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In the vast tapestry of Japanese popular culture, where threads of imagination weave legends that transcend generations, there exists a figure whose name resonates with the strength of a titan and the mischief of a playful imp: Go Nagai. His impact is a shockwave that forever altered the landscape of manga and anime, an echo that still reverberates in every stroke of audacity and in every character that defies conventions. Imagine a post-war Japan, a canvas under reconstruction where a young artist, armed with ink and dreams, was preparing to unleash a creative storm. Ever since his name burst onto the scene in the Land of the Rising Sun back in 1968, with the appearance of his pioneering and delightfully controversial work, Harenchi Gakuen—a feast of racy humor for an adolescence eager for novelty—Nagai became the architect of the 70s. Like a Midas of manga, everything he touched turned into iconic gold, founding genres and conquering hearts with a cascade of series and concepts drawn from the purest adventure. And among all those jewels, one shone with its own light, a metal colossus that would stand as the banner of anime on screens across the globe: the legendary Mazinger Z. With a deeply personal artistic vision, an almost supernatural instinct for design, and an innate business acumen, Nagai took the torch of manga tradition, lit by the master Tezuka Osamu, and carried it towards new and dazzling graphic frontiers. He defined a style, both in drawing and narrative, that was a true revolution for shonen manga, leaving a trail of influence that would inspire countless legions of artists. Join us in this story, a journey through the controversial and fascinating career of one of the mangakas who has most shaken the foundations of the industry over more than five decades of tireless creation. Presenting the titan, the innovator, the unequaled… Go Nagai, the Father of Mecha!

Go Nagai, a manga visionary.
Master Go Nagai in his studio, a fount of creativity.

Whispers of Destiny: The Birth of a Drawing Legend

In Ishikawa Prefecture, cradled by the Sea of Japan, the small fishing town of Wajima witnessed the first breath of Nagai Kiyoshi on September 6, 1945. His family, like so many others, had sought refuge there, hastily fleeing Shanghai in the ominous shadow of Japan’s defeat in World War II. Destiny, however, had other plans for young Kiyoshi. In 1951, under the veil of sadness following his father’s death, the family moved to Tokyo. It was in the vibrant metropolis that art began to whisper in his ear. His encounter with a Japanese edition of the Divine Comedy, illustrated with the phantasmagorical and sublime art of Gustave Doré, was a revelation, a seed planted in fertile ground. His older brother, Yasukata, became the herald of a new world by showing him Tezuka Osamu’s Lost World. From that moment on, young Kiyoshi became an insatiable devourer of manga. Tezuka’s science fiction and mechanical giants like Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Tetsujin 28-go populated his childhood dreams. But as he grew, his artistic palate refined, drawing him to the rawness and realism of the emerging gekiga style, with works like Shirato Sanpei’s Ninja Bugeicho marking his adolescence.

Although pencil and paper were natural extensions of his hands, and he drew with the constancy of breathing, the idea of a career as a mangaka seemed a forbidden dream. His mother’s disapproval was a shadow looming over his aspirations. Thus, after finishing high school, he enrolled in a preparatory school with an eye on the entrance exams for the prestigious Waseda University. But destiny, capricious and often ironic, had a different test in store for him. A few months later, severe colitis chained him to the toilet for three weeks of agony. The thought of dying, of his only legacy on Earth being the anecdote of “the kid who shat himself to death,” shook him to his core. That thought, grotesque and terrifying, was the catalyst. Nagai Kiyoshi decided he would leave an indelible mark on the world, whatever the cost. Once recovered, with a determination forged in the crucible of his recent ordeal, he dropped out of preparatory school, turning a deaf ear to his mother’s protests. With his brother’s complicity, he found a part-time job as a waiter. Nights, previously dedicated to rest, became a feverish creative laboratory. For an entire year, he poured his soul into an 88-page epic story of cyborg ninjas. With the manuscript under his arm, he knocked on the doors of several publishers, only to face rejection. It’s rumored, like an urban legend, that his mother’s own hand, pulling strings in the shadows, contributed to these refusals.

But perseverance is the armor of dreamers. In 1965, chance, or perhaps destiny once again, gave him the opportunity to show his work to the King of Manga himself, Ishinomori Shotaro. At that time, Ishinomori was the sun around which the manga universe revolved, with his acclaimed Cyborg 009 at the peak of its popularity. Ishinomori, with his expert eye, was impressed by the strength of Nagai’s drawing and the originality of his plots. However, he also perceived the almost obsessive meticulousness of his stroke, a perfectionism that had undoubtedly slowed down his production. With a master’s generosity, he invited him to join his team of assistants. The goal: to streamline his technique, to teach him the secrets of rhythm and efficiency in the competitive world of manga. Nagai, exultant, accepted the offer without hesitation. For two years, his hands brought to life the backgrounds of series like Sarutobi Ecchan and Sabu To Ichi Torimono Hikae, absorbing every lesson, every piece of advice, becoming Ishinomori’s main assistant. This learning period was crucial. If you feel the call of drawing like young Nagai, and you long to polish your stroke until you find your own distinctive voice on the vast canvas of creation, discover here how to strengthen your artistic and narrative foundations, exploring paths that will allow you, like him, to transform passion into mastery.

While he mastered the secrets of pen and brush under Ishinomori’s tutelage, the flame of his personal ambition continued to burn. He longed to tell his own stories, science fiction epics that would rival those of his mentors. But the exhausting work as an assistant barely left him time for his projects. It was then that, out of pragmatism and necessity, he pivoted to gag manga. Shorter stories, less demanding in terms of plot development, but requiring quick wit and a special spark. He soon discovered, with pleasant surprise, that he possessed a natural talent for humor. And so, in November 1967, like someone taking a first step onto an illuminated stage, he made his official debut with Meakashi Polikichi in Bokura magazine, published by Kodansha. This first work, humble yet significant, is a testament to his beginnings, as can be seen in the simple but effective structure of its first page. Other short humorous comics followed, small diversions that, nevertheless, were successful enough to put him on the radar of Kodansha’s rival publishers. Doors began to open, and in less than a year since his debut, Nagai Kiyoshi, the young man who feared dying without a trace, was about to become one of the most famous—and controversial—mangakas in all of Japan.

First page of Meakashi Polikishi, Nagai's humble beginning.

The Awakening of Controversy: Harenchi Gakuen and the Ecchi Revolution

The 60s were an era of effervescence in the manga market. Although the first successful magazines had been monthly, the pace quickened, and by the end of the decade, weekly publications dominated. Kodansha’s Shonen Magazine reigned with astronomical figures, closely followed by Shogakukan’s Shonen Sunday. In this battlefield of publishing giants, Shueisha was unwilling to be left behind. In June 1968, with an audacity worthy of his future characters, they launched Shonen Jump. Their strategy to stand out in a market saturated with talent was clear: to push manga to its limits, to explore still-virgin narrative and visual territories. And Go Nagai was one of those chosen for this mission, a young talent invited to collaborate from the very first issue, granted unusual freedom of action, almost carte blanche to unleash his imagination.

