Tite Kubo

About

Noriaki Kubo (Japanese: 久保 宣章, Hepburn: Kubo Noriaki; born June 26, 1977), known professionally as Tite Kubo (久保 帯人, Kubo Taito), is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. His manga series Bleach (2001–2016) had over 130 million copies in circulation as of 2022.

Kubo was born on June 26, 1977, in Hiroshima Prefecture, where his father worked as a town council member. In elementary school, he had already decided to become a manga artist, due to reading the manga Saint Seiya. His first one-shot was “Ultra Unholy Hearted Machine”, written for the Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1996. He wrote his first manga Zombiepowder, which was also published in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1999. It ran a short 27 chapters before being canceled in 2000. According to the author’s commentary, Kubo was in a state of severe emotional trauma when he wrote it. Kubo later stated that he was not used to the magazine weekly serialization and used to pay more attention to his editor’s comments rather than his own ideas.
His next series, Bleach, about Ichigo Kurosaki, a high school student who becomes a shinigami and fights creatures known as Hollows, began running in the same magazine in 2001….