Blade of the Immortal
During his last years of college at Kyushu Sangyo University, Kishimoto spent time drawing manga and went to an art college with the hopes of becoming a manga artist. Upon entering college, Kishimoto decided he should try creating a Chanbara manga since "Weekly Shōnen Jump" had not published a title from that genre. However, during the same year, Kishimoto started reading Hiroaki Samura's "Blade of the Immortal" and Nobuhiro Watsuki's "Rurouni Kenshin" (the latter of which was published in "Weekly Shonen Jump"), which used the said genre. Kishimoto recalls having never been surprised by manga ever since reading "Akira" and found that he still was not able to compete against them.