I am a big fan of Naruto. I recently found that numbers of Naruto movies were released in Japan as well as in the USA, but not a single one was released in India. What's the reason for this?
1 Answer
Not only India, but they are not released in many other countries, too. You can also compare in IMDb: for The Last: Naruto the Movie, it was not released in UK, Switzerland, Malaysia, etc, but Western animation does cover those countries as well.
Anime are not as popular as American animations globally, not everybody knows about it.
For the case of Naruto, even its anime series is not regular in India. They come in India with a good delay time. On the other hand, American animated series come on time in India and few even come with regional languages, too, such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, etc. Anime like Dragon Ball and Naruto are few of the most famous anime in India, but still their telecast order is not comfortable. They always stop telecasting in middle without any future release news.
So releasing Naruto films in India will be a big risk, as people might not even be up-to-date with Naruto universe. Even manga is not much popular in India, I have not even seen any famous manga in popular book stores.
This even raises the use of illegal means of entertainment, too. And illegal site brought the anime and manga sooner than regular release.
So as a whole, I will say India has not been considered as a big anime market yet, that's why famous anime movies never make into big release in India. At best they get television broadcast few years later and sometimes not even make into India.