Masashi Kishimoto

Masashi Kishimoto was born on November 8, 1974, in Nagi, a rural town in Okayama Prefecture. He has a twin brother, Seishi Kishimoto, who also became a manga artist and created 666 Satan and Blazer Drive. As kids, both grew up reading Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, and Akira Toriyama was Masashi's first big role model.

As a teenager he saw a poster for the film Akira and was struck by Katsuhiro Otomo's art. He began studying Otomo's realistic style and decided to take drawing seriously. He studied art at Kyushu Sangyo University, and around then he also named Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal and the work of Yoshihiro Togashi as influences.

His first professional step was Karakuri, a pilot he sent to Shueisha in 1995 that earned an honorable mention at the 1996 Hop Step Award. In 1997 a one-shot called Naruto ran in Akamaru Jump. A serialized Karakuri launched in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1998 but polled badly and was canceled. Kishimoto went back to the drawing board and reworked the ninja idea.

Naruto premiered in Weekly Shōnen Jump in September 1999. Naruto Uzumaki is a loud orphan who carries the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed inside him and is treated as a threat by his own village. He wants to become Hokage, leader of the Hidden Leaf, and joins a ninja squad with Sasuke and Sakura. Kishimoto blended martial arts, Japanese folklore and a tightly built system of techniques, always centered on loneliness, friendship and rivalry. The bond between Naruto and Sasuke, two outsiders pulled in opposite directions, became the spine of the whole series. The series ended on November 10, 2014, after 700 chapters in 72 volumes.

It became a giant. Sales top 250 million copies worldwide, per 2019 figures, and volume 7 of the American edition won the 2006 Quill Award for Best Graphic Novel. Studio Pierrot adapted the story as Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, which aired on broadcast TV and streaming across the Americas. Kishimoto also supervised films such as Road to Ninja, The Last and Boruto: Naruto the Movie. In 2015 the Japanese government gave him its Art Encouragement Prize for new artists.

He kept working after Naruto. From 2016 to 2020 he supervised Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, written by Ukyō Kodachi and drawn by Mikio Ikemoto, his former chief assistant. In 2019 and 2020 he wrote Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, a samurai sci-fi story drawn by Akira Ōkubo. In late 2020 he took over Boruto's scripts himself, and since August 2023 he has written Boruto: Two Blue Vortex for V Jump. That same year he released the one-shot Naruto: The Whorl Within the Spiral, centered on Minato. Kishimoto has been married since 2003 and has a son.