Masashi Kishimoto

Born on November 8, 1974, Masashi Kishimoto is a Japanese manga artist renowned for his work. His manga series, Naruto, was serialized from 1999 to 2014 and has achieved global success, with over 250 million copies sold in 46 countries as of May 2019. Beyond the manga, Naruto has been adapted into two anime series, numerous films, video games, and various related media.

In addition to his work on Naruto, Kishimoto played a hands-on role in supervising two canonical anime films, namely, The Last: Naruto the Movie and Boruto: Naruto the Movie. He has also authored several one-shot stories. In 2019, Kishimoto ventured into a new project, Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, which concluded in March 2020.

From May 2016 to October 2020, Kishimoto served as a supervisor for the Boruto: Naruto Next Generations manga, initially written by Ukyo Kodachi and illustrated by Mikio Ikemoto. In a significant development in November 2020, it was revealed that Kishimoto had taken over as the writer for the series, succeeding Kodachi.