Tite Kubo and Akira Toriyama, both are considered to be legends in the game. While Kubo’s Bleach is making rounds with the upcoming third season of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Toriyama’s Dragon Ball is still inspiring other prominent manga creators even after Toriyama’s death. However, there is a story about Kubo and Toriyama’s interaction that sounds too good to be true.
According to the story, when Kubo first submitted the Bleach manga, it was rejected and Kubo was disappointed. His disappointment reached so high that he decided to leave the manga industry, but somehow Toriyama read the Bleach manga and he felt that Kubo should continue with his work.
This led to Kubo submitting Bleach once again, and the rest is history. While the story feels inspiring, there is no piece of evidence to support this story. Dragon Ball and Bleach fans have continuously searched for interviews and comments from Kubo and Toriyama to prove the story true, but they have been disappointed.
Akira Toriyama Motivated Tite Kubo to Keep Working on Bleach
In 2008, the Los Angeles Times conducted an interview with Kubo where they talked about the manga’s success, the anime adaptation, the characters of the story, etc. When the interview was shared by the platform, they added an incident about how Kubo was dejected because Bleach was not being accepted in the Shonen manga.
It was Kubo’s second rejection, and thus it forced him to think about quitting the manga industry and doing something else with his life. However, Akira Toriyama read the first pitch of Bleach, which was submitted by Kubo to Shonen Jump, and he liked the story so much that he wrote a letter to Kubo to motivate him to continue working on Bleach.
Later on, Kubo made some changes to his magnum opus and once again submitted the story to Shonen Jump. This time Bleach was accepted, and from there on, Kubo went on to become one of the biggest names in the manga industry.
Manga Fans Are Yet To Prove The Tite Kubo and Akira Toriyama Story
Although the interaction between Tite Kubo and Toriyama feels inspiring and motivating, there is no solid piece of evidence to prove this claim. Both Dragon Ball and Bleach fans have tried to find the original source of the story but it only goes back to a Bleach fan page that published the story in the early 2000s.
Because of all this, fans are skeptical about the story and refuse to believe this interaction. One of the reasons for not believing it is that Bleach instantly gained fame and popularity after being published in the Shonen Jump for the first time. This proves that Bleach had no danger of being removed from the Shonen Jump in the first place.
It is true that Kubo looked up to Toriyama and was inspired by his work. But it doesn’t prove that Toriyama was the reason why Kubo published Bleach and became a manga creator in the first place. It was his genius and hard work that made him one of the best manga creators in the history of manga.
You can watch Bleach on Hulu and Dragon Ball on Crunchyroll.
