Age: 26 (debut), 34 (end) Birthday: June 18, 1984 Birthplace: Kanagawa-ken, Japan Hiramaru was a salary man that hated working. On hearing Takagi and Mashiro talking about drawing manga on the subway and finding an abandoned copy of Jack, he quit his job to be a mangaka because he thought it would be less work for him. He is a different kind of genius compared to Eiji because he is talented even though he just started to write manga more in of a spur of the moment. After teaching himself to draw manga in a very short amount of time, his manga, Otters 11 is serialized. He is hailed as a genius by Koji Yoshida who pushed for his serialization saying that Hiramaru had no real motivation to continue as a mangaka and failure would just make him quit. Hiramaru is extremely lazy and immediately regrets getting serialized due to the amount of work to keep up a weekly series. He has said that he doesn't know why people have to work for a living and that he wants to sleep when he's tired and to eat when he's hungry. Due to his laziness, his editor, Koji Yoshida, often schemes to manipulate Hiramaru into working. Hiramura often tries to escape Yoshida to avoid working. His attempts to escape Yoshida is a long-running gag in the manga. He is also a chronic hypochondriac and often makes incredible claims of illness. However, he is always proven healthy by the doctors. It's mostly believed that his "illnesses" are not only a product of his own fears, but also serves as an excuse to avoid work. Hiramaru has a huge crush on Aoki Yuriko. Yoshida bribes him into doing work by giving him weekly facts about Aoki. Yoshida also often depicts dramatic scenarios of Aoki rejecting him due to his laziness or inability to produce names to energize him to work hard. Because he can't stand the idea of losing Aoki in his life, a combination of his own anxiety and Hiramaru's end-game scenarios, he works feverishly in hopes his work will earn Aoki's heart. Eventually, he gets engaged to her in Chapter 160.
Age: 15 (debut), 26 (end) Birthdate: November 3, 1992 Eiji Nizuma is a high school genius mangaka who has been drawing ever since he was young. Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi consider him their rival. He was supposed to serialize a manga called Yellow Hit but he wanted to draw a different manga, Crow, which appeared in Akamaru Jump instead. His assisants were initially Nakai and Fukuda (Mashiro also worked for him temporarily before Detective Trap was serialized). His editor is Hattori Yujiro. He once demanded to be allowed to end one series he hated if he ever made it as the most popular author in Jump. Niizuma is slightly naive, but can also be serious and calculating when he wants to. Eiji tends to act conceited because he is hailed as a genius; however, after working on Crow for quite a long time, he grew more humble, 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 Golden Future Cup. (He judges anyway, but is not very helpful, only expressing his interest in Ashirogi and Ryu Shizuka). He tends to make noises and sound effects when drawing or writing his manga. Eiji is constantly chastised by his editor, and at first seems to be rather oblivious toward his rivals' feelings toward him, even expressing great excitement when he meets Ashirogi Muto and saying he is their fan. He is a great lover of manga and his opinion are valued by everyone at Jump, including his rivals. He refers to himself as an "Eternal Boy" and that is why he writes Shonen manga. He has only ever had a crush on one girl, back in elementary school, which paired with his naïveté most likely explains his lack of success in the Super Leaders' Love Fest.
Age: 24 (currently) Birthday: June 9, 1994 He is an assistant to Ashirogi Muto when they publish Perfect Crime Party. He is a year younger than Mashiro and Takagi. After he became a finalist in the Tezuka Award he decided to drop out of design school and concentrate on manga. Moriya seems polite but it is revealed in his thoughts he has a very negative view on others. He can be quite snippy at times. Moriya believes manga should be about the art and creativity, and you shouldn't worry about popularity because you won't get anywhere if you do. (Source: Bakuman Wikia)
Age: 14 (debut), 24 (end) Birthdate: November 5, 1993 Blood Type: B Height: 162cm Weight: 44kg Azuki is Mashiro's classmate. Her dream is to be a voice actor. She agreed to marry Mashiro when both of their dreams come true. However, she also told him that in the mean time, they should not have any distractions so they will contact each other only through emails. Her best friend is Kaya Miyoshi. Although her outer image is shy, she is a very mysterious girl. It is sometimes hard to know what she is thinking about. After securing her role as the main heroine in Ashirogi Muto's "Reversi," she finally receives a proper marriage proposal from Mashiro, which she accepts. They begin living in her old house which Mashiro purchased and are married following Ashirogi Muto's next serialization.
Age: 40 (currently) Birthday: June 23, 1978 Yoshida is Hiramaru Kazuya's editor. He tells the chief-editor in the meeting about his genius, which led to Hiramaru's serialization. He is able to ignore Hiramaru's personality. He is also a Captain, meaning he gets to sit in the serialization meetings and lead the other editors in his team, like Yamahisa. Yoshida is perhaps the most manipulative of the editors shown. When he realizes that forcing Hiramaru to work isn't applicable to an efficient and/or long-running series, he bribes him with rich items or information about Aoki Ko in order to get him back to work and pay off the debts he owes for buying such items. Yoshida is able to keep this running for an extended period of time (throughout the 200 chapters of Otters 11), even threatening Hiramaru with disassociation with Shueisha if he does not get serialized again after Otters 11 gets canceled. Yoshida's reason and rationality are even more key to his character. He is able to deduce that Niizuma Eiji was responsible for +Natural's artwork and worries that Hiramaru's manga will take a dive if he asks Aoki Ko out and gets rejected, knowing that Hiramaru most probably will get rejected. This reasoning has its limits, however, as Yoshida was greatly surprised that Aoki accepted Hiramaru's proposal, though it would later scratch away most of Hiramaru's negativity and cause a dive in his manga quality.