Masashi Kishimoto is the creator and author of the wildly popular manga, Naruto, his most popular work to-date. The manga has been in circulation since 1999, and is being published with Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine with many scanlation groups releasing weekly raws for those across the globe. Inspired by series like Akira, One Piece, Dragonball and its follow up series Dragonball Z - it was mostly Toriyama's works that were a huge influence on the series. Kishimoto has also won the 'Hop Step Award', and award given to new manga-ka once a month by Shonen Jump and as of recently, volume seven of Naruto was also given 'The Quills Award' for best graphic novel in 2006. This was the first time a manga has won this award.