Michiteru Kusaba is a Japanese manga artist born in 1971 in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture. He is best known as the original creator and writer-illustrator of the long-running soccer manga series Fantasista and its sequel, Fantasista Stella.

Kusaba began his most famous work, Fantasista, in 1999. The series was serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine, a prominent publication for shonen manga, from July 1999 to March 2004. The story follows a young soccer player from the countryside named Teppei Sakamoto as he pursues his athletic dreams. The successful series was compiled into twenty-five tankobon volumes.

After a hiatus, Kusaba returned to the world of Fantasista with a direct sequel, Fantasista Stella. This new series was also serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday, running from October 2012 to August 2015 and collected into fourteen volumes. It is this sequel that was adapted into a three-episode original video animation (OVA) of the same name. The Fantasista Stella OVA was produced by the animation studio Xebec and released on DVD bundled with special editions of the manga volumes from September 2014 to February 2015. For this adaptation, Kusaba is credited as both the original creator and the original character designer.

Beyond the Fantasista franchise, Kusaba has created other sports-themed manga. He is the author and artist of Lost Man, a seinen manga focused on soccer that was serialized in Big Comic Spirits from 2007 to 2012 and spans seventeen volumes. He also created Tie Break, a tennis series that has been published in French. Another work mentioned in connection with Kusaba is Daiku no Hato. The consistency of sports as a central theme, particularly soccer, forms a core part of his artistic identity as a creator. Throughout his career, Kusaba has served as both the writer and illustrator for his manga, demonstrating a complete authorial voice in the shonen and seinen genres.