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.
Mikio Ikemoto
Mikio Ikemoto first wrote a one-shot manga titled "Cosmos" for the manga magazine "Weekly Shōnen Jump", which granted him an award in 1997. By that time, Ikemoto had become interested in Masashi Kishimoto's works as he was also a rookie in manga. When hearing that Ikemoto had been contacted by Shueisha to make a gag series, Kishimoto felt that his art might suit another type of series. Thus, he asked his superior to meet Ikemoto and let him work as one of his assistants. Ikemoto was grateful for this job, since he felt that "Naruto"s genre was what he had originally wanted. During the making of "Naruto", Ikemoto was Kishimoto's youngest assistant, and the latter jokingly said this made him and his other assistants envious. Ikemoto was responsible for drawing crowds and background figures, adding white to speed lines, highlights and characters' eyes, whiting out art that went out of the panels, putting stars in night skies, and adding in half-tones. Ikemoto recalls how often Kishimoto requested his help with adding more details to the manga chapters, leading him to draw more clones created by Naruto Uzumaki as well as an unspecified character who could become giant.