Masashi Kishimoto was born in the Okayama Prefecture, Japan on November 8, 1974 as the older identical twin of Seishi Kishimoto.[1] During his childhood, Kishimoto showed interest in drawing characters from the anime shows he watched, such as Dr. Slump's Arale and Doraemon's titular protagonist.[4][5] In elementary school, Kishimoto started watching the Kinnikuman and Dragon Ball anime alongside his brother.[6] During the following years, Kishimoto started idolizing Dragon Ball's original creator Akira Toriyama, enjoying not only his series Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, but also Dragon Quest, a series of role-playing video games for which Toriyama is the art designer. While he could not afford to buy Weekly Shōnen Jump where the Dragon Ball manga was published, he followed the series thanks to a friend from school who had subscribed to the magazine.[7][8] By high school Kishimoto started losing interest in manga as he started playing baseball and basketball, sports he practiced at his school. However, upon seeing a poster for the animated film Akira, Kishimoto became fascinated with the way the illustration was made and wished to imitate the series' creator Katsuhiro Otomo's style.[9] Other series he enjoyed reading are Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, Ninku and Ghost in the Shell.[10]
During his last years of school, Kishimoto spent time drawing manga and went to an art college with hopes that he would become a manga artist.[11] Upon entering college, Kishimoto decided he should try creating a Chanbara manga since Weekly Shōnen Jump had not published a title from that genre. However, during the same years, Kishimoto started reading Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal and Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin (the latter of which was published in Weekly Shonen Jump), which used the said genre. Kishimoto recalls having never been surprised by manga ever since reading Akira and found that he still was not able to compete against them.[12] In his second year of college, Kishimoto started drawing manga for magazine contests. However, he noted that his works were similar to seinen manga, aimed towards an adult demographic, rather than the shōnen manga read by children and teenagers.[13] Wishing to write a manga for Shōnen Jump that targets a young demographic, Kishimoto found his style unsuitable for the magazine.[14]When watching the anime series Hashire Melos!, Kishimoto was surprised by the character designs employed by the animators and he started researching works from animators. He later met Tetsuya Nishio, designer from the anime adaptation of the manga Ninku who he deemed a big influence.[15] Now emulating the way of drawing from multiple character designers from anime series, Kishimoto noted that his style started resembling shōnen series.[16]
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