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.
Nina Matsumoto
Matsumoto first came to the attention of the comic industry through her widely distributed artwork "Simpsonzu", a manga stylized parody artwork of "The Simpsons" cast. After the image was picked up by digg, it became one of the most popular deviations ever submitted to DeviantArt and caught the attention of Bongo Comics as well as editor Dallas Middaugh of Del Rey Manga and even that of "The Simpsons" creator, Matt Groening. Middaugh read Matsumoto's long-running webcomic "Saturnalia" and then invited her to submit a proposal which became the graphic novel "Yōkaiden".