Kitarō Kōsaka (高坂 希太郎, born February 28, 1962 in Kanagawa Prefecture) is a Japanese animator and film director. He began his career in 1979 with the studio Oh! Production. He left the studio in 1986 to become a freelance, and soon went on to work on numerous projects as a key and supervising animation director for the noted animation studio Studio Ghibli, and with the famed director Hayao Miyazaki, of whose work he is himself an acknowledged fan. In 2003, he directed the cycling anime film, Nasu: Summer in Andalusia, set on the Vuelta a…