Shueisha Warns Against Social Media Accounts Impersonating Naruto Mangaka Masashi Kishimoto

The official Twitter account of Naruto issued a warning on April 8, 2024, to alert fans regarding accounts on social media impersonating the series’ creator, Masashi Kishimoto.

The tweet read, “[Please be careful] Manga artist Masashi Kishimoto does not have any accounts on any social media platforms. Please be aware that accounts claiming to be Masashi Kishimoto-sensei are not genuine. – Shueisha“.

The warning comes amidst fan confusion surrounding a parody account potentially mistaken for the real Kishimoto. Many fans expressed amusement at the situation as the account in question clearly mentioned in the bio that it is a parody account. While others were surprised that fans were still falling for the account to the point that the official channels felt the need to address it.

However, many fans believed the account was operated by Masashi Kishimoto and thanked Shueisha for issuing the alert.

Masashi Kishimoto is a Japanese manga artist. His manga series, Naruto, which was in serialization from 1999 to 2014, has sold over 250 million copies worldwide in 46 countries as of May 2019. The series has been adapted into two anime and multiple films, video games, and related media

Besides the Naruto manga, Kishimoto also personally supervised the two canonical anime films, The Last: Naruto the Movie and Boruto: Naruto the Movie, and has written several one-shot stories.

In 2019, Kishimoto wrote Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru which ended in March 2020. From May 2016 through October 2020 he supervised the Boruto: Naruto Next Generations manga written by Ukyo Kodachi and illustrated by Mikio Ikemoto. In November 2020 it was announced that he had taken over as writer on the series, replacing Kodachi.

Source: Twitter