THE MIND
Tite Kubo (born Noriaki Kubo, June 26, 1977; "Tite" is pronounced "Taito") is the creator of the popular series Bleach, one of the "Big Three" Shōnen IPs of the Turn of the Millennium (next to Naruto and One Piece) and still one of the most popular Shonen Jump titles ever.
For Jump's 50th anniversary in 2018, Kubo came back to make a oneshot, a romcom fantasy titled Burn The Witch (2018).
Eventually, in 2019, it was announced that Kubo would be making his video game debut as the character designer for Sakura Wars (2019), the sixth installment in the Sakura Wars series.
Manga by Tite Kubo with pages on this wiki:
Tite Kubo and his works provide examples of:
- Art Evolution: With time, the faces he draws have become more stylized and with finer features. As a drawback, he's often fallen in Only Six Faces syndrome. He jokes about it in-universe by having one Bleach character ask how his face is similar to the main character's, and also uses it as a plot twist when revealing that one character is a more ancient version of the villain.
- Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Kubo is often quoted as saying he creates new characters whenever faced with writer's block. However, it's not known exactly when this was said.
- Breakthrough Hit: While Zombie Powder was Kubo's first in his native country, it was Bleach that skyrocketed his popularity worldwide.
- Cast of Snowflakes: Bleach in particular is known for its gargantuan supporting cast, all of whom Kubo makes at least a token effort to distinguish from one another. He's been quoted as saying making new characters is a way for him to overcome writer's block, although this may be apocryphal.
- Continuity Nod: Burn The Witch is revealed to be in the same universe as Bleach when the arch at the beginning is restored, revealing the full logo to be SSWB, or Soul Society West Branch.
- Cosplay: After the ending of Bleach, Kubo re-surfaced in November in a cosplay of Mayuri Kurotsuchi
, fully affirming his below-mentioned fashion design talent. - Costume Porn: Kubo has stated that his real desire is to become either a fashion designer or an architect. He also stated he gave Shinigami kimono because he wanted gorgeously billowing sleeves. He makes his characters very fashion conscious as a result, and does lots of artwork for volumes and chapters displaying characters in a range of fashionable modern clothing.
- Creative Differences: According to this interview he wasn't exactly happy with the changes made to the Bleach anime. He says that at some point the differences between manga and anime were so great, he got "stomach aches"; so he pretty much demanded to be sent the scripts so he could correct them. Unsurprisingly, the director of the Bleach anime was Noriyuki Abe, said to have had similar problems with Yoshihiro Togashi over the animated adaptation of YuYu Hakusho.
- Creator Backlash: Made it abundantly clear he was not pleased with Bleach: Hell Verse. In the small interview that came with the collectors edition of the DVD in Japan, Kubo notes that he requested his name be removed from the credits (a request that was denied) as he rather passive-aggressively stated that he felt he hadn't contributed enough to the film to be acknowledged in the credits... because the studio had rejected all of his ideas.
- Creator Breakdown: Kubo has stated that he's had at least two of these:
- His first manga Zombiepowder. only lasted four volumes due to low sales. In a veiled reference on the inside cover of the final volume, Kubo acknowledged a nervous breakdown also contributed to its cancellation.
- Some months after the end of Bleach, he revealed on Twitter that the tenth year of publishing was incredibly hard on him due to stress and bad health. Then a letter gave him his spirits back—it was from a deceased 10-year-old kid, whose Last Request was to have an anonymous letter with encouraging words given to him after his death. At the end of the reveal, Kubo asked for leads about the boy's family's whereabouts, intending to find them. (And around a year later, he did.)
- No Origin Stories Allowed: Despite his importance as the main Big Bad, Aizen's backstory was a complete mystery and never revealed by the end of the manga. Kubo once stated that revealing Aizen's backstory would give too much away too soon.
- Spell My Name With An S: The man's nickname. It's Taito in Japanese, but he invariably romanizes it as "Tite" (a pun on "tight", geddit?)
