VIZ Media, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, is an anime, manga, and Japanese entertainment company. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, and Shogakukan's licensing division Shogakukan Productions (ShoPro Japan).

Seiji Horibuchi, originally from Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku, moved to California in 1975. After living in the mountains for almost two years, he moved to San Francisco, where he started a business exporting American cultural items to Japan, and became a writer of cultural information. He also became interested in publishing Japanese manga in the United States, though he himself was not a fan of Japanese comics until a visit to Japan in 1985 exposed him to Katsuhiro Otomo's single-volume title Domu: A Child's Dream. His idea came to fruition after he met Masahiro Ohga, then managing director of Shogakukan, in 1985 and shared his vision. Shogakukan provided Horibuchi with $200,000 in startup capital, which Horibuichi used in 1986 to found VIZ Communications.

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Masashi Kishimoto (岸本 斉史, Kishimoto Masashi^?, born 8 November 1974) is a Japanese manga artist, well known for creating the manga series Naruto. His younger twin brother, Seishi Kishimoto, is also a manga artist and creator of the manga series 666 Satan (O-Parts Hunter) and Blazer Drive. During the publication of Naruto, Kishimoto got married and became a father. Two of his former assistants, Osamu Kajisa (Tattoo Hearts) and Yuuichi Itakura (Hand's), have also gone on to moderate success following their work on Naruto.

Masashi Kashimoto was born on November 8, 1974 as the older identical twin of Seishi Kishimoto in the Okayama Prefecture, Japan. During his childhood, Kishimoto showed interest in drawing characters from the shows he view such as Dr. Slump's Arale and Doraemon's protagonist with the same name. In elementary school, Kishimoto started watching the anime series Kinnikuman and Dragon Ball alongside his twin. During following years, Kishimoto started idolizing Dragon Ball's author, Akira Toriyama, enjoying not only his series Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, but also Dragon Warrior, role-playing video game where Toriyama collaborated as a designer. While he could not afford to buy the Weekly Shōnen Jump where the Dragon Ball manga was published, he followed the series thanks to a friend from school who had subscribed to the magazine. By high school Kishimoto started losing interest in manga as he started playing baseball and basketball, sports he practised at his school. However, upon seeing a poster of the film Akira, Kishimoto became fascinated with the way the illustration was made and wished to imitate his style.