List of Bakuman characters

This is a list of fictional characters in the anime and manga series Bakuman. The writer of the series, Tsugumi Ohba, developed the basic character traits while Takeshi Obata, the artist, created the visual character designs. A majority of the characters are themselves involved in the manga industry as manga artists, editors, or assistants.

Main characters

 * Moritaka Mashiro (真城 最高)
 * Moritaka is the main protagonist of the series.t Once content to follow the usual life of a Japanese citizen, going on to University, and then maybe becoming an office worker, he now follows in the foosteps of his late uncle—a manga artist who loved his classmate from the shadows, but never told her, and later died from overwork—as he too aspires to become a manga artist. Mashiro was a talented artist from an early age, but is still highly dissatisfied with his drawings. Moritaka is fond of his classmate Miho Azuki, who wishes to become a voice actress, and spontaneously proposes to her. She accepts to marry him on the condition that they must not see each other until they both achieve their dreams, which later they break their promise "not to see each other". Moritaka then decides to team up with another classmate, genius and talented writer Akito Takagi, and tries to create a popular manga to have it adapted into an anime. The two work under the shared pen name Muto Ashirogi (亜城木 夢叶). He develops a personal rivalry with Eiji Nīzuma. He is often called Saiko (サイコー). He is previously voiced by Jun Fukuyama in the flash web-comic & will be voiced by Atsushi Abe in the anime.


 * Akito Takagi (高木 秋人)
 * Akito is one of the main protagonists of the series. He is one of Moritaka's classmates, and after discovering Moritaka's talent as an artist, he proposes that they publish a manga together. Although Moritaka refuses, the two soon come to work together. Akito is a writer who specializes in unorthodox storylines and writes them in their manga. The two start working under the pen name Muto Ashirogi (亜城木 夢叶), and Akito himself is often called Shujin (シュージン). He eventually dates and marries Miho's best friend Kaya Miyoshi. He shares a rivalry with his former classmate Aiko Iwase. He is previously voiced by Shinnosuke Tachibana in the flash web-comic & will be voiced by Satoshi Hino in the anime.

Supporting characters

 * Miho Azuki (亜豆 美保)
 * Moritaka's former classmate and fiancée. She aspires to become a voice actress and shows promise in the field. She promises to marry Moritaka after they achieve their dreams; however, they must not see each other until then. Since this promise, she has picked up a voicing role, and is gaining growing popularity, not because of her skills, but for her looks. At one point her agent urges her to bring out a photo book, in effect becoming a gravure idol. With Moritaka's support, however, she turns down the offer and perseveres in her voice acting. Her mother is the woman Moritaka's uncle fell in love with. She and Moritaka often communicate through text messages and sometimes through phone calls, but rarely meet except by chance or under special circumstances. She will be voiced by Saori Hayami in the anime.


 * Kaya Miyoshi (見吉 香耶)
 * Miho's best friend and Akito's wife. Because her friends all have high aspirations, she begins to feel left out and decides to become a mobile romance novelist. For her first story, she relates the romance between Moritaka and Miho; however, Akito ends up writing it for her. She later changes her dream to wanting Moritaka and Akito's dreams to come true as well as wanting to become Akito's wife afterward. She helps out in inking the manga and generally maintaining a positive atmosphere in the studio. Moritaka and Akito find that her optimistic presence in the studio helps cheer up what is otherwise a very stressful working environment, and feel she is part of "the team." She will be voiced by Sayuri Yahagi in the anime.


 * Eiji Nīzuma (新妻 エイジ)
 * A 16-year-old high school student hailed as a genius by many people. He wins the Tezuka Award for his manga Large Bander, after which Moritaka and Akito declare him their rival, although he is very friendly upon meeting them and states he is a fan of theirs. He moves to Tokyo to work on the serialization of his manga Crow on the condition that he is able to cancel one of his series in Weekly Shōnen Jump after becoming the magazine's most popular author. The head editor describes the difference between Moritaka and Akagi to Eiji is their "love of manga"; indeed, Eiji seems to have been obsessed with drawing manga since he was six years old. Eiji tends to act conceited because he is hailed as a genius; however, after working on Crow for quite a long time, he becomes humbler, even claiming to "not be good enough of a mangaka to be judging other people's work" when asked by his editor to judge for the Treasure magazine. He works under the direction of the Weekly Shōnen Jump editor Yūjirō Hattori (服部 雄二郎) and for a time with his two assistants, Shinta Fukuda and Takurō Nakai. He will be voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto in the anime.


 * Akira Hattori (服部 哲)
 * Akira Hattori begins as Akito Takagi's and Moritaka Mashiro's editor. He helps them with their pen name and eventually gets them serialized for Detective Trap. Once it becomes serialized, however, Akira loses them to Gorō Miura due to conflicting responsibilities, and soon becomes Aiko Iwase's editor. After The Perfect Crime Club is serialized, Akira returns as Muto Ashirogi's editor, leading Gorō to edit Aiko's work. He comes up with the idea of having Eiji and Aiko collaborate on Natural in order to inspire Moritaka and Akito to work harder. He will be voiced by Kentaro Tone in the anime.


