Isshin Kurosaki

Isshin Kurosaki (黒崎 一心) is a character in the manga and anime series Bleach.

He is the father of Ichigo Kurosaki and as such, head of the Kurosaki family. He runs their private clinic, the Kurosaki Clinic.

Character outline

In the beginning of the series, Isshin is portrayed as a silly, fight-loving father who takes a keen interest in what his children are doing, but does it either offensively or with an all-too-happy tone, which somewhat alienates his children from him. Isshin also seems to enjoy making fun of Ichigo and has a tendency to talk to the large memorial poster of his late wife Masaki he has pinned up whenever he feels particularly emotional.

Behind the silly mask however, it is later revealed that Isshin can be serious and grim at times. Notably, he has no time for laughter during the fight with Grand Fisher and subsequent chat with Kisuke Urahara.

Isshin is a big fan of Don Kanonji's TV show.

History

Little is known about Isshin's history, it is implied that he was a shinigami captain, by what appears to be a torn coat when he is in his Shinigami form. 20 years before the main Bleach storyline, he quit his shinigami duties to form a family.

He married Masaki Kurosaki and they had 3 children - Ichigo, Karin and Yuzu. Masaki died 6 years before the main storyline.

Zanpakutō

The name of Isshin's zanpakutō has not yet been revealed. However, Isshin used it as an example of how captains must suppress the sizes of their zanpakutō in order to have it at a proper size (otherwise they'd be swinging swords the size of buildings), when he talked to the arrancar Grand Fisher.

Trivia

• Bleach creator Tite Kubo assigned several characters theme songs which are used to give insight to characters that might not normally appear in the run of the manga or anime. In Isshin's case, the song is "Don't Drag Me Down", by Social Distortion.

• Isshin's seiyū in the anime is Toshiyuki Morikawa.

• Initially Kubo wanted to portay Isshin as a mortician rather than a doctor because Kubo thought Isshin looked better in black