Masashi Kishimoto [Naruto]

Born in the Okayama Prefecture in 1974 as the older of two twins, Masashi Kishimoto sprung on to the scene as one of the greatest mangakas in all of history just within the couple past years, with his beloved and ever popular manga, Naruto. His younger twin brother, Seishi Kishimoto is also a manga artist and creator of the manga series 666 Satan. In his elementary days, it would be safe to say that Masashi Kishimoto was obsessed with drawing. At one time, he saw Akira Toriyama's famous creation, Dr. Slump. Masashi Kishimoto recalls how he couldn't believe how "super good" the art was and he began to draw the Dr. Slump characters and even submitted a crayon drawing of Arale-chan to a contest.

In his latter Elementary school days, Akira Toriyama's most famous creation, Dragon Ball became an anime and for Kishimoto this spawned a whole new interest in Manga and Shonen Jump. Near the end of Elementary school, Masashi Kishimoto was strictly a Dragon Ball fan, he recalls how he was so obsessed with Akira Toriyama, "He was like a god to me, I was constantly drawing characters that appear in Dragon Ball." After seeing the works of the great Toriyama, Kishimoto hoped to one day become a great mangaka much like Toriyama. Thus, he began creating a manga called Hiatari-Kun, a story about a shadow ninja boy, and maybe his first and rough concept of Naruto. He named Akira Toriyama and his Dragon Ball Z as among his major influences. During his years in Junior High, Kishimoto began to focus a lot of baseball, which a very popular sport in modern day Japan. He had even tried attempting to make a baseball manga.

It was during his year in Junior High that an incident occurred that influenced him to continue in drawings. One day, when walking home form school, Kishimoto came across a drawing of Katsuhiro Ootomo's "Akira". This sparked Kishimoto's urge to draw again. After he learned of "Akira", Masashi Kishimoto's drawings changed in a big way. He spent hours studying and trying to understand the style of Ootomo, but couldn't. He was soon able to finish his first manga which was only about 31 pages long. After getting feedbacks from his brother and father, Kishimoto didn't feel that his drawings were good enough. After graduating high school ranked 38th out of 39 students, Kishimoto felt he wasn't good at anything. But he never gave up on becoming a great mangaka and kept on drawing. Masashi Kishimoto would eventually go on to create one of the greatest manga read by many around the world, Naruto.

Through dedication and self believing, Masashi Kishimoto with his Naruto has finally reach his dream. Naruto is one of the most famous manga all around the world nowadays. And Naruto even manage to rival his long time favorite manga, Dragon Ball Z.

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Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z's story has a much more depth and action filled in it than Dragon Ball's. Akira Toriyama turns Goku's enemies form being 'funny and entertaining' to a truly evil, strong, and even sadistic characters. The main theme of the Dragon Ball saga is slightly turned, from searching the dragon balls theme, to somekind of quest for power and saving the universe theme. Although the Dragon Balls are still become an important part of the story, but the story mostly circle around Son Goku's journey to become the strongest man in the Universe.

The story picks up where Dragon Ball has left off. As the next chapter of Dragon Ball saga, Dragon Ball Z begins years after the last scene of Dragon Ball, where Goku left his friends to go with Chi Chi. This time, Goku return and appear in front of his friends with a boy, who is in fact his son, Son Gohan. At the same time, a strange alien from other planet arrived, and looking for our hero. As it turns out, this alien is called Raditz, Son Goku's brother. This is the moment of truth, where Akira Toriyama introduced us to a fact that Goku is actually an alien race called Saiyans from the planet Vegeta. This is the begining of Son Goku's quest to become the strongest man on the universe, since Saiyans are a warrior race, which born and live for fights, and will grew stronger and stronger everytime they survive an almost death situation.

