Kazuo Komatsubara (小松原 一男 or 小松原 一夫 Komatsubara Kazuo?, December 24, 1943 – March 24, 2000) was a Japanese animator, animation director and character designer born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. He worked as an independently contracted character designer for Toei Animation in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a member of the board of directors of animation studio Oh! Production (which he helped found along with Norio Shioyama, Kōichi Murata, and Kōshin Yonekawa). He died on March 24, 2000 due to a cancerous tumor on his neck.
Beginning with Devilman in 1972, Komatsubara moved on to work on other important 1970s anime shows including Getter Robo (1974), Getter Robo G (1975), UFO Robo Grendizer (1975), and Magne Robo Gakeen (1976), working closely with and succeeding Go Nagai on character designs for many of these shows. For the 1987 OVA remake of the Devilman series, Komatsubara worked as both character designer and animation director. He then caught the animation fandom book at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s as the character designer for Leiji Matsumoto's Space Cruiser Yamato series, as well as working on the anime TV series Space Pirate Captain Harlock and the anime film Galaxy Express 999. Komatsubara became the most popular anime character designer for Matsumoto's characters, and many of his illustrations were featured on the front covers of various magazines.