Masashi Kishimoto (岸本 斉史 Kishimoto Masashi, born November 8, 1974[1]) is a Japanese manga artist, well known for creating the manga series Naruto which was in serialization from 1999 to 2014. As of October 2015, Naruto manga has sold over 220 million copies worldwide.[2] The series has been adapted into two anime, and multiple films, video games and multiple related media. Besides the Naruto manga, Kishimoto also personally supervised the two canonical anime films, The Last: Naruto the Movie and Boruto: Naruto the Movie, and has written several one-shot stories.
A reader of manga ever since a young age, Kishimoto showed a desire to write his own manga, citing authors Akira Toriyama and Katsuhiro Otomo as his main inspirations. As a result, Kishimoto spent several years working to write his own shōnen manga for Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine which he was a fan of.[3]
