Masashi Kishimoto creator of Naruto

Masashi Kishimoto...the creator of one of the most popular manga in the world, Naruto. Born in Okayama Prefecture in 1974, Kishimoto, the older of the twins, was already starting to draw during his childhood in elementary school. Kishimoto often drew images from his favorite anime Doraemon, but that soon changed when was introduced to the show Mobile Suit Gundam. After seeing the creation of Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump, Kishimoto began to find his interest in manga, stating that the arts were great and he soon began to produce Dr. Slump drawings. Eventually, he became a fan of the Dragonball series by Toriyama and later referring to it as one of his most popular manga and anime series. After seeing the works of the talented Toriyama, Kishimoto hoped to one day become a great mangaka much like Toriyama. Thus, he began creating a manga called "Hiatari-Kun", a story about a shadow ninja boy.

During his years in Junior High, Kishimoto began to focus a lot of baseball, which a very popular sport in modern day Japan. He had even tried attempting to make a baseball manga. It was during his year in Junior High that an incident occurred that influenced him to continue in drawings. One day, when walking home form school, Kishimoto came across a drawing of Katsuhiro Ootomo's "Akira". This sparked Kishimoto's urge to draw again.

He was soon able to finish his first manga which was only about 31 pages long. After getting feedbacks from his brother and father, Kishimoto didn't feel that his drawings were good enough. After graduating high school ranked 38th out of 39 students, Kishimoto felt he wasn't good at anything. But he never gave up on becoming a great mangaka and kept on drawing. Masashi Kishimoto would eventually go on to create one of the greatest manga read by many around the world, Naruto.

His manga Naruto would debuted in 1999 in the Weekly Shonen Jump and has become widely popular among boys and girls of all age. The following is an interview with Masashi Kishimoto from the Shonen Jump issue #6, enjoy!

1. Read interview with Masashi Kishimoto about his life
2. Read interview with Masashi Kishimoto about Ninja
3. Read interview with Masashi Kishimoto about Naruto

Source: Shonen Jump