Joseph Bizinger, better known as Joey Bizinger and known online as The Anime Man, is a Japanese-Australian YouTuber and voice actor. His work focuses on creating videos about anime, manga, Japanese culture, language and gaming.
Early life
Joey Bizinger was born on 28 September 1994, the son of a Japanese born mother and an Australian born father of Hungarian/German descent. His mother wanted to ensure that he would retain his Japanese heritage by speaking the language to him exclusively and started showing him Japanese anime on home video with Doraemon, Sazae-san, and Pokémon being especially prevalent in his early childhood. He attended the Sydney Japanese School for a few years during primary school, however his parents moved him to Allambie Heights Public School after being dissatisfied with the quality of education the Sydney Japanese School was providing. And at the same time, decided to enroll him in a Japanese language school on Saturdays to ensure they both kept learning the language. At St. Pauls High School in Manly, Bizinger was the only student of Japanese descent in his class and was often asked by his peers if he knew about anime, as the genre was beginning to grow in popularity with teenagers in Australia and around the world. This, alongside a school project to create a website, spurred him to make a website where he reviewed anime. He kept making the reviews even after the project ended, but he continued to post the reviews up until when he attended Sydney University. While studying there, he started to make some YouTube videos to be posted on his website, but eventually decided to switch entirely to the platform. Bizinger attended Sydney University, where he graduated in 2016 with a degree in Design Computing.
Career
After graduating from university, Bizinger moved to Japan where he had originally planned to work in information technology, but by then his YouTube channel had grown successful enough that he could work on it full time. He has also done voice acting in the video game Grisaia Phantom Trigger, as well as a role in the Pop Team Epic anime series. Bizinger has participated in Animecon events in Finland a couple of times, first in Kuopio in 2017 and the following year in Helsinki. On 18 December 2019, Bizinger released an album entitled A Picture Frame Full Of Memories under the stage name Ikurru, performing both piano and vocals, with references to his late Grandfather Eishiro Suzuki.
