Muto Ashirogi (亜城木 夢叶, Muto Ashirogi) is a pen name used by Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi. It is created by Kaya and was originally created so that no one at their high school would know they were creating manga. 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 voice acting a female character in the anime).
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. In the latest chapter, Takagi and Mashiro are working on a new manga called Reversi featuring two demons, a black and a white, in conflict to destroy the workd in their one way. They work through humans who gain brainwashing and other psychic powers from them. This is to create a mainstream battle manga with their non-mainstream style.
Manga
- The Two Earths
- Money and Intelligence
- 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.
- 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.
- Muto in Muto Ashirogi translated is "Hopes and Dreams" and Ashirogi is a mixture of Azuki, Takagi, and Mashiro.