From his beginnings, Nagai harbored a marked disdain for ossified authority figures and repressive systems. This innate rebelliousness became the seed for Harenchi Gakuen (Shameless School). He conceived an educational institution where teachers were not beacons of wisdom, but cruel beasts, grotesque caricatures of power, destined to be humiliated time and again by the cunning and wit of their students. But the real dynamite, the secret ingredient that would make the formula explode, came from a casual anecdote. A friend confessed his teenage pranks: spying on his female classmates in the showers through a hole in the ceiling. This spark of mischief inspired Nagai to inject generous doses of eroticism into his comedy. Thus were born students as perverted as any real teenager, clumsily and longingly pursuing the beautiful girls of the school, or, in an even more hilarious twist, defending them from the even more depraved advances of their own teachers. The result was a foundational work, the cornerstone of the ecchi genre in manga. Harenchi Gakuen inaugurated a tradition of erotic comedy where boiling hormones mixed with the most outrageous slapstick and the inevitable humiliation of peeping Toms, creating a roller coaster of pure entertainment. This success was undoubtedly supported by Nagai’s innate gift for drawing beautiful girls, stretching the typical proportions of the Tezuka-Ishinomori tradition to achieve a highly attractive and effective synthesis of the female figure, capturing the essence of many romantic comedy clichés that were born precisely in its pages. The public, immersed in the new era of sexual liberation that followed the Summer of Love, connected immediately. Harenchi Gakuen became a phenomenon, spawning film and television adaptations, and catapulting the young Shonen Jump to sell over a million copies a week before its first year of existence. Ecchi comedy, thanks to Nagai, established itself as one of the fundamental pillars of shonen manga.

A scene from Harenchi Gakuen, illustrating a romantic comedy cliché.

However, fame has two faces, and the enormous popularity of Harenchi Gakuen soon attracted the unwanted attention of moral guardians. Particularly vociferous were parent-teacher associations across Japan, which denounced the work as the product of a perverted and frustrated mind, accusing it of corrupting the innocent minds of Japanese youth and, in the process, of sullying the noble teaching profession. Nagai, with an often misunderstood lucidity, knew that even his raciest jokes were considerably less explicit than much of what could be seen daily on television or read in newspapers. But controversy is a magnet for the media, and they soon joined the public lynching. Cameras and microphones hounded Nagai, demanding explanations, asking him to retract in the face of the denunciations. Pressure on Shonen Jump to cancel the series grew to unsustainable levels, to the point where some prefectures banned the sale of the magazine. Weary of the harassment, of the hypocrisy he perceived in his critics, Nagai decided to end Harenchi Gakuen in 1969. But he didn’t do it with an apology, but with a brutal satire, an artistic slap in the face to his accusers. In the story’s climax, the school was invaded by an army of parent-teacher association members who, in an orgy of puritanical violence, allied to relentlessly execute all the ‘corrupted’ students. Although Harenchi Gakuen would be revived a few months later, once the media storm subsided, this experience left a deep mark on Nagai. He had tasted graphic violence, using broken lines and irregular page compositions to convey the rawness of the situation. There’s no doubt that eroticism and a calculated dose of violence mixed into a winning combination for the era, challenging established boundaries. And Nagai continued to explore that path, with more satires on the abuse of authority like Gakuen Taikutsu Otoko and, especially, Abashiri Ikka. In the latter, the war between youth and adults became explicit, a stark representation of resistance against those who sought to curtail the freedom of new generations. Thanks to these bold and transgressive works, Go Nagai is recognized as the author who legitimized sex and violence as valid topics for shonen manga. He opened up a range of new narrative possibilities for weekly magazine mangakas, giving the genre that edge, that irreverent freedom that continues to characterize manga worldwide to this day. Nagai’s ability to create characters that broke molds and explored taboo themes was fundamental. If you’re passionate about the art of bringing characters with unique personalities and impactful designs to life, boost your own creativity in figure design by exploring ideas and approaches here.

Scene from Harenchi Gakuen where violence and eroticism intertwine.

Between Shadows and Fire: The Forging of an Unmistakable Style

After the media cataclysm and the controversial climax of Harenchi Gakuen, Nagai’s undeniable talent for action did not go unnoticed by editors. They saw in him a storyteller with a unique ability to generate tension and dynamism. Nagai, astute and always seeking to expand his creative horizons, seized this opportunity to professionally distance himself from gag manga, which, while having brought him fame, did not fulfill his deeper ambitions. He longed to return to serious stories, to those epic narratives he so admired in his youth. He began to draw several horror one-shots for Shonen Magazine, exploring darker and more complex territories. In these forays into the world of demons and space travel, Nagai deepened the development of his style. His aesthetic began to mutate, to evolve. While he retained certain traits of the Tezuka school, such as the construction of figures and faces with a caricatured touch, he began to elongate the proportions of his characters. Figures eight, and even nine heads tall, began to populate his pages, giving them a more imposing and stylized presence. Concurrently, he projected light and shadow in a more realistic, more dramatic way. This mastery of chiaroscuro allowed him to convey atmospheres of brutality, mystery, and terror with breathtaking effectiveness. But his experimentation didn’t stop there. He definitively broke with the rigid classic manga grid, that structure of ordered panels that had dominated the medium for decades. With refreshing visual audacity, he began to regularly draw panels that could occupy an entire page, or even extend across two, creating visual impacts of great power and dynamism.

The year 1971 marked a turning point. He was offered the opportunity to deploy this entire arsenal of new tricks in a regular series for another of Kodansha’s weekly publications, Shuukan Bokura Magazine. This magazine was clearly action-oriented, with iconic heroes like Kamen Rider and Tiger Mask adorning its covers. Nagai, still with the resentment from the Harenchi Gakuen controversy nested in his chest, and with the images of Gustave Doré’s illustrations for the Divine Comedy—those that had impacted him so much in his youth—simmering in his mind, brought Maoh Dante (Demon Lord Dante) to life. In this manga, Nagai dived headfirst into the eternal conflict between God and the Devil, but he did so from an unusual perspective: that of the demons. He boldly questioned whether the labels of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ were really as clear-cut, as easily delineated as tradition had taught us. In Maoh Dante, Nagai captured readers’ interest not only with its frenetic and gripping narrative, full of unexpected twists and epic confrontations, but also with his extraordinary touch for character design. He created monsters of genuinely unsettling originality, beings that seemed drawn from the deepest nightmares, with forms and textures that defied imagination. The way Nagai used all available resources to convey the uncertainty and terror of each scene was masterful, as can be seen in pages where composition, inking, and character expressions combine to create an oppressive atmosphere. Unfortunately, the adventure of Maoh Dante came to an abrupt end. In July 1971, Kodansha decided to discontinue Bokura Magazine. The story was left unfinished, cutting short Nagai’s creative momentum just as he was warming up, leaving readers with an unsatisfied craving and the author himself with the frustration of an interrupted tale.

Page from Maoh Dante demonstrating the effective use of resources to convey terror.

