Does Tite Kubo design his characters before the story?

Yes. Characters first, and he says so himself, plainly.

Asked directly, in a Shonen Jump Alpha interview published by Viz Media, whether character or plot comes first, Tite Kubo's method is the reverse of the usual one: the people exist before the story does, and the story is built to hold them. This page prints his description of that method, and the hard lesson from his first series that sits underneath it.

The stock

His own description

Kubo: 'I don't really have a specific process to make characters. But I always have quite a few characters in my mind. When I start a new story arc, I think back to the "stock" of characters in my mind. I draw them in a group and see if they are appropriate to the next story. It's pretty easy to pick who is going to be the main character. Then I pick the other characters in relation to the main character based on what would suit their personality.' Note the order of operations: drawing the group comes before judging the story fit, and personalities are matched after the figures exist.

The admission

Not how everybody works

He ends the answer with the sentence this page is built on: 'This is not the way everybody creates manga, but I like to create the story based on the characters.' The production record of the series agrees with the observable result: character design served as the primary driver of narrative development, and when Kubo hit a creative wall or needed a new plotline, his documented habit was to introduce large numbers of new characters or reread earlier volumes. A cast counted in the hundreds, organized in squads, armies, and families, is what a characters first method produces over fifteen years.

Where the figures start

A kimono, and a contradiction

The first figure of all followed the same rule. The concept for Bleach originated in Kubo's desire to draw a shinigami, a Soul Reaper, wearing a kimono, and that wish formed the basis for the design of the Soul Reapers and for Rukia Kuchiki, the first character drawn for the series. Kubo has also stated a preference for characters whose appearance contrasts with their true nature, a contradiction he finds personally interesting. Design, in his hands, is not decoration added to a person. It is the first draft of the person.

The lesson underneath

Zombiepowder, 1999 to 2000

Asked what his cancelled first series taught him, Kubo answered in the same interview: 'The most important thing I learned from ZombiePowder is that I should always follow my heart and draw what I want to draw. When I was working on ZombiePowder, I was still holding back. I wasn't used to weekly serializations, and I was reacting to my editor's comments. But now I focus more on staying true to my own style and creating what I want to.' The characters first method and that lesson are the same position stated twice: start from the figures he wants to see, and do not let the process talk him out of them.

THE BOOK ON THE SHELF

Bleach · Vol. 1

Japanese tankobon · Vol. 1

The first Japanese volume of Bleach, the series Kubo built around characters he drew first.