Masashi Kishimoto

Kishimoto is an ERC-20 token dedicated to Masashi Kishimoto, a Japanese manga artist. His manga series, Naruto, which was in serialization from 1999 to 2014, has sold over 250 million copies worldwide in 46 countries as of May 2019. The series has been adapted into two anime and multiple films, video games, and 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. In 2019, Kishimoto wrote Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru which ended in March 2020. From May 2016 through October 2020 he supervised the Boruto: Naruto Next Generations manga written by Ukyō Kodachi and illustrated by Mikio Ikemoto. In November 2020 it was announced that he had taken over as writer on the series, replacing Kodachi.

In September 1999, the serialised version of Naruto premiered in Weekly Shōnen Jump 1999 No. 43 and quickly became a hit. Naruto ended on November 10, 2014 after more than 15 years of serialisation, with a total of 700 chapters collected in 72 volumes. Sales have exceeded 113 million copies in Japan and over 95 million copies in the US, followed by over 93 million copies worldwide (outside Japan and United States) as of volume 36. It was adapted into two successful anime series. The Naruto manga series became one of Viz Media's top properties, accounting for nearly 10% of all manga sales in the US in 2006. The seventh volume of Viz's release became the first manga to ever win a Quill Award when it claimed the award for "Best Graphic Novel" in 2006. Responding to Naruto's success, Kishimoto said in Naruto Collector Winter 2007/2008 that he was "very glad that the American audience has accepted and understood ninja. It shows that the American audience has good taste... because it means they can accept something previously unfamiliar to them."