Katsuya Kondo

Katsuya Kondō 近藤 勝也 born June 2 1963 in Ehime Prefecture Japan is a Japanese manga artist character designer animator and animation director He is best known for his character design work on the Studio Ghibli films Kikis Delivery Service and Ocean Waves as well as the PlayStation game Jade Cocoon His character designs are considered the epitome of the Studio Ghibli style After graduating from high school he began working for Osamu Dezaki and Akio Sugino at their Studio Annapuru Under the direction of Shinji Ōtsuka Kondō worked as a key animator of the TV anime series Cats Eye He then worked as a free agent on such shows as The Mighty Orbots Rainbow Brite and Disneys Adventures of the Gummi Bears His first work with Studio Ghibli was as a key animator on Castle in the Sky After working on the Gainax film The Wings of Honneamise and the OVAs Devilman and Meikyū Bukken File 538 Kondō began to be known for the high quality of his work Kondō collaborated with Kenichi Sakemi on a manga retelling of the Joan of Arc story as well as doing the character designs for the Jade Cocoon video game series He also collaborated with Sakemi by creating the character designs for the 1990 NTV TV movie Like the Clouds Like the Wind based on Sakemis novel Kōkyū Monogatari which tells the story of a young country girl who is chosen to become one of the Emperors concubines He also worked with Tomomi Mochizuki on the NHK Minna no Uta music video titled Kaze no Tōri Michi produced by Ajiado Animation Works for Sayuri Horishita In 2007 he was announced as the supervising animator of the Studio Ghibli film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea He also wrote the lyrics for the films theme song Description above from the Wikipedia article Katsuya Kondō licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia