Makoto Ishikawa

Makoto Ishikawa (Neo-Japanese: 石川誠) (born January 18th, 1991), formerly known on BloxTube as MaruAshley, is an Neo-Japanese and Robloxian animator, artist and BloxTuber who has been considered to be an prominent BloxTuber in the 2020s.

Nowadays, Ishikawa is more internationally known for two of his webseries, namely EMIKO (2023-ongoing) and KariMari (2018).

History

Makoto Ishikawa was born on January 18th, 1991 to Mariko and Hirokazu Ishikawa. Not much is known about his childhood as he never discusses it for personal reasons.

However, from what has been found in public records in his later teen years, he attended University of Roblox to study animation between 2010 and 2014.

Eventually, on his first year of college (2010), he decided to create a BloxTube channel to reupload some of his parody animations from Ro-Newgrounds (which were mostly based upon Brick Bronze Pokemon, Pulseman, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Ashley: The Magical Witch, Sonic X, Lucky Star and Sgt. Madoka).

It is also said that he named it MaruAshley due to trying to came up with a random username (the “Ashley” part might potentially be a reference to the children’s anime series, Ashley: The Magical Witch).

These animations were said to have been created for an animation class, but this was debunked by Ishikawa by himself, who said that the animations were created because he was bored and that the only animation that was ever made for animation class was an animation based on the television anime series, Nyaruko.

He kept making fan-animations until 2018, when he privated all of his fan-animations and shifted to making original content (such as “KariMari” (2018)) due to a fear of being sued for copyright infringement. Most of Ishikawa’s parody animations have since been reuploaded by his fans, however. Some of them are considered to be lost media since copyright struck the animations anyway. During this time, he changed his username to a abbreviation of his real name, “Makoto I”. currently, this is his username.

In 2023, he would become famous internationally for his surrealist comedy webseries, EMIKO, which would become popular due to its anime-like character designs.

Uploads

NOTE: IF THE UPLOAD DOES NOT HAVE A BOLD TEXT, IT IS MOST LIKELY A REUPLOAD OF ONE OF MARUASHLEY’S RO-NEWGROUNDS ANIMATIONS.

NOTE #2: It is worth noting that, after January of 2013, Ishikawa stopped reuploading his Ro-Newgrounds animations because he thought that the reuploading his animations from there was not worth doing.

2010

  • “The Melancholy of Ash Ketchup” (posted December 17th, 2010)

2011

  • Pulseman Returns but BETTER (posted January 8th, 2011)
  • Brick Bronze Pokemon Parody: Ash’s 11th birthday (posted March 8th, 2011)
  • The Truth of Haruhi Suzumiya (posted May 23rd, 2011)
  • Sgt. Madoka short fan-film: Homura and Mami Vs Roblox (posted August 21st, 2011)
  • NEW! Ashley: The Magical Witch (short film) (posted December 29th, 2011)

2012

  • Brick Bronze Pokemon Parody: Ash’s 11th birthday (part 2) (posted February 21st, 2012)
  • Mikuru and Yuki Episode 1: “Let’s Go! Friends!” (posted April 2nd, 2012)
  • Chris Thorndyke Returns! (posted July 2nd, 2012)
  • Mikuru and Yuki Episode 2: “We’re Here!” (posted September 8th, 2012)

2013

  • Brick Bronze Pokemon Parody: “Slice of Life Edition” (posted January 8th, 2013)
  • UNLUCKY STAR (posted January 19th, 2013, is most likely a parody of the 1992 manga series and 1997 anime series, Lucky Star)
  • “Archie Parody: The Story of Archie Andrews” (posted June 11th, 2013)
  • Mikuru and Yuki (Episode 3 and 4, FINALE) (posted November 17th, 2013)

2014

  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 1) (posted January 21st, 2014)
  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 2) (posted March 8th, 2014)
  • “Brick Bronze Pokemon Parody: Ash vs Adulthood” (posted May 21st, 2014)
  • “The history of Bloxtendo but animated!” (posted July 8th, 2014)

