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.
Naruto Uzumaki
Out of all the student-teacher relationships Kishimoto has created in the "Naruto" series, the bond between Naruto and Jiraiya is his favorite, noting that it makes drawing them "worthwhile." Regarding bonds in the story, Kishimoto remarks the Jiraiya's death in his fight against Pain as in his last moments, he discovers the origin of Pain's multiple bodies and uses his last forces to send it as a message to Naruto so that he could send him as an piece of advice to defeat him in his place.