Akiyoshi Hongo

Akiyoshi Hongo (本郷 あきよし) is credited on all relevant media as the creator of the original concept and character designs for the virtual pet franchise, Digimon. However, nothing is known about Hongo as an individual.

There are some possibilities that Akiyoshi Hongo could be a pseudonym for two people: Aki Maita, the creator of the original Tamagotchi, and Takeichi Hongo, the principal officer of Tamagotchi for Bandai.

His name is sometimes spelled as Akiyoshi Kongo, but this may be a typo.

Concept
Digimon was first conceived as a virtual pet toy in the vein of Tamagotchis and, as such, took influence from Tamagotchis' cute and round designs. The small areas of the screens (16 by 16 pixels) meant that character designers had to create monsters whose forms would be easily recognizable. As such, many of the early Digimon—includingTyrannomon, the first one ever created—were based on dinosaurs. Many further designs were created by Kenji Watanabe, who was brought in to help with the "X-Antibody" creatures and art for the Digimon collectible card game. Watanabe was one influenced by American comics, which were beginning to gain popularity in Japan, and as such began to make his characters look stronger and "cool." The character creation process, however, has for most of the franchise's history been collaborative and reliant on conversation and brainstorming.

Staff
He was staff in:
 * Digimon (manga) : Original Concept, Character Design
 * Digimon Adventure (movie): Original Work
 * Digimon Adventure: Script, Original Concept, Character Design
 * Digimon Adventure 02: Original Concept, Character Design
 * Digimon Frontier: Original Concept, Character Design
 * Digimon Fusion: Original Concept
 * Digimon Savers the Movie: Ultimate Power! Activate Burst Mode!!: Original Concept
 * Digimon Tamers: Script, Original Concept, Character Design
 * Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01: Original Concept
 * Digimon Data Squad: Original Concept
 * Digimon Adventure 02: Revenge of Diaboromon: Original creator
 * Digimon: The Movie: Original Concept, Character Design