Masashi Kishimoto has always been a master at what he does, hence being regarded as one of the most skilled and talented mangaka of the shonen genre. His storytelling abilities coincide with the extraordinary character designs and sketches, contributing to what makes Naruto such a well-liked series.
Be it the movies, anime, or manga, it stands in the big three for a season no one can turn a blind eye to. Such a case also justifies the fact as to why a live-action movie would work towards increasing an already massive fan following. However, it took years of practice to perfect such a piece of art.
Interestingly enough, it wasn’t his storytelling skills that he focused on back when he started drawing, but specific body parts.
Masashi Kishimoto’s Unique Habit
For an interview for the Naruto 10th Anniversary Chronicle Book Mini, Masashi Kishimoto sat down with Hunter x Hunter creator Yoshihiro Togashi. During the sitting, the former revealed that as a high schooler, he had a peculiar habit of drawing specific body parts in his notebook. So much so that he had an entire notebook filled with drawings of different types of hands.
“I like concentrating on a single body part, Back when I was in high school, I had a notebook filled with drawings of hands and legs under different angles, I guess you could call it my fetish.”
He would often draw hands and legs from different perspectives, finding the perfect angle and understanding just how parts of the body change due to even the most minute angles. The mangaka even thought of calling this habit some form of a fetish because of how often he found himself drawing hands and legs.
This helped him in mastering not just the care he put into Naruto’s story but also the character designs fans grew to love.
Masashi Kishimoto’s Skill Caught Yoshihiro Togashi’s Eye
During the interview, Yoshihiro Togashi revealed that there was an interesting anecdote he had heard with regard to how the way an artist draws hands speaks volumes about who they are. It gives the readers and critics the ability to better understand and judge those who bring their imagination to life.
“Kishimoto has some really impressive drawing skills, I heard that in order to understand or evaluate the skills of an artist, you need to judge the way they draw hands, and the way his characters hold things in hand is impressive.”
The author of Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter was deeply impressed by Masashi Kishimoto’s skills and acknowledged how it depicted balance in his artwork through the way he perfectly managed to draw hands.
He spoke greatly about how it had been his artistic skills shown in their finest form through what Kishimoto humorously considered a fetish.
