Naruto’s official X (formerly Twitter) account recently warned Naruto fans that the creator of the series is not active on social media and fans should be wary of anyone claiming to be him.
Recently, there has been a wave of online scams where people claiming to be either popular media personalities or YouTubers message fans that they have won a prize and in turn scam them out of their money.
One of the biggest examples is Mr Beast, who repeatedly warned his fans that he doesn’t direct message anyone claiming that they have won a prize.
The situation is not different when it comes to the anime and manga community. Many fraudulent accounts claiming to be either Eiichiro Oda or Masashi Kishimoto have surfaced in the past few years on various social media platforms, including Facebook and X.
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Although any fraudulent activities from these accounts have never been publicly reported, it doesn’t help that these accounts have a huge fan following. Moreover, the rules of X allow anyone to get a blue checkmark, which can lead to deception.
For example, one of Masashi Kishimoto’s parody accounts on X has more than 300k followers and also has a blue checkmark. It is easy to fall for a scam if a big account with a verification checkmark decides to do so.
On the other hand, the Official Naruto account on X has barely 80k followers. Unfortunately, some fans are unable to differentiate between a parody and a real account so Naruto Official had to make fans aware of anyone claiming to be Masashi Kishimoto as he does not post on any social media.
[WARNING]
— NARUTO OFFICIAL (@NARUTO_info_en) April 8, 2024
The manga creator Masashi Kishimoto does not post on any social media.
Please be aware that any accounts claiming to be him are fraudulent.
– Shueisha
The situation is worse when it comes to Facebook, with multiple ‘parody’ accounts having followers in the thousands. One of Kishimoto’s fan accounts on Facebook has more than 1 million followers.
An Eiichiro Oda account on Facebook has more than 600k followers. Both of these manga creators don’t have any social media presence.
Naruto manga, written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto, was first serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine in 1999. It quickly gained popularity and was later adapted into an anime series that premiered on October 3, 2002.
The anime ran for 220 episodes until its conclusion on February 8, 2007. However, due to its immense success, a sequel series titled Naruto: Shippuden aired from February 15, 2007, to March 23, 2017, spanning an impressive 500 episodes.
