Ryosuke Shiba

A cigarette dangling from his lips and a chip on his shoulder from a bureaucracy that never quite trusted him, Ryosuke Shiba runs Special Operations Division 2 like a man with nothing left to lose. He founded the mononoke-hunting unit known as Black Torch, and nearly everything that unfolds in the story traces back to the moment he chose to bring Jiro Azuma into the fold.

Ryosuke Shiba’s Role and Personality

Shiba answers to the Bureau of Espionage, the secretive agency descended from the old Oniwaban spy network and tasked with hunting down mononoke before they cause real damage. He built Black Torch specifically to handle these cases, recruiting Jiro after the teenager fused with the mononoke Rago and became something the Bureau couldn’t ignore. His management style leans closer to benign neglect than mentorship; rules get bent, paperwork gets stalled, and other divisions have learned to keep their distance from him. He’s rarely seen without a cigarette, and that perpetual half-lit haze suits a man who treats every crisis like just another Tuesday. Underneath the detachment, he does look out for his people, even when his methods, like filing Jiro as a missing person just to keep him close, raise more than a few ethical questions.

Who Voices Ryosuke Shiba in Black Torch?

Junichi Suwabe handles the Japanese performance, bringing the same world-weary authority he’s known for as Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez in Bleach and Ryomen Sukuna in Jujutsu Kaisen. Ryan Colt Levy voices Shiba for the English dub, a role that arrives on the heels of his breakout turn as Denji in Chainsaw Man.