Yuriko Aoki

Yuriko Aoki
Name	Yuriko Aoki
Kanji	蒼樹 紅(Aoki Ko) 青木 優梨子 (Aoki Yuriko)
Romanji	Aoki Yuriko
Characteristics
Age	22
Gender	Female
Eyes	Brown
Hair	Brown
Profession
Occupation	Manga-ka
Stories	Hideout Door A Time of Green Leaves What God Gave Me...
Magazines	Shonen Jump Akamaru Jump
Personal Status
Marital Status	Dating Hiramaru Kazuya
Relatives	Unknown
Education	Tooh University
First Appearance
Manga Debut	Literature and Music (Chapter 29)
Anime Debut	N/A
Video Game Debut	N/A
Voices
Japanese Voice	Ayako Kawasumi
English Voice	N/A

Yuriko Aoki (Born March 11, 1990 in Tokyo, Japan), is a main supporting character and mangaka in Bakuman. She only came up with the story because she was told that drawings weren't suited for Jump. She used the pen name Aoki Ko.

Appearence

Aoki has short brown hair and brown eyes. She has a beauty mark under the corner of her left eye. When she is reading she wears a pair of glasses.

Personality

At first Aoki appears haughty, judgmental, and superior, similar to Aiko Iwase, but underneath all of this she is really very timid and shy. In the beginning she thought that men were untrustworthy but as the series goes on this begins to change. She has had a crush on Takagi and has recently began to date Hiramaru.

History

Aoki attended To-ou University, a fictional university that characters from Death Note also attended. Prior to working for Shonen Jump, she drew manga for Margaret, demonstrating a shojo background that is shown to conflict with her manga's ability to attract a shonen audience.

Summary

Golden Future Cup She worked with Nakai on Hideout Door for the Golden Future Cup. She takes part in the meeting, held by Fukuda with Akito Takagi, Moritaka Mashiro, Eiji Niizuma, and Nakai, regarding&nbsp Koogy's announcement about his manga. They read and were going to discuss each other's manga. Aoki refuses, stating that her manga is the best,&nbsp which leads to Niizuma's opinion on their mangas. He correctly predicts that two manga would tie for first and one would place third, referring to Kiyoshi Knight and Detective Trap as first and Hideout Door as thrid. This meeting forms the basis for what will become Team Fukuda.

After New Years Party

When Aoki announced that she would work with Makaino Koji, Nakai is heartbroken. She tells him that his drawings couldn't convey the world in Hideout Door. To prove his desire to work with her, he draws in front of her window after work, even during a snowstorm. She offers him an umbrella, admitting that it was her story and not his drawings that was the reason that Hideout Door wasn't serialized. She wants her story to be good enough for his drawings. Eventually, Hideout Door is serialized, and Aida becomes the pair's editor.

Aoki and Nakai

Creator Strike

When Detective Trap is put on hiatus due to Mashiro's hospitalization, Aoki is among the mangaka of Team Fukuda to go on a strike, adamantly holding her position while Nakai was more uncertain.

Cancellation of Hideout Door

Low rankings eventually cause Sasaki to remove Hideout Door and Detective Trap from serialization, commenting that he wants Nakai on another manga for his art and that he "couldn't care less about Aoki." Presented with this ending, Aoki states that she wants to end the manga in her own way, without trying to salvage Hideout Door.

When presented with Nakai's confession of love for her over the phone, Aoki states that she cannot reciprocate his feelings. After her serialization of A Time of Green Leaves, she offers Nakai to be her assistant again, but his explicit deal to make her his girlfriend greatly offends her to the point of slapping him across the face. Aoki is among the mangaka to bid Nakai farewell after he moves back to the country.

Aoki slaps Nakai

After the Love Fiesta

She and Hiramaru go out for tea where she agrees to date him officially as long as he continues to write manga.

Fall and Rise of Nakai

Aoki sees a drunk and miserable Nakai blaming her for his miseries. This noise causes Hiramaru to overhear Nakai and he drives to her home to defeat him. Aoki becomes increasingly bothered by their fight, which mostly ends in Nakai's favor. When Fukuda and Ashirogi arrive to assist Hiarmaru, Aoki witnesses Hiramaru's determination to protect her, and Nakai ardently blaming her for his miseries. In a blatent shonen moment, Aoki walks downstairs to Nakai and allows the obese man to hit her and release his pent-up anger. She finds that Nakai found himself unable to hit her, knowing that he is the one at fault, after which Hiramaru asks Nakai to be his assistant.

Aoki is later discussed, again, as another part of Yoshida's plans to improve Hiramaru's manga and Nakai's lifestyle. After Aoki marries Hiramaru, her older sister would meet a physically-improved Nakai and a relationship would spark between the two.

Manga

Hideout Door is about a boy who opens a door to the fairy world. He then has to choose to gain the soul of a fairy and befriend them or die. As her art wasn't suited to a shonen audience at the time, she would only work on the story.

A Time of Green Leaves was an ecchi manga in which she drew numerous panty shots, demonstrating a shift of her manga into the shonen demographic. The manga was later cancelled alongside Hiramaru's Otters 11, setting the Love Fiesta in motion.

In the Love Fiesta, she took first place with her one shot "What God Gave Me..."; which expands to become her next series.

Trivia

• Aoki enjoys Darjeeling tea, a fruity, floral, astringent black tea.
• Aoki's specialization in romance manga, along with her experience and popularity with the series, draw a parallel to Kawashita Mizuki, mangaka of Ichigo 100%, Hatsukoi Limited, and Ane Doki.
• Mashiro was once offered by Aida to be Aoki's partner.