Masashi Kishimoto is well known all over the world as creator of Naruto manga series. His first success came in 1995 when he published Karakuri manga in Shueisha. He even has been awarded as a promising manga artist. His Naruto masterpiece of manga is ongoing, with more than 46 volumes, with more than 100 million copies sold worldwide.  It is the first manga to win the Quill Award as Best Graphic Novel in 2006.

kishimoto

Masashi likes to speak about his plant that died due to poor feeding in his office. Many of his plants did not survive.


Kishimoto tried to make his heroes as unique as possible. Thus he studied a lot of other shonen mangas. He quotes Dragon Ball as one of them to look at, and notes that Son Goku was a key character to influence Naruto Uzumaki, due to his energy and mischief. To make tension and intrigue, he had to create a rival, a “cool genius”, as an archetypal rival character. Thus Sasuke Uchiha was born, with all the necessary qualities.

For main heroine Masashi eventually created Sakura Haruno, with emphasis on her energy and flirtatious spirit. Despite difficulty in depicting her appearance, Sasuke became his favorite character to draw.

When drawing his animation characters, Masashi uses a five-step process: concept and rough sketch, then drafting, inking, shading and in the end – coloring. Sometimes he used an airbrush but afterwards decided that it requires too much cleanup, and abandoned it.

Kishimoto was very particular on designs for the village of Konohagakure, the main initial setting for the series. He tells that initially it was created spontaneously, without much thought, but admits that he took a lot from his home in Okayama prefecture. The village does not belong to any time or place, it is “just a place in (his) head”. He included some modern elements such as convenience stores but neither projectile weapons nor vehicles.

He conducts his own research into Japanese culture a lot for better details and reference material for his “Japanese fantasy world”, as he needs to “set certain rules systematically” to convey the story in a logical way.  He also wanted to draw in Chinese zodiac tradition which has a long presence in his country.

He said that Naruto would not have any firearms.  He may make use of automobiles or air craft, and some simple computers, like “eight-bit computers, but definitely not sixteen-bit”.