This chapter of the story are then called Saiyan Saga. In this saga, Goku fights three strongest Saiyans that survived the planet's destruction, Vegeta, Nappa and the weak Raditz. This chapter/ saga introduced Vegeta to the fans, who will not only became a famous character on his own in manga/ anime world, but also build a foundation for a all cold, silent- strong type, a bit evil, hero's rival characters in manga and anime nowadays. By knowing his origins and meeting stronger enemies, Goku grows even stronger. To defeat these aliens who threatened to destroy the earth, Goku had to team up with Piccolo and all his friends, including Krilin and his son Gohan. Vegeta is finally defeated, but Goku let him escapes the earth.

The aftermath of his battle with Vegeta leaves Goku paralyzed for some time. So in order to help their friends that was killed in the battle, Krilin, Son Gohan and Bulma have to go to Planet Namec, to find and use the dragon balls there. But what they didn't know, is that a universe tyrant is also in that planet, looking too for the dragon balls. His name is Frieza, the strongest enemy Goku will have to face this far. This chapter, will then be called the Frieza Saga. Vegeta who escapes the earth after the events in Saiyan Saga also arrived in namec to find the mystical orbs. This is when things got complicated, where three different teams are looking for the same dragon balls. Our heroes on one side, Vegeta on the other, and Frieza and his cronies on the other. To defeat Frieza, Goku has to transform into a legendary warrior, Super Saiyan. As a super saiyan, Goku experience quite a change. His muscle is bigger, his eyes are sharper with even some evilish looks in it, he became quite temperamental, and especially his hair turned yellow and even pointier. This is the Super Saiyan traits every fan will love even until now.

After Frieza Saga, Dragon Ball Z went through two more major sagas, the Cell Saga and the Maajin Buu Saga. The Cell Saga brings our heroes face to face againts a very powerful humanoid called Cell. This saga introduced to the reader a character called Trunks, who in facts Vegeta and Bulma's son from the future. This saga is said to be the inspiration for the TV New Hit series Heroes, the first season. Uncanny similiarity is seen between the two stories, such as:

1. A mysterious killer who killed people by absorbing their power/ essences - Cell in DBZ, Sylar in Heroes.
2. A hero from the future who came back to warn of the danger, this hero brings a sword on his back - Future Trunks form DBZ and Future Hiro from Heroes.
3. The view used to show Trunks looking at the destroyed city in DBZ's scene (Trunks' Story) is very similiar to the scene where Hiro Nakamura went to the future and see the destroyed New York.
4. In the end of the story, someone blows up, and another one saves the city by taking the man who is going to blew up someplace else - Cell blows up, and Goku take him to Kaii World in DBZ, and Peter Petrelli blows up, and Nathan Petrelli take him up to high altitude in Heroes.

This saga also introduced Super Saiyan 2 phase, the second transformation after the normal Super Saiyan. It leaves Son Gohan as the hero of the story.

The final chapter of Dragon Ball Z Maajin Buu Saga, gives the fans Maajin Buu. A very powerful demon with a bit mystical power. Maajin Buu's character is funny in it's own way. This final chapter gives alot of new characters, facts and powers, like Super Saiyan 3, Fusion and Pottara. Goku's second son, Son Goten is introduced in this saga. Super Saiyan 3 is very different than Super Saiyan 1 and 2. In the third transformation, Goku's hair become long and yellow. He got electricity all over his body like the one in the Super Saiyan 2, and his eyes got even sinister. His eyebrows disappears and 2 layer of pupil is seen. To defeat Maajin Buu, Goku use the help of everyone in the earth and universe including the people in Hell to build a Genki Dama (Spirit Bomb in English) and ends Maajin Buu's life forever.

Thus ends the Dragon Ball Z saga. The story actually ends at the Tenka Ichi Budokai, when Goku finds his wish granted, and leaves the arena with the reincarnation of Maajin Buu, a boy that called Uub. He leaves his friends and families again, to train Uub how to fight, so he can fight him properly one day. After all, Son Goku loves a good fight.

