Kubo was born on June 26, 1977, in Hiroshima Prefecture. His real name is Noriaki Kubo.
He decided to become a manga artist while still in elementary school after reading Saint Seiya. His first one-shot, "Ultra Unholy Hearted Machine," appeared in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1996.
His debut series, Zombiepowder, launched in the same magazine in 1999 but only lasted 27 chapters before getting canceled the following year. Kubo has reflected that he was struggling emotionally during that run and relied too heavily on his editor's feedback rather than trusting his own instincts—he simply wasn't ready for the grind of weekly serialization.
Bleach came next, and it became the series he's best known for. The story follows Ichigo Kurosaki, a high school student turned shinigami who fights supernatural creatures called Hollows. Kubo originally thought it would run for maybe five years at most. Interestingly, he'd pitched the concept to Weekly Shōnen Jump right after Zombiepowder ended, but they rejected it. Then Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, read the story and sent Kubo a letter of encouragement. When Bleach finally launched in 2001, it became a massive hit—running for 15 years and spanning over 698 chapters before wrapping in 2016.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
