Muto Ashirogi (亜城木 夢叶, Ashirogi Muto) is a pen name used by Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi. It was created by Kaya and was originally created so that no one at their high school would know they were creating manga, so as to avoid a similar incident that happened in Middle School with Ishizawa. The name comes from combining the Japanese characters for "dream" and "come true"(Muto) along with Azuki (A), Mashiro (Shiro), and Takagi's (Gi) names. It means that their dreams are going to come true (Mashiro and Takagi getting an anime and Azuki voicing the main female character in the anime). After their dreams come true Mashiro and Azuki will get married.
When Takagi and Mashiro broke up for a brief time, Mashiro asked to be called Ashiro Muto if he got published. At the beginning, before they got serialized, Hattori was the editor in charge of helping them. When they got serialized with "Detective Trap," they got Miura as their new editor. For their second manga Run, Daihatsu Tanto!, Miura continued being their editor and when their latest manga "Perfect Crime Party" got serialized, Miura was replaced by Hattori, who is their current editor. When they had Reversi serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump and PCP moved to Hisshō Jump, their new editor for PCP became Hiroyuki Nakano, while Hattori stayed on as their editor for Reversi. Along with the move to a new magazine they had the main characters of PCP graduate from Elementary School in the remaining chapters released in Weekly Shonen Jump and begun a new Middle School arc in Hissho Jump. Their new manga Reversi has seen profound success, each week battling it out for first place with Zombie Gun in the questionaires. Reversi is unique because they have been able to create a mainstream battle manga using their non-mainstream style.
Manga
- The Two Earths
- One Hundred Millionth
- Money and Intelligence
- Angel Days
- Detective Trap
- Hitman10
- Future Watch
- Run, Daihatsu Tanto!
- Kana Chie Mitame (KTM)
- Perfect Crime Party (PCP)
- Reversi
Trivia
- Muto Ashirogi, being a tandem pair of a manga writer and a manga artist, reflects the writer and artist of Bakuman: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, the writer and artist respectively.
Muto Ashirogi's Avatar
- The avatar Mashiro and Takagi use to represent Muto Ashirogi as a single entity appears to be a man with a mixture of traits from Mashiro (such as his hair) and Takagi (such as his glasses), as seen in their contents page comment in chapter 139.
- After having their identities revealed, it's left to wonder if Takagi and Mashiro still use this avatar to representive themselves for comments in Jump.
- Muto in Muto Ashirogi translated is "Hopes and Dreams" and Ashirogi is a mixture of Azuki, Takagi, and Mashiro.