In a recent interview with us here at Anime Corner, the Japanese voice actor of BLEACH protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki, Masakazu Morita, shared how he first encountered the series — and how he almost ended up not being Ichigo’s voice actor at all.
Morita-san explained that he first encountered BLEACH in Shonen Jump. The series was serialized in the manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from August 2001 to August 2016. He also noted that the series “sticks with you” and that it was one of the first series he encountered that featured shinigami / Soul Reapers and placed them in the spotlight.
Then, finishing his answer, Morita-san shared a brief story about how he almost missed his audition, explaining “As an aside, I was actually late to my audition. Not my fault — my manager and my company gave me the wrong date. So I might have not made it.”
Morita-san has been the voice of Ichigo since BLEACH was adapted by Pierrot into an anime television series and broadcast beginning in October 2004. While, according to both Ichigo’s Japanese and English voice actors in our interview, some “texture” of Ichigo’s voice have changed, the voice actors have remained the same across all BLEACH animated content and video games.
After the original BLEACH anime ended in March 2012, Morita-san reprised his role as Ichigo in a sequel to the TV series, BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, which premiered in October of 2022. The fourth cour of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War premiered yesterday.
You can watch the anime on Hulu and Disney+ and check out the manga on VIZ.
© Tite Kubo/Shueisha, TV TOKYO, dentsu, Pierrot
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