Moritaka Mashiro

Moritaka Mashiro is one of the main protagonist from the Bakuman anime and manga.

Moritaka is also referred to as Saikō by his friends, as it is an alternative way of reading his name. He is a dedicated mangaka who strives to have a hit series as well as an anime to fulfill his promise to Miho Azuki, his love interest and later on wife. He is the artist half of the duo, Ashirogi Muto and he is also the rival of Eiji Nizuma.

Appearance
Mashiro is of average build and height. He has raven blue hair and blue eyes, with a cowlick at the top of his head. He is usually seen wearing more than 2 layers of clothing and wears a t-shirt with a jacket on the top most of the time. He has been described as being very attractive and cute by several of the females in the series (Kato, Kaya, and the voice actress Ririka wrote that he was 'totally hot' in her blog).

Personality
Mashiro is very talented at art and has received numerous commendations for it even before he decided to become a mangaka. He has extremely high standards when it comes to his drawings, and refuses to stop redoing them until he is completely satisfied. He is also extremely competitive, especially when it comes to his rival, Niizuma. Other than Niizuma, he also shares a friendly rivalry with Fukuda, Aoki, and Hiramaru.

Mashiro is in a solid partnership with his middle school classmate and best friend Takagi. Mashiro and Takagi have a deep mutual respect for each other, and both have decided to work with other due to their talent and intelligence. He is also close friends with Takagi's wife, Kaya, whom he has known since they were in middle school.

He is also shown to be very strict, wanting Takagi to follow deadlines, parting ways with him once because of the latter's inability to write a proper name in time.

Mashiro has an extremely wholesome relationship with his fiancé, Azuki. The relationship between the two has been compared by both Takagi and Kaya to those of grade schoolers. Mashiro and Azuki have promised each other to simply motivate each other through text until their dreams come true. Takagi has speculated that if they were to date, they would only be able to think about each other and forego their dreams. Mashiro is also shown throughout the series to be a hopeless romantic, an tends to get extremely giddy when texting Azuki.

Mashiro is one of the more sensitive characters within the series. He has great insight on other people's feelings and is able to accurately read moods, especially Takagi's. He even could tell beforehand that the manga which Niizuma hated and wanted to end was 'Crow'. He is also noted to be very obstinate, which is noted by many characters in the series. Kaya mentions that he is as bad as Azuki.

Trivia

 * He ranked 2nd in the Weekly Shonen Jump's popularity character poll.
 * Moritaka could be compared to Takeshi Obata, the illustrator for Bakuman partnered with Tsugumi Ohba. Or he could rather be compared to the writer of the series considering he had confessed that "L"s character and habits are based of his own meaning it could be a play made by the authors, basing the illustrator on the writer and vice versa.
 * He among Akito Takagi made a cameo in To Aru Majutsu no Index episode 10 walking near Accelerator.
 * It was implied by Moritaka in episode 2 of Bakuman Season 2, while meeting his assistants for the first time that he has trouble drawing characters looking to the right.
 * Moritaka resembles the pilot protagonist of Death Note, Taro Kagami.
 * He always refers to Miho as Azuki. This is rather ironic; when they get married, Miho's last name will be Mashiro.