino were completely re-drawn for a flashback scene where you see them as kids. As you can imagine it would simply be too much footage to show if you were to illustrate all of these scenes. Therefore, edits like this will only be listed once (especially when the following edits are similar/identical to this one). Other edits/alterations - of course - will be mentioned.

The images will be shown as follows:
On left side: Japanese Version
On the right side: US Version


About this episode: In this episode there's no censorship, however, there are several scenes that were revised. The most interesting scene of these marginal alterations probably is Shikamaru's shoulder which includes 2 wounds from the previous fight. In the Japanese version/in Naruto episodes in general they normally don't pay close attention to consistencies like this (there are some scenes where one of the characters has some blood on the corner of the mouth and then the blood is suddenly gone in the next scene). Surprisingly enough, this makes the US version is a little more brutal in this epsiode. In this version (ignoring opening and credits) there's no difference in time.

0:03:28
Error correction: the bloodstain on Shikamaru's shoulder was added afterwards.

No difference in time.

0:05:46
The display board was translated.

No difference in time.

0:05:49
Another shot of the same display board (including the exact same edit).

No difference in time.

0:05:51
Ditto.

No difference in time.

0:06:31
The course of the splitscreen-scene was slightly changed.

No difference in time.

0:06:21
Another shot of the translated display board.

No difference in time.

0:10:15
Error correction: the examiner (Hayate Gekko) was deleted from this scene.

No difference in time.

0:20:30
Error correction: They again added the bloodstains on Shikamaru's shoulder.

No difference in time.