 * Aiko Iwase (岩瀬 愛子)
 * She is a former classmate of Moritaka and Akito's during junior high school. She at first has a crush on Akito but is rejected because she disapproves of writing manga. She later reappears as a student at To-Oh University along with Kō Aoki. She writes her first novel while in University, but since she sees Akito as a rival, she decides to write a manga for Shōnen Jump to prove her superiority. Her editor is originally Akira, who works with Akito and Moritaka beforehand, but after Akira returns as Akito and Moritaka's editor, her new editor becomes Gorō Miura, which angers her because she had feelings for Hattori. Her writing and plot are praised as very well made and she is the writer of Natural. She will be voiced by Ayumi Fujimura in the anime.


 * Gorō Miura (港浦 吾郎)
 * He is Moritaka and Akito's editor between the start of Detective Trap and the serialization of Perfect Crime Party. He is desperate to get one of his series serialized in order to protect his job, and believes that gag manga have a better chance of doing so. This often clashes with Moritaka and Akito's approach, leading to some arguements. Over time, they come to accept him as an editor, and he becomes more flexible and his personal desires do not come into play as often. He eventually becomes Aiko's editor.

Others

 * Shinta Fukuda (福田 真太)
 * Shinta and Moritaka first meet when Moritaka decides to become an assistant for Eiji Nīzuma. Shinta has already won an honorable mention when he tries for the Tezuka Award and also gets seventh place in the same issue of Akamaru Jump in which Ashirogi's Money and Intelligence gets third place. Shinta then became friends with Moritaka and also competes with Ashirogi in the Golden Future cup with his original manga Kiyoshi Knight. Shinta then gets serialized and is an aspiring rival to Ashirogi, Eiji, and Takurō. Among them, he is considered to have the worst drawings, though that they often border on grotesque apparently matches his stories. He can be extremely conceited, abrasive and competitive at times, yet helps out his rivals, who are also his friends. He will be voiced by Junichi Suwabe in the anime.


 * Kō Aoki (蒼樹 紅)
 * Kō (real name, Yuriko Aoki (青木 優梨子)) is an aspiring female mangaka that only recently began to work in the shōnen genre, previously having worked exclusively as a shōjo manga author. Kō is a beautiful woman a couple years older than Moritaka and Akito, which her editor believes will help her sales. She is distrustful of men, as she draws a number of suitors interested in her appearance, including her assistant Takurō Nakai, whose advances she rejects a number of times. She initially appears cold and aloof, but gradually opens up, and is quite warm and friendly to those she trusts. Because shōjo art styles do not match well with Jump, she initially needs help from assistants and artists in order to be published. She is paired with Takurō for her first series, Hideout Door, and after the series is cancelled, Kō resolves to return to shōjo, although she is later convinced to stay on working for Shōnen Jump. She works on the serialized series The Time of Green Leaves, and she does her own drawings with assistance from Shinta Fukuda. She will be voiced by Ayako Kawasumi in the anime.


 * Kazuya Hiramaru (平丸 一也)
 * A new mangaka who one day picks up Shōnen Jump for the first time in his life, and decided to quit his job to draw manga. With his series is called Otters 11, he becomes serialized around the same time as Moritaka and Akito. He can be easily overwhelmed and finds it hard to deal with the stress of writing manga. He frequently shows up at the other mangaka's studios to hide, but is always soon found by his editor. He often complains about his job and wonders aloud why he ever decided to do it in the first place, but consistently ranks high with readers in questionnaires. His editor manages to persuade him to continue by offering to help him get closer to Kō Aoki, as he is attracted to her, but his attempts usually end badly. Due to his success, he has been called a manga genius possibly on the level of Eiji Nīzuma, especially considering his inexperience with manga.


 * Ryū Shizuka (静河 流)
 * An 18-year-old newcomer mangaka who submits a manga called Shapon for an issue of Treasure. Eiji considers him and his story to be second only to Moritaka and Akito's manga in the same issue, stating that he was amazing and deep, and would have won if he had not been up against Muto Ashirogi. Because of the dark subject matter of his manga, he is working with a young editor named Yamahisa to make it more Jump-friendly. He has social anxiety disorder and is reluctant to talk to his editor face-to-face, instead preferring to have his meetings over the Internet. He is a recluse who has spent much of his time in his room with video games and computer since the eighth grade and is sensitive to the words of others. He starts to become more comfortable talking with Yamahisa further on in the story and Yamahisa later helps him buy his own apartment and begin conversing with people.


 * Takurō Nakai (中井 巧朗)
 * Takurō is a manga artist, and a former assistant of Eiji Nīzuma's. He won a monthly award ten years before his introduction in the story, and has since been determined to get serialized and find a girlfriend. He is good with drawing backgrounds and angles. He offers to draw for Kō Aoki only if she agrees to be his girlfriend, which prompts her to slap him and declare that she hates him, but comes to create Hideout Door with Kō. After Hideout Door is cancelled, Takurō leaves because he is disgusted with himself for how he uses manga for his own personal gain. He will be voiced by Tomoyuki Shimura in the anime.