Who Writes and Draws Boruto, and How Did Kishimoto Return?

The original arrangement was a deliberate passing of the torch. Kishimoto, exhausted after fifteen weekly years and wanting to supervise rather than draw, blessed a sequel built by his own team: Ikemoto, who had been one of his chief assistants and whose own design instincts had already shaped parts of Naruto's late look, on art; Kodachi, a novelist and anime writer who had scripted the Boruto film, on the story; Kishimoto credited as creator and editorial supervisor.

The 2020 change was announced in the manga's own channels in November of that year: from chapter 52, Kishimoto would take over the writing based on the drafts prepared for the series. Kodachi stepped back with public grace, and the credit line changed to story by Kishimoto from that point, a rare case of a franchise creator resuming the pen of his own sequel four years in.

The seams are documented rather than hidden. Kodachi's era built the Kara organization and Kawaki's introduction; Kishimoto's resumed run drove the story through the Omnipotence climax into the Two Blue Vortex timeskip. Readers and the Library alike keep the chapter numbers of the handover because style, pacing and priorities visibly shift, and because accurate crediting is the whole point of a reference shelf.

For collectors the credit history explains the physical record: Boruto volumes carry dual and then changing credits across the run, the anime credits evolved separately again, and the film, written with Kishimoto's direct involvement, sits before all of it as the seed. A Boruto shelf is a three-author object, and its documentation should say so.