1st novel in series focusing on Kakashi ships on Tuesday

This year's 27th issue of Shueisha 's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine announced on Monday that Shueisha 's Jump J-Books imprint is releasing two more novels in the Naruto Retsuden novel series based on Masashi Kishimoto 's manga.

The second novel in the series will be titled Sasuke Retsuden , and it will ship in August. The third novel in the series will be titled Naruto Retsuden , and it will ship in October.

The first novel in the franchise, titled Naruto : Kakashi Retsuden: Rokudaime Hokage to Ochikobore no Shōnen ( Naruto : Kakashi Retsuden: The sixth Hokage and the failure boy ), will release on Tuesday . Jun Esaka ( Naruto : Sasuke Shinden: Shitei no Hoshi ) is penning the novel. Kishimoto is himself drawing the novel's cover image (pictured at right).

In the novel, Kakashi finds himself far away in a country deep in a mountain range, seeking a legend about the Sage of Six Paths. There, he finds that after the king of the country died, and his daughter became queen, the country has seen no rain. The son of the king is called the "failure boy," and Kakashi decides to train the boy to become a young leader.



Update: Esaka is returning to write both new novels, and Kishimoto will again provide the cover illustrations. The theme of Sasuke's novel will be "a married couple's view on life and death," and the theme of Naruto's novel will be "teamwork and technology."