With the cancellation of Maoh Dante, Nagai was forced to refocus, at least partially, on gag manga. However, he did not abandon his aspirations. He continued to develop one-shot stories for Shonen Magazine, patiently waiting for the next opportunity to stand out as a narrator of complex and profound stories. The experience with the Harenchi Gakuen adaptations had taught him a valuable lesson about the economic aspect of creation. Frustrated by the little profit he had made from the licensing and merchandising of his most popular work to date, in 1969, along with his brothers, he made a visionary business decision: he founded Dynamic Productions. This corporation would not only hire Nagai’s assistants and managers, professionalizing his work environment, but would also actively negotiate the licensing and merchandising rights for all his creations. Dynamic Productions was one of the first mangaka studios to be established as a joint-stock company, a business structure that gave him greater bargaining power and control over his intellectual property. They were pioneers in demanding written contracts from publishers, something that was not the norm at the time. They negotiated copyrights and royalties so effectively that their practices quickly became standardized among other manga professionals, raising the bar for the entire industry. Thanks to the solid backing of Dynamic Productions, Go Nagai was able to free himself from many administrative and financial worries, allowing him to concentrate almost exclusively on what he did best: drawing manga. His productivity soared. His dedication, already legendary, intensified, and his obsession with surpassing himself led him to publish humorous manga in five weekly magazines simultaneously. Among them were the big three: Shonen Jump, Shonen Magazine, and Shonen Sunday. Achieving this feat was a record that not even his prolific master, Ishinomori Shotaro, had been able to match. Characters as original and diverse as the grimy and endearing Omorai-Kun, whose page reminds us that Nagai wasn’t afraid to break taboos with scatological humor, or the violent and eccentric family of Abashiri Ikka, in addition to the still-popular Harenchi Gakuen, seemed to consolidate Nagai, much to his chagrin, as a natural-born humorist. But destiny, always playful, would soon give him the opportunity to establish himself, once and for all, as a master in all facets of the art of manga.

Omorai-Kun, an example of Nagai's unabashed scatological humor.

The Roar of the Inner Demon: Devilman and Human Darkness

The year 1972 would stand as a fundamental pillar in Go Nagai’s chronology, a period of creative effervescence that would see the birth of two of his most enduring icons. The seed for one of them was planted when an executive from Toei Animation, the Japanese animation giant, contacted Nagai. This executive, an avowed admirer of the dark and visceral Maoh Dante, expressed a deep interest in collaborating with the mangaka to develop an animated series with a similar theme. However, there was one condition: the protagonist had to be less grotesque, more accessible, so as not to scare off the child audience at whom the television production would be partly aimed. Nagai, always receptive to new challenges and with the thorn of Maoh Dante‘s interruption still in his side, accepted the proposal enthusiastically. Taking television stars of the moment as models, masked heroes and champions of justice like Ultraman and Kamen Rider, he conceived Devilman. The premise was powerful: a demon-man who, in an act of supreme rebellion, turned against his own kind to defend humanity from a hellish invasion. Nagai threw himself into the design, creating a multitude of terrifying monsters and memorable characters for the animated series. As part of the project’s advertising strategy, he was also commissioned to draw a Devilman manga, which would be published in the pages of the influential Shonen Magazine.

This is where Nagai’s genius shone with particular intensity. While the Devilman anime, due to the demands of the medium and the target audience, adopted a relatively simple concept of ‘Evil fighting Evil’ in a dark superhero format, the manga took a very different path. Shonen Magazine had a more mature audience, readers interested in complex human dramas, often inspired by the raw realism of the Gekiga movement. The paradigm for this type of story was the immensely popular boxing manga Ashita No Joe, by Chiba Tetsuya and Ikki Kajiwara, which explored the depths of ambition, sacrifice, and despair. To meet the expectations of the magazine and its audience, Nagai created a much more sophisticated, dark, and philosophical version of the Devilman story. He emphasized the inherent horror aspects of the concept—not just the physical horror of transformations and monstrous battles, but also the psychological horror of loss, betrayal, and the corruptible nature of human beings. In the process, perhaps without consciously intending to at first, Nagai gave birth to an undisputed manga masterpiece, one that would transcend its time and genre.

In the Devilman manga, Nagai explored to its ultimate consequences the idea of demons as a metaphor for humanity’s inherent capacity for violence, cruelty, and self-destruction. The narrative centered on the personal tragedy of Fudo Akira, a timid and kind-hearted young man who, to protect his loved ones and humanity, allows the demon Amon to fuse with him, thereby renouncing his own humanity. However, the population he so desperately tries to defend reacts to his efforts with fear, paranoia, madness, and visceral antipathy, unleashing a witch hunt that reveals the true monstrosity nesting in the hearts of men. Nagai would later confess that he didn’t plan any Devilman chapters too far in advance. He let his imagination guide him, letting the story flow organically in each weekly installment. This method of creation, almost improvised, took the plot to unexpected and often desolate places. The story progressively acquired a nihilistic and apocalyptic tone, becoming a vehicle through which Nagai spewed his grudges, his anxieties, and his fiercest criticisms against Japanese society of the time, against prevailing hypocrisy, against the absurd brutality of conflicts like the Vietnam War, and against the painful futility of seeking peace through force and violence. To convey the overflowing emotion, anguish, and fury required by a story of such magnitude, Nagai deployed every visual trick at his disposal. He assembled pages with highly irregular compositions, with twisted, distorted panels that broke and overlapped, pushing dynamism and expressiveness to unsuspected limits. A double-page spread in Devilman can border on pure expressionism in its dirty, visceral, and grotesque treatment of figures and environments. Drawing inspiration from the historical manga of masters like Hirata Hiroshi and Sanpei Shirato, known for their rawness and detail, Nagai used a varied and bold range of inking techniques. His goal was to produce a climate of inescapable darkness, an oppressive atmosphere that would envelop the reader. He combined the round, careful lines of the pen, a legacy of his classical training, with the smudges and thick, pasty blacks of the brush, and added the rough, organic textures of the grease pencil. The result was a unique, organic, and profoundly dark aesthetic that gave Devilman an overflowing visual interest and an unmistakable identity. Although the Devilman anime enjoyed considerable success, the manga quickly stood out as one of Shonen Magazine‘s most original, impactful, and adult series, definitively consolidating Go Nagai as one of the most accomplished and visionary mangakas of the 70s. Mastering visual narrative to convey emotions as complex as Nagai did in Devilman is a fascinating journey for any artist. If you seek to transcend the stroke and tell stories that resonate deeply, advance your mastery of composition and visual impact by discovering resources and guides here.

Double-page spread from Devilman, an example of expressionism and grotesque treatment.

The Steel Giant That Conquered the World: The Era of Mazinger Z

It’s almost incredible to think that, with all the critical acclaim and reader fervor that Devilman deservedly garnered, it wasn’t the most popular series Go Nagai created in that prodigious year of 1972. Because alongside the voluptuous girls populating his comedies and the infernal abysses of Dante inspiring his horrors, there was another passion that burned fiercely in Nagai’s heart since his youth: science fiction, and especially, giant robots. Colossal figures like Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Tetsujin 28-Go (known in the West as Gigantor), and the powerful mechanical enemies faced by Osamu Tezuka’s Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), had fueled his childhood and adolescent imagination. For years, Nagai had flirted with the idea of drawing his own series within this fascinating genre. However, he held back, waiting to find an idea original enough, a concept that would justify the effort and could stand out in a field already populated by titans. Inspiration, as it often does, came in the most unexpected way, during an everyday moment. One day, while stuck in a monumental traffic jam in front of his Tokyo office, observing the frustrating immobility of the vehicles, his mind began to wander. He fantasized about a car with legs, a machine capable of standing up and walking over the chaotic traffic, leaving the gridlock behind. And then, like a flash of lucidity, he had an epiphany: no one had ever created a giant robot piloted from the inside, like a vehicle! Until then, giant robots were mostly remote-controlled or possessed a kind of artificial intelligence of their own. The idea of a human pilot merging with the machine, operating it from an internal cockpit, was revolutionary.

Despite his already incredibly busy schedule, with multiple series in simultaneous publication, the vision of this new type of robot consumed him. As soon as he returned to his office, he began working with feverish energy on the first designs of what would become Mazinger Z. This work would not only be a runaway success but would also stand as the cornerstone of the Mecha genre, forever shaping what we know today as the Super Robot archetype. Mazinger Z debuted in the pages of Shonen Jump in October 1972, and from its first appearance, the series overflowed with contagious energy and excitement. Nagai applied the same range of dynamic techniques and bold compositions he was using in Devilman, but adapted the overall tone. He maintained a clearer and brighter atmosphere than in his dark horror manga, weaving a lighter and more optimistic story, though not without its dangers and sacrifices. This combination of spectacular action, charismatic characters, and heroic optimism immediately captured the hearts of millions of young readers in Japan. Toei Animation executives, always attentive to Nagai’s talent and market trends, were also enormously enthusiastic about this original giant robot. They soon commissioned Nagai to develop Mazinger Z as an anime series. It was in this project that Nagai proved to be not only an exceptional storyteller but also a top-tier robot designer. He created hundreds of ‘mechanical beasts’ (Kikaijus), each with a unique and terrifying design, destined to be spectacularly destroyed by Kouji Kabuto and his powerful Mazinger Z. In this titanic design task, he had the invaluable help of his first and main assistant, the talented Ken Ishikawa, who would become a key collaborator on many of Nagai’s mecha projects.

The Mazinger Z anime debuted on Japanese television in December 1972, and its success was instant and unstoppable. Audience figures were astonishing, reaching ratings of over 30%, a feat for any program. This television phenomenon led to a flood of merchandising that continues to this day, with countless figures, models, video games, and all sorts of derivative products that keep the flame of the steel giant alive. But the impact of Mazinger Z was not limited to Japan’s borders. The series garnered enormous international success, especially with its broadcast in Europe (particularly in Spain and Italy) and Latin America, where it became a cultural benchmark for an entire generation. The iconic image of Mazinger Z, in all its metallic glory, as can be seen in many of his cover illustrations, was burned into the collective memory. Nagai, driven by this unprecedented success, would develop several sequels and spin-offs of Mazinger Z, such as the equally popular Great Mazinger or the sophisticated Grendizer (known as Goldorak in France), which became a cult classic in Italy and the Middle East. He also created other original mecha series for Toei Animation, often in collaboration with Ken Ishikawa, such as the innovative Getter Robo, which introduced the concept of transformable and combinable robots. The influence of Mazinger Z on the anime and manga industry was so profound and transformative that Go Nagai is universally recognized as the ‘Father of Mecha.’ Another accolade, another transcendental innovation he propelled into Japanese popular culture, and all before he turned thirty. Nagai’s ability to conceive not only characters but also universes and machines as iconic as Mazinger Z required extraordinary vision and design skill. If you dream of shaping your own fantastical worlds and science fiction elements, or even specializing in creating detailed manga backgrounds, expand your horizons in creating complex environments and designs here.

Mazinger Z, the icon of super robots, in a cover illustration.

The Chameleonic Warrior: Cutie Honey and the Reinvention of the Magical Girl Genre

Go Nagai’s creative whirlwind seemed endless. In 1973, just a year after revolutionizing the landscape with Devilman and Mazinger Z, Nagai would bring to life another character destined to redefine the limits of a genre, and he would do so in more ways than one. Once again, it was Toei Animation that approached him with a new proposal. They asked him to develop another animated series, but this time with a different demographic target: the female audience. The idea was to create something along the lines of the popular ‘little witch’ (majokko) shows, an already established and beloved genre among Japanese girls. To add an element of commercial appeal, they suggested the heroine have multiple transformations, so that dolls with a variety of costumes and accessories could be promoted and sold. Nagai, always ready to experiment and play with expectations, accepted the challenge. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Tezuka’s classic Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), with its kind-hearted android protagonist, and Fritz Lang’s iconic expressionist film Metropolis, with its powerful and seductive gynoid Maria, Nagai created the basic concept of Cutie Honey.

The initial premise was that of a sweet and seemingly normal android girl who attended a strict Catholic school during the day, but, when night fell, transformed into a daring crime fighter. Everything seemed set for the Cutie Honey anime to debut in the Monday programming block, a typically family-oriented timeslot. Concurrently, the manga would be published in the shojo (girl-oriented) magazine Ribon. However, at the last moment, like an unexpected twist in one of his own stories, the project underwent a drastic change. The anime series was rescheduled for Saturdays at 8:30 PM, the same prime-time slot occupied by Devilman, implying direct competition and a potentially different audience. And, even more significantly, the manga’s publication was reassigned to Shonen Champion magazine, a publication clearly aimed at a young male audience accustomed to action, adventure, and, thanks to Nagai himself, a good dose of naughtiness. Faced with this new scenario, Nagai confronted a considerable challenge: how to convince the boys and male teenagers of Japan to give a female heroine a chance, in a genre traditionally associated with girls? Nagai’s answer was to resort to his ‘old tricks,’ those creative tools that had worked so well for him in the past: eroticism and violence, but taken to a new level of sophistication and spectacle.

He radically redesigned Honey’s costume, making it much more revealing and form-fitting, accentuating her curvaceous figure. He added the bold idea of Honey becoming completely naked during her transformation sequences, a brief but impactful moment of vulnerability and power that would become one of the series’ hallmarks. And, to complete the cocktail, he provided her with an army of much more grotesque, extravagant, and often sexually suggestive villains, against whom Honey would fight spectacularly and, at times, surprisingly bloodily. This gamble, which could have been risky, worked like a charm. Both the Cutie Honey manga and anime achieved considerable success, managing the feat of attracting both boys and girls. It quickly established itself as a pioneering work in the ‘Magical Girl Warrior’ genre, laying much of the groundwork for future series that would combine fantasy, action, and female empowerment. Cutie Honey, with its unusual and dynamic page compositions, where Nagai continued to experiment with visual narrative, became a Japanese cultural icon that remains relevant to this day, with multiple remakes, sequels, and adaptations attesting to its enduring appeal. It was another demonstration of Nagai’s versatility and his ability to take a concept and transform it into something completely new and exciting.

Page from Cutie Honey, showcasing Nagai's unusual and dynamic compositions.

The Indelible Legacy: Beyond Success, a Master in Evolution

After this impressive string of era-defining successes—Harenchi Gakuen, Devilman, Mazinger Z, and Cutie Honey—Go Nagai was solidly established in the Olympus of narrative mangakas. His name was synonymous with innovation, audacity, and a prodigious talent for connecting with the most primal emotions of his audience. However, despite having established himself in the realm of serious, action-packed stories, he never completely abandoned gag manga, the genre that had given him his first opportunities and where his wit shone brightly. In fact, he never hesitated to inject generous doses of humor, often irreverent and dark, even into his most serious and dramatic works. This ability to balance tones, to shift from epic to comedy, from horror to tenderness, is one of the hallmarks of his genius.

He continued to expand the universes of his most iconic creations, producing sequels, prequels, and remakes of Devilman, Mazinger Z, and Cutie Honey, adapting them for new generations of readers and viewers, and exploring new facets of his characters. But his creativity was an inexhaustible spring, and he also brought to life multitudes of original manga spanning a wide range of genres and themes. Works like the post-apocalyptic and ultraviolent Violence Jack, the folkloric and terrifying Dororon Enma-Kun, or the mythological and epic Susano-Oh, are just a few examples of his vast and diverse output. In all of them, he continued to explore his recurring obsessions: the nature of good and evil, human duality, social and political criticism, and, of course, his unrestricted love for eroticism and boundless adventure. During the early years of his major successes, more conservative and academic critics often ignored or disparaged him, considering him an author with a ‘crude’ style and ‘vulgar’ sensibilities, too focused on immediate impact and on topics considered coarse. However, time and the persistence of his quality would eventually prove him right. In 1980, an important official recognition silenced many of his detractors: he won the prestigious Kodansha Manga Award for Best Shonen Series for Susano-Oh. This work, with its more modern and refined style, yet retaining the incessant search for new and dynamic page compositions, demonstrated Nagai’s constant evolution as an artist. With this award, Go Nagai secured, once and for all, an undisputed place in the pantheon of great Japanese comic artists, recognized not only for his popularity but also for his artistic mastery and profound influence.

Page from Susano-Oh, reflecting Nagai's more modern style and his continued experimentation with composition.

Over the following decades, as Dynamic Productions consolidated itself not just as a management studio but as a veritable manga factory, capable of producing and overseeing multiple projects simultaneously, Go Nagai’s personal graphic style also underwent a gradual transformation. His line became neater, more controlled, though without ever losing that visceral energy that characterized him. He began to make more extensive and sophisticated use of screentones and grays to add depth and texture to his drawings. Although he never stopped creating purely shonen manga, with its characteristic epic battles and charismatic heroes, he also undertook projects of greater scope and intellectual ambition. He ventured into autobiographical territory, creating manga that recounted his own career, struggles, and triumphs with honesty and humor. He explored his country’s history, creating biographies of great generals and figures from the turbulent Sengoku period, demonstrating a remarkable capacity for research and historical recreation. And in a project that closed a vital and artistic circle, he embarked on a monumental adaptation of the Inferno chapters of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. In this work, Nagai paid a heartfelt and spectacular tribute to those Gustave Doré illustrations that had so impacted him in his childhood, those images that, in a way, had ignited the first spark of his artistic vocation. This project was a demonstration of his maturity as an artist and his profound respect for the sources that had nourished his imagination.

The Eternal Echo: Nagai’s Influence on Future Generations

Today, with the wisdom and perspective that his more than seventy-seven years grant him, Go Nagai remains an active and vital force in the world of manga. He is not a retired titan contemplating his past glories from a distance, but a tireless creator who continues to wield the pen, bringing new stories and characters to life. Parallel to his work as a mangaka, he shares his vast knowledge and experience teaching character design at the Osaka University of Arts, training future generations of artists who will undoubtedly walk paths he himself helped pave. His prestige is such that he participates as a judge in several of Japan’s most important manga awards, including the coveted Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, an honor that places him among the guardians of the legacy of one of his own idols. And, of course, he receives the warm and constant homage of millions of fans around the globe, an affection that extends across generations and cultures. Among these admirers are figures of the stature of Kentaro Miura, the late genius behind Berserk, and Hideaki Anno, the visionary creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, both masters of manga and anime who have openly acknowledged Nagai’s profound influence on their own works and their understanding of narrative and design.

Nagai contemplates his career with a mixture of humility and gratitude. Eternally grateful for having had the opportunity to follow his dreams, to transform a childhood passion into a career that has left an indelible mark on global popular culture, he continues to draw with the same fervor as in his early days. His restless mind never rests, always devising new adventures for his classic characters and conceiving entirely new ones. He doesn’t rest on the laurels of his innumerable successes, because for a true artist, creation is a vital impulse, a necessity as essential as breathing. Go Nagai’s legacy is not just a collection of masterpieces; it is a philosophy of creative audacity, of breaking conventions, of tireless exploration of the human condition in all its facets, from the most sublime to the most grotesque. It is a legacy that will endure in the hearts and minds of manga and anime fans for generations to come, an eternal echo that will continue to inspire dreamers and artists to take up their own pens and tell their own stories, without fear of challenging the limits. An artist’s journey is one of constant evolution, and the legacy of masters like Nagai reminds us of the importance of continuing to learn and perfect our art. If you are committed to your creative development and seek to take your skills to the next level, continue your artistic evolution and explore new creative frontiers with our specialized guide and resources.

Thus concludes, for now, the story of Go Nagai, the boy who feared dying without a trace and who, instead, sculpted his name in the firmament of imagination. His story is a testament to the transformative power of art, to the ability of an individual to change the world with the strength of his ideas and the magic of his strokes. And as long as there are readers avid for adventure, characters who defy darkness, and creators willing to dream without chains, the indomitable spirit of Go Nagai will live on, roaring like a demon, shining like a giant robot, and transforming, again and again, into pure legend.

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In the vast tapestry of Japanese popular culture, where threads of imagination weave legends that transcend generations, there exists a figure whose name resonates with the strength of a titan and the mischief of a playful imp: Go Nagai. His impact is a shockwave that forever altered the landscape of manga and anime, an echo that still reverberates in every stroke of audacity and in every character that defies conventions. Imagine a post-war Japan, a canvas under reconstruction where a young artist, armed with ink and dreams, was preparing to unleash a creative storm. Ever since his name burst onto the scene in the Land of the Rising Sun back in 1968, with the appearance of his pioneering and delightfully controversial work, Harenchi Gakuen—a feast of racy humor for an adolescence eager for novelty—Nagai became the architect of the 70s. Like a Midas of manga, everything he touched turned into iconic gold, founding genres and conquering hearts with a cascade of series and concepts drawn from the purest adventure. And among all those jewels, one shone with its own light, a metal colossus that would stand as the banner of anime on screens across the globe: the legendary Mazinger Z. With a deeply personal artistic vision, an almost supernatural instinct for design, and an innate business acumen, Nagai took the torch of manga tradition, lit by the master Tezuka Osamu, and carried it towards new and dazzling graphic frontiers. He defined a style, both in drawing and narrative, that was a true revolution for shonen manga, leaving a trail of influence that would inspire countless legions of artists. Join us in this story, a journey through the controversial and fascinating career of one of the mangakas who has most shaken the foundations of the industry over more than five decades of tireless creation. Presenting the titan, the innovator, the unequaled… Go Nagai, the Father of Mecha!

Go Nagai, a manga visionary.
Master Go Nagai in his studio, a fount of creativity.

Whispers of Destiny: The Birth of a Drawing Legend

In Ishikawa Prefecture, cradled by the Sea of Japan, the small fishing town of Wajima witnessed the first breath of Nagai Kiyoshi on September 6, 1945. His family, like so many others, had sought refuge there, hastily fleeing Shanghai in the ominous shadow of Japan’s defeat in World War II. Destiny, however, had other plans for young Kiyoshi. In 1951, under the veil of sadness following his father’s death, the family moved to Tokyo. It was in the vibrant metropolis that art began to whisper in his ear. His encounter with a Japanese edition of the Divine Comedy, illustrated with the phantasmagorical and sublime art of Gustave Doré, was a revelation, a seed planted in fertile ground. His older brother, Yasukata, became the herald of a new world by showing him Tezuka Osamu’s Lost World. From that moment on, young Kiyoshi became an insatiable devourer of manga. Tezuka’s science fiction and mechanical giants like Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Tetsujin 28-go populated his childhood dreams. But as he grew, his artistic palate refined, drawing him to the rawness and realism of the emerging gekiga style, with works like Shirato Sanpei’s Ninja Bugeicho marking his adolescence.