2015

  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 3) (posted January 8th, 2015)
  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 4) (posted July 11th, 2015)
  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 5) (posted October 24th, 2015)
  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episodes 6 and 7) (posted October 24th, 2015)

2016

  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 8) (posted January 17, 2016)
  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 9) (posted May 11, 2016)
  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (Episode 8) (posted June 21st, 2016)

2017

  • “Pokegirls at Work!” (FINALE) (posted January 17, 2017)

For the rest of 2017, Makoto did not upload videos to BloxTube due to unknown reasons. Some speculated he was starting to make an original animation known as KariMari and needed substantially more time on it since he could not copy animation characters from his fanmade animations.

2018

  • ”KariMari Pilot” (posted January 8th, 2018)
  • “KariMari Ep. 2“ (posted March 17th, 2018)
  • “KariMari Ep. 3” (posted April 8th, 2018)
  • “KariMari Ep. 4” (posted May 2nd, 2018)
  • ”KariMari Ep. 5 and Ep. 6“ (posted May 27th, 2018)
  • ”KariMari Ep. 7” (posted December 21st, 2018)

2023

  • “EMIKO (Episode 1)” (posted January 8th, 2023)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 3)” (posted May 8th, 2023)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 2)” (posted April 21st, 2023)
  • “SIDE ANIMATION: EMIKO EMIKO” (posted August 9th, 2023)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 4)” (posted December 9th, 2023)

2024

  • “EMIKO (Episode 5)” (posted January 9th, 2024)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 6)” (posted March 8th, 2024)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 7)” (posted April 8th, 2024)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 8)” (posted July 11th, 2024)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 9)” (posted September 17th, 2024)
  • “EMIKO (Episode 10)” (posted October 25th, 2024)

2025

  • “EMIKO (Episode 11)” (posted January 11th, 2025)
  • ”EMIKO (Episode 12)” (posted May 8th, 2025)
  • “Short film: The Story of Emiko Takamaki (EMIKO)” (posted July 10th, 2025)
  • ”EMIKO (Episode 13) posted December 22nd, 2025)

2026

  • “EMIKO (Episode 14)” (posted February 17th, 2026)

The first hiatus

Makoto returned to BloxTube in 2023 after a 5-year hiatus that began on December 21, 2018 with KariMari Episode 7. During the hiatus, he decided to create a new original series called “EMIKO”, the series. Unlike his previous work (KariMari), it was designed to be surreal on purpose and is aimed at Robloxians who are thirteen and older due to its surreal imagery.

Ishikawa also expressed that he had created eight more episodes of KariMari during his hiatus. However, he explained that the hiatus was caused by one event in particular; in 2019, he upgraded his operating system from Rodows 7 to Rodows 10 due to the former losing support on January 14, 2020. To make room for the upgrade, Rodows 10 had to delete the eight episodes he finished making, frustrating him. It is likely he spent the hiatus trying to figure out how to recover the files Rodows 10 deleted. Meanwhile, in 2023, he simply dealt with the loss and decided to make a new animation series instead, arguing that Episode 7 was actually meant to be a finale in some way. He has also explained that he believes that it is unlikely that he will ever get the files back, making Episodes 8 to 15 seemingly permanent lost media.

Trivia

  • His first major webseries, “Pokegirls at Work!”, became popular in 2016 after the Brick Bronze Pokemon fan-community began taking an interest on the subject of Pokegirls.
  • Prior to joining BloxTube, he was active on a website called “Ro-Newgrounds” (in which he went under the same username as his former BloxTube username).
  • At some point, he was a fan of Lucky Star. In fact, he made a lot of Lucky Star fan-animations during his Ro-Newgrounds days. However, UNLUCKY STAR was the only fan animation of Lucky Star uploaded to BloxTube, and when he privated the fan-animations, this effectively made the rest of the animations lost media. Even though reuploads exist, Lucky Star can still copyright strike them.