Today, 20 years after it's first release, Dragon Ball Z is still as huge as ever, with loyal fans all over the world. Dragon Ball Z becoming more then a saga, but almost a legend. New Dragon Ball's stuff are still made every month, from video games, accesories, toys, action figures, even the manga got re- released, to a big budget movie DBZ, by Twentieth Century Fox set to release in 2009.

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Dragon Ball

Akira Toriyama's world famous manga Dragon Ball Z begins with Dragon Ball at 1989. It tells a story about a monkey- tailed young boy, Son Goku, whose only desire is to get stronger and to fight people who are stronger than him. Son Goku lives on a mountain somewhere, far from the city and lived a simple life, filled only with martial arts training and food hunting. Goku had a Dragon Ball, a magical orb which the legend said, that if you succeed in collecting 7 of them, a dragon will appear and grant whatever wish you desire. One day, a girl named Bulma came along looking for the Dragon Ball, and thus begin Goku's journey.

Dragon Ball is a comedic, fun, and very loose translation from chinese legend Journey to the west. The story is very 'light', and fun to read. Goku's first enemies, are funny enemies, that reader can find them 'quite entertaining' than dangerous. Goku's journey then bring him to meet Kamesennin or Mutenroshi (Master Roshi in English version) and his best friend ever, Kuririn (Krilin in English). Dragon Ball's story got a bit serious when Goku fight his first dangerous and real evil enemy, Piccolo. Piccolo is a demon of the past, that got resurected when Goku is fighting in the middle of a World Fighting Tournament (Tenka Ichi Budokai). When Krilin got killed by Piccolo's henchman, Goku decided to fight and defeat the demon once and for all. After a long, hard, journey and with help from his new acquired allies, Goku managed to defeat Piccolo. But at the second before his death, Piccolo lays an egg, and a new young Piccolo is reborn from the egg.

Goku then go with Kami Sama (Kami in English version) and Mr. Popo to train until the next World Tournament, where he will be fighting the new reborned Piccolo. Returned to the next tournament as a young man, he surprises his friends by his new attitude and calmer appearance. In this tournament Goku reunited with Chi Chi, a girl from his past that will be his wife. After a heavy fight that involves destroying all the arena and the arena buildings, Son Goku finally defeated Piccolo. But as Kami moves to kill him, Goku stop Kami, and saves Piccolo's life. He knows, that Piccolo is actually shares Kami's soul. If Piccolo dies, Kami will dies too. He assures Kami, that if Piccolo will attack again, he will stop him again. After Goku gives Piccolo a Magic Bean to save his life, Piccolo immediately flew away and swear that he will kill Goku someday.

With this said and done, Goku take Chi Chi away, hop on his Kintoun Cloud, and flew away, leaving his friends behind. This is the end of the Dragon Ball title.


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Introduction

Mangas are Japanese comic books. These days manga has become a huge commodity in sequential art and entertainment industry in the world. Manga is famous for it's unique storytelling, panelling, and especially, unique drawing style. Manga characters had large eyes, uniquely drawn - pointy hairs, long legs (especially for female characters) and mostly, non- realistic body proportion.

These are some of the factors that attract comic book readers worldwide to manga. Mangas' stories also has more variations and different themes in it compares to other style/countries' sequential arts. If most comic books' stories are about action, drama, daily lives, sci- fi, heroes, or superheroes, manga's theme are much more differs. Manga got stories about history, soccer, golf, musician, writer, students, weird elementary teachers, ninjas, fantasy, fiction ninjas - warriors, even about dogs, cats, and dinosaur cub!

Mangas started became a worldwide pursuit since Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball Z anime (Japanese animation based on the manga) hits international TV at 1996. Dragon Ball Z has started what will become a Manga Fever. Since then, these Japanese comic books are started to become a part of global entertainment. It got even bigger when some of America's greatest Comic Artist such as Joe Madureira and Ed McGuiness had some Manga influence in their drawing style.

Today, mangas are no longer belong only to the Japanese. They belong to the world.

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