Although pencil and paper were natural extensions of his hands, and he drew with the constancy of breathing, the idea of a career as a mangaka seemed a forbidden dream. His mother’s disapproval was a shadow looming over his aspirations. Thus, after finishing high school, he enrolled in a preparatory school with an eye on the entrance exams for the prestigious Waseda University. But destiny, capricious and often ironic, had a different test in store for him. A few months later, severe colitis chained him to the toilet for three weeks of agony. The thought of dying, of his only legacy on Earth being the anecdote of “the kid who shat himself to death,” shook him to his core. That thought, grotesque and terrifying, was the catalyst. Nagai Kiyoshi decided he would leave an indelible mark on the world, whatever the cost. Once recovered, with a determination forged in the crucible of his recent ordeal, he dropped out of preparatory school, turning a deaf ear to his mother’s protests. With his brother’s complicity, he found a part-time job as a waiter. Nights, previously dedicated to rest, became a feverish creative laboratory. For an entire year, he poured his soul into an 88-page epic story of cyborg ninjas. With the manuscript under his arm, he knocked on the doors of several publishers, only to face rejection. It’s rumored, like an urban legend, that his mother’s own hand, pulling strings in the shadows, contributed to these refusals.

But perseverance is the armor of dreamers. In 1965, chance, or perhaps destiny once again, gave him the opportunity to show his work to the King of Manga himself, Ishinomori Shotaro. At that time, Ishinomori was the sun around which the manga universe revolved, with his acclaimed Cyborg 009 at the peak of its popularity. Ishinomori, with his expert eye, was impressed by the strength of Nagai’s drawing and the originality of his plots. However, he also perceived the almost obsessive meticulousness of his stroke, a perfectionism that had undoubtedly slowed down his production. With a master’s generosity, he invited him to join his team of assistants. The goal: to streamline his technique, to teach him the secrets of rhythm and efficiency in the competitive world of manga. Nagai, exultant, accepted the offer without hesitation. For two years, his hands brought to life the backgrounds of series like Sarutobi Ecchan and Sabu To Ichi Torimono Hikae, absorbing every lesson, every piece of advice, becoming Ishinomori’s main assistant. This learning period was crucial. If you feel the call of drawing like young Nagai, and you long to polish your stroke until you find your own distinctive voice on the vast canvas of creation, discover here how to strengthen your artistic and narrative foundations, exploring paths that will allow you, like him, to transform passion into mastery.

While he mastered the secrets of pen and brush under Ishinomori’s tutelage, the flame of his personal ambition continued to burn. He longed to tell his own stories, science fiction epics that would rival those of his mentors. But the exhausting work as an assistant barely left him time for his projects. It was then that, out of pragmatism and necessity, he pivoted to gag manga. Shorter stories, less demanding in terms of plot development, but requiring quick wit and a special spark. He soon discovered, with pleasant surprise, that he possessed a natural talent for humor. And so, in November 1967, like someone taking a first step onto an illuminated stage, he made his official debut with Meakashi Polikichi in Bokura magazine, published by Kodansha. This first work, humble yet significant, is a testament to his beginnings, as can be seen in the simple but effective structure of its first page. Other short humorous comics followed, small diversions that, nevertheless, were successful enough to put him on the radar of Kodansha’s rival publishers. Doors began to open, and in less than a year since his debut, Nagai Kiyoshi, the young man who feared dying without a trace, was about to become one of the most famous—and controversial—mangakas in all of Japan.

First page of Meakashi Polikishi, Nagai's humble beginning.

The Awakening of Controversy: Harenchi Gakuen and the Ecchi Revolution

The 60s were an era of effervescence in the manga market. Although the first successful magazines had been monthly, the pace quickened, and by the end of the decade, weekly publications dominated. Kodansha’s Shonen Magazine reigned with astronomical figures, closely followed by Shogakukan’s Shonen Sunday. In this battlefield of publishing giants, Shueisha was unwilling to be left behind. In June 1968, with an audacity worthy of his future characters, they launched Shonen Jump. Their strategy to stand out in a market saturated with talent was clear: to push manga to its limits, to explore still-virgin narrative and visual territories. And Go Nagai was one of those chosen for this mission, a young talent invited to collaborate from the very first issue, granted unusual freedom of action, almost carte blanche to unleash his imagination.

From his beginnings, Nagai harbored a marked disdain for ossified authority figures and repressive systems. This innate rebelliousness became the seed for Harenchi Gakuen (Shameless School). He conceived an educational institution where teachers were not beacons of wisdom, but cruel beasts, grotesque caricatures of power, destined to be humiliated time and again by the cunning and wit of their students. But the real dynamite, the secret ingredient that would make the formula explode, came from a casual anecdote. A friend confessed his teenage pranks: spying on his female classmates in the showers through a hole in the ceiling. This spark of mischief inspired Nagai to inject generous doses of eroticism into his comedy. Thus were born students as perverted as any real teenager, clumsily and longingly pursuing the beautiful girls of the school, or, in an even more hilarious twist, defending them from the even more depraved advances of their own teachers. The result was a foundational work, the cornerstone of the ecchi genre in manga. Harenchi Gakuen inaugurated a tradition of erotic comedy where boiling hormones mixed with the most outrageous slapstick and the inevitable humiliation of peeping Toms, creating a roller coaster of pure entertainment. This success was undoubtedly supported by Nagai’s innate gift for drawing beautiful girls, stretching the typical proportions of the Tezuka-Ishinomori tradition to achieve a highly attractive and effective synthesis of the female figure, capturing the essence of many romantic comedy clichés that were born precisely in its pages. The public, immersed in the new era of sexual liberation that followed the Summer of Love, connected immediately. Harenchi Gakuen became a phenomenon, spawning film and television adaptations, and catapulting the young Shonen Jump to sell over a million copies a week before its first year of existence. Ecchi comedy, thanks to Nagai, established itself as one of the fundamental pillars of shonen manga.

A scene from Harenchi Gakuen, illustrating a romantic comedy cliché.

However, fame has two faces, and the enormous popularity of Harenchi Gakuen soon attracted the unwanted attention of moral guardians. Particularly vociferous were parent-teacher associations across Japan, which denounced the work as the product of a perverted and frustrated mind, accusing it of corrupting the innocent minds of Japanese youth and, in the process, of sullying the noble teaching profession. Nagai, with an often misunderstood lucidity, knew that even his raciest jokes were considerably less explicit than much of what could be seen daily on television or read in newspapers. But controversy is a magnet for the media, and they soon joined the public lynching. Cameras and microphones hounded Nagai, demanding explanations, asking him to retract in the face of the denunciations. Pressure on Shonen Jump to cancel the series grew to unsustainable levels, to the point where some prefectures banned the sale of the magazine. Weary of the harassment, of the hypocrisy he perceived in his critics, Nagai decided to end Harenchi Gakuen in 1969. But he didn’t do it with an apology, but with a brutal satire, an artistic slap in the face to his accusers. In the story’s climax, the school was invaded by an army of parent-teacher association members who, in an orgy of puritanical violence, allied to relentlessly execute all the ‘corrupted’ students. Although Harenchi Gakuen would be revived a few months later, once the media storm subsided, this experience left a deep mark on Nagai. He had tasted graphic violence, using broken lines and irregular page compositions to convey the rawness of the situation. There’s no doubt that eroticism and a calculated dose of violence mixed into a winning combination for the era, challenging established boundaries. And Nagai continued to explore that path, with more satires on the abuse of authority like Gakuen Taikutsu Otoko and, especially, Abashiri Ikka. In the latter, the war between youth and adults became explicit, a stark representation of resistance against those who sought to curtail the freedom of new generations. Thanks to these bold and transgressive works, Go Nagai is recognized as the author who legitimized sex and violence as valid topics for shonen manga. He opened up a range of new narrative possibilities for weekly magazine mangakas, giving the genre that edge, that irreverent freedom that continues to characterize manga worldwide to this day. Nagai’s ability to create characters that broke molds and explored taboo themes was fundamental. If you’re passionate about the art of bringing characters with unique personalities and impactful designs to life, boost your own creativity in figure design by exploring ideas and approaches here.

Scene from Harenchi Gakuen where violence and eroticism intertwine.

Between Shadows and Fire: The Forging of an Unmistakable Style

After the media cataclysm and the controversial climax of Harenchi Gakuen, Nagai’s undeniable talent for action did not go unnoticed by editors. They saw in him a storyteller with a unique ability to generate tension and dynamism. Nagai, astute and always seeking to expand his creative horizons, seized this opportunity to professionally distance himself from gag manga, which, while having brought him fame, did not fulfill his deeper ambitions. He longed to return to serious stories, to those epic narratives he so admired in his youth. He began to draw several horror one-shots for Shonen Magazine, exploring darker and more complex territories. In these forays into the world of demons and space travel, Nagai deepened the development of his style. His aesthetic began to mutate, to evolve. While he retained certain traits of the Tezuka school, such as the construction of figures and faces with a caricatured touch, he began to elongate the proportions of his characters. Figures eight, and even nine heads tall, began to populate his pages, giving them a more imposing and stylized presence. Concurrently, he projected light and shadow in a more realistic, more dramatic way. This mastery of chiaroscuro allowed him to convey atmospheres of brutality, mystery, and terror with breathtaking effectiveness. But his experimentation didn’t stop there. He definitively broke with the rigid classic manga grid, that structure of ordered panels that had dominated the medium for decades. With refreshing visual audacity, he began to regularly draw panels that could occupy an entire page, or even extend across two, creating visual impacts of great power and dynamism.

The year 1971 marked a turning point. He was offered the opportunity to deploy this entire arsenal of new tricks in a regular series for another of Kodansha’s weekly publications, Shuukan Bokura Magazine. This magazine was clearly action-oriented, with iconic heroes like Kamen Rider and Tiger Mask adorning its covers. Nagai, still with the resentment from the Harenchi Gakuen controversy nested in his chest, and with the images of Gustave Doré’s illustrations for the Divine Comedy—those that had impacted him so much in his youth—simmering in his mind, brought Maoh Dante (Demon Lord Dante) to life. In this manga, Nagai dived headfirst into the eternal conflict between God and the Devil, but he did so from an unusual perspective: that of the demons. He boldly questioned whether the labels of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ were really as clear-cut, as easily delineated as tradition had taught us. In Maoh Dante, Nagai captured readers’ interest not only with its frenetic and gripping narrative, full of unexpected twists and epic confrontations, but also with his extraordinary touch for character design. He created monsters of genuinely unsettling originality, beings that seemed drawn from the deepest nightmares, with forms and textures that defied imagination. The way Nagai used all available resources to convey the uncertainty and terror of each scene was masterful, as can be seen in pages where composition, inking, and character expressions combine to create an oppressive atmosphere. Unfortunately, the adventure of Maoh Dante came to an abrupt end. In July 1971, Kodansha decided to discontinue Bokura Magazine. The story was left unfinished, cutting short Nagai’s creative momentum just as he was warming up, leaving readers with an unsatisfied craving and the author himself with the frustration of an interrupted tale.

Page from Maoh Dante demonstrating the effective use of resources to convey terror.

With the cancellation of Maoh Dante, Nagai was forced to refocus, at least partially, on gag manga. However, he did not abandon his aspirations. He continued to develop one-shot stories for Shonen Magazine, patiently waiting for the next opportunity to stand out as a narrator of complex and profound stories. The experience with the Harenchi Gakuen adaptations had taught him a valuable lesson about the economic aspect of creation. Frustrated by the little profit he had made from the licensing and merchandising of his most popular work to date, in 1969, along with his brothers, he made a visionary business decision: he founded Dynamic Productions. This corporation would not only hire Nagai’s assistants and managers, professionalizing his work environment, but would also actively negotiate the licensing and merchandising rights for all his creations. Dynamic Productions was one of the first mangaka studios to be established as a joint-stock company, a business structure that gave him greater bargaining power and control over his intellectual property. They were pioneers in demanding written contracts from publishers, something that was not the norm at the time. They negotiated copyrights and royalties so effectively that their practices quickly became standardized among other manga professionals, raising the bar for the entire industry. Thanks to the solid backing of Dynamic Productions, Go Nagai was able to free himself from many administrative and financial worries, allowing him to concentrate almost exclusively on what he did best: drawing manga. His productivity soared. His dedication, already legendary, intensified, and his obsession with surpassing himself led him to publish humorous manga in five weekly magazines simultaneously. Among them were the big three: Shonen Jump, Shonen Magazine, and Shonen Sunday. Achieving this feat was a record that not even his prolific master, Ishinomori Shotaro, had been able to match. Characters as original and diverse as the grimy and endearing Omorai-Kun, whose page reminds us that Nagai wasn’t afraid to break taboos with scatological humor, or the violent and eccentric family of Abashiri Ikka, in addition to the still-popular Harenchi Gakuen, seemed to consolidate Nagai, much to his chagrin, as a natural-born humorist. But destiny, always playful, would soon give him the opportunity to establish himself, once and for all, as a master in all facets of the art of manga.

Omorai-Kun, an example of Nagai's unabashed scatological humor.

The Roar of the Inner Demon: Devilman and Human Darkness

The year 1972 would stand as a fundamental pillar in Go Nagai’s chronology, a period of creative effervescence that would see the birth of two of his most enduring icons. The seed for one of them was planted when an executive from Toei Animation, the Japanese animation giant, contacted Nagai. This executive, an avowed admirer of the dark and visceral Maoh Dante, expressed a deep interest in collaborating with the mangaka to develop an animated series with a similar theme. However, there was one condition: the protagonist had to be less grotesque, more accessible, so as not to scare off the child audience at whom the television production would be partly aimed. Nagai, always receptive to new challenges and with the thorn of Maoh Dante‘s interruption still in his side, accepted the proposal enthusiastically. Taking television stars of the moment as models, masked heroes and champions of justice like Ultraman and Kamen Rider, he conceived Devilman. The premise was powerful: a demon-man who, in an act of supreme rebellion, turned against his own kind to defend humanity from a hellish invasion. Nagai threw himself into the design, creating a multitude of terrifying monsters and memorable characters for the animated series. As part of the project’s advertising strategy, he was also commissioned to draw a Devilman manga, which would be published in the pages of the influential Shonen Magazine.

This is where Nagai’s genius shone with particular intensity. While the Devilman anime, due to the demands of the medium and the target audience, adopted a relatively simple concept of ‘Evil fighting Evil’ in a dark superhero format, the manga took a very different path. Shonen Magazine had a more mature audience, readers interested in complex human dramas, often inspired by the raw realism of the Gekiga movement. The paradigm for this type of story was the immensely popular boxing manga Ashita No Joe, by Chiba Tetsuya and Ikki Kajiwara, which explored the depths of ambition, sacrifice, and despair. To meet the expectations of the magazine and its audience, Nagai created a much more sophisticated, dark, and philosophical version of the Devilman story. He emphasized the inherent horror aspects of the concept—not just the physical horror of transformations and monstrous battles, but also the psychological horror of loss, betrayal, and the corruptible nature of human beings. In the process, perhaps without consciously intending to at first, Nagai gave birth to an undisputed manga masterpiece, one that would transcend its time and genre.

In the Devilman manga, Nagai explored to its ultimate consequences the idea of demons as a metaphor for humanity’s inherent capacity for violence, cruelty, and self-destruction. The narrative centered on the personal tragedy of Fudo Akira, a timid and kind-hearted young man who, to protect his loved ones and humanity, allows the demon Amon to fuse with him, thereby renouncing his own humanity. However, the population he so desperately tries to defend reacts to his efforts with fear, paranoia, madness, and visceral antipathy, unleashing a witch hunt that reveals the true monstrosity nesting in the hearts of men. Nagai would later confess that he didn’t plan any Devilman chapters too far in advance. He let his imagination guide him, letting the story flow organically in each weekly installment. This method of creation, almost improvised, took the plot to unexpected and often desolate places. The story progressively acquired a nihilistic and apocalyptic tone, becoming a vehicle through which Nagai spewed his grudges, his anxieties, and his fiercest criticisms against Japanese society of the time, against prevailing hypocrisy, against the absurd brutality of conflicts like the Vietnam War, and against the painful futility of seeking peace through force and violence. To convey the overflowing emotion, anguish, and fury required by a story of such magnitude, Nagai deployed every visual trick at his disposal. He assembled pages with highly irregular compositions, with twisted, distorted panels that broke and overlapped, pushing dynamism and expressiveness to unsuspected limits. A double-page spread in Devilman can border on pure expressionism in its dirty, visceral, and grotesque treatment of figures and environments. Drawing inspiration from the historical manga of masters like Hirata Hiroshi and Sanpei Shirato, known for their rawness and detail, Nagai used a varied and bold range of inking techniques. His goal was to produce a climate of inescapable darkness, an oppressive atmosphere that would envelop the reader. He combined the round, careful lines of the pen, a legacy of his classical training, with the smudges and thick, pasty blacks of the brush, and added the rough, organic textures of the grease pencil. The result was a unique, organic, and profoundly dark aesthetic that gave Devilman an overflowing visual interest and an unmistakable identity. Although the Devilman anime enjoyed considerable success, the manga quickly stood out as one of Shonen Magazine‘s most original, impactful, and adult series, definitively consolidating Go Nagai as one of the most accomplished and visionary mangakas of the 70s. Mastering visual narrative to convey emotions as complex as Nagai did in Devilman is a fascinating journey for any artist. If you seek to transcend the stroke and tell stories that resonate deeply, advance your mastery of composition and visual impact by discovering resources and guides here.

Double-page spread from Devilman, an example of expressionism and grotesque treatment.

The Steel Giant That Conquered the World: The Era of Mazinger Z

It’s almost incredible to think that, with all the critical acclaim and reader fervor that Devilman deservedly garnered, it wasn’t the most popular series Go Nagai created in that prodigious year of 1972. Because alongside the voluptuous girls populating his comedies and the infernal abysses of Dante inspiring his horrors, there was another passion that burned fiercely in Nagai’s heart since his youth: science fiction, and especially, giant robots. Colossal figures like Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Tetsujin 28-Go (known in the West as Gigantor), and the powerful mechanical enemies faced by Osamu Tezuka’s Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), had fueled his childhood and adolescent imagination. For years, Nagai had flirted with the idea of drawing his own series within this fascinating genre. However, he held back, waiting to find an idea original enough, a concept that would justify the effort and could stand out in a field already populated by titans. Inspiration, as it often does, came in the most unexpected way, during an everyday moment. One day, while stuck in a monumental traffic jam in front of his Tokyo office, observing the frustrating immobility of the vehicles, his mind began to wander. He fantasized about a car with legs, a machine capable of standing up and walking over the chaotic traffic, leaving the gridlock behind. And then, like a flash of lucidity, he had an epiphany: no one had ever created a giant robot piloted from the inside, like a vehicle! Until then, giant robots were mostly remote-controlled or possessed a kind of artificial intelligence of their own. The idea of a human pilot merging with the machine, operating it from an internal cockpit, was revolutionary.

Despite his already incredibly busy schedule, with multiple series in simultaneous publication, the vision of this new type of robot consumed him. As soon as he returned to his office, he began working with feverish energy on the first designs of what would become Mazinger Z. This work would not only be a runaway success but would also stand as the cornerstone of the Mecha genre, forever shaping what we know today as the Super Robot archetype. Mazinger Z debuted in the pages of Shonen Jump in October 1972, and from its first appearance, the series overflowed with contagious energy and excitement. Nagai applied the same range of dynamic techniques and bold compositions he was using in Devilman, but adapted the overall tone. He maintained a clearer and brighter atmosphere than in his dark horror manga, weaving a lighter and more optimistic story, though not without its dangers and sacrifices. This combination of spectacular action, charismatic characters, and heroic optimism immediately captured the hearts of millions of young readers in Japan. Toei Animation executives, always attentive to Nagai’s talent and market trends, were also enormously enthusiastic about this original giant robot. They soon commissioned Nagai to develop Mazinger Z as an anime series. It was in this project that Nagai proved to be not only an exceptional storyteller but also a top-tier robot designer. He created hundreds of ‘mechanical beasts’ (Kikaijus), each with a unique and terrifying design, destined to be spectacularly destroyed by Kouji Kabuto and his powerful Mazinger Z. In this titanic design task, he had the invaluable help of his first and main assistant, the talented Ken Ishikawa, who would become a key collaborator on many of Nagai’s mecha projects.

The Mazinger Z anime debuted on Japanese television in December 1972, and its success was instant and unstoppable. Audience figures were astonishing, reaching ratings of over 30%, a feat for any program. This television phenomenon led to a flood of merchandising that continues to this day, with countless figures, models, video games, and all sorts of derivative products that keep the flame of the steel giant alive. But the impact of Mazinger Z was not limited to Japan’s borders. The series garnered enormous international success, especially with its broadcast in Europe (particularly in Spain and Italy) and Latin America, where it became a cultural benchmark for an entire generation. The iconic image of Mazinger Z, in all its metallic glory, as can be seen in many of his cover illustrations, was burned into the collective memory. Nagai, driven by this unprecedented