Masashi Kishimoto
For the ninth "Naruto" film, "", Kishimoto was responsible for both the story planning and characters' designs. To promote the film, Kishimoto worked in "Motion Comic Naruto" a DVD that shows scenes from the manga in 3D that was given to the first 1.5 million people who went to the cinema. Regarding "Naruto"s publication Kishimoto told Tetsuya Nishio in July 2012 that the series would take over a year and a half to end. However, Kishimoto admitted that it now appears that the manga will continue beyond that timeframe. In April 2012, it was announced that Kishimoto would publish a one-shot version of his long-postponed mafia manga, "Mario", in "Jump Square", based on the rough, 160-page manuscript he began working on before "Naruto" became serialized.
Sakura Haruno
Although Sakura Haruno is the most recurring female character in "Naruto", Masashi Kishimoto did not originally intend for Sakura to be the heroine of the series. Kishimoto attributed this to him being unable to draw good heroine characters and fashioned Sakura as a girl who could not understand men, the best example of a heroine he could come up with. Sakura's creation is a result of Kishimoto's desire to make a somewhat irritating character who was well-intentioned. Despite these elements, Kishimoto is fond of Sakura, as he feels that many of her personality traits are common among all people, thus giving her a sense of real humanity. When asked in an interview if there was something about Sakura's background that had not been revealed, Kishimoto explained that he had never thought of that as Sakura is a "normal girl". Kishimoto has often been asked by readers about why he did not show Sakura's parents until the film "". In response, he said this would not be entertaining as Sakura did not belong to any clan unlike other characters so her parents were civilians.
When designing Sakura, Kishimoto focused on her silhouette and created a costume as simple as possible. This is a divergence from the other main characters of the series, whose costumes are very detailed. The leggings are the most notable aspect of her design, as they are meant to show that she is very active. At the start of the series, her leggings extended below her knees and closely resembled trousers. As Part I progressed, the leggings became increasingly shorter and tighter. Similar to his inexperience in drawing heroines, Kishimoto lacked the experience needed to make Sakura "cute" when he first began drawing her; although he implied that her appearance had become cuter since then, Kishimoto and much of the "Naruto" manga staff agreed that Sakura had been "far from cute" at the start of the series. In retrospective, he found Sakura one of the hardest characters to draw, alongside Sasuke Uchiha. Kishimoto first planned Sasuke and Sakura's romance in the early production of "Naruto". In regards to Sakura's feelings for Sasuke, Kishimoto tried to write them as realistic as possible but ended up getting complaints from young girls about her.