Katsuya Kondō
Japanese manga artist
Katsuya Kondō (近藤 勝也, Kondō Katsuya; 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 Kiki's 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 Cat's Eye. He then worked as a free agent on such shows as The Mighty Orbots, Rainbow Brite and Disney's 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 Ken'ichi 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 Sakemi's novel Kōkyū Monogatari), which tells the story of a young country girl who is chosen to become one of the Emperor's concubines.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Katsuya Kondō” is japanese manga artist. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Katsuya, Kondō and Japanese, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “japanese manga artist” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6378225. VIAF identifies the subject as 253792907. The Library of Congress control number is n2019046172. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963 and 1990.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Katsuya Kondō” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.