User blog comment:RealityKeeper/TOO MANY/@comment-25156300-20170214032359/@comment-25156300-20170215004814

Well most of those are very minor roles and aren't even named. For more fleshed out characters, it's probably closer to 40, plus some summoning animals.

Since my story is in Kusagakure, I didn't have the Konoha cast to fill those roles, so a bunch of side characters eventually popped in my head to take their place. But I've had this story in my head since about 2006, so it's had all that time to slowly grow to that size.