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.
Jiraiya (Naruto)
Manga author Masashi Kishimoto first conceived Jiraiya's name based on Kabuki. He conceptualized him as a wizard with frog-like traits. He gave him an incisive and energetic speech pattern specific to old Kabuki plays. Kishimoto stated that Jiraiya "makes everything more colorful" since he is one of the few characters who enjoy talking. Regarding the bonds in the story, Kishimoto highlighted the importance of the character's death during his fight against Pain; this remark was made since, in his last moments, Jiraiya manages to discover the origin of Pain's multiple bodies and uses his last forces to send a message to Naruto Uzumaki in which he explains how Pain can be defeated. Kishimoto felt he had done a good job of establishing Jiraiya's last moments. He commented that out of all the master-pupil relationships he had created in the "Naruto" series, the bond between Naruto and Jiraiya is his favorite, stating that drawing their interactions was "worthwhile". Jiraiya was one of the characters that resonated the most with the author alongside Naruto, Sasuke Uchiha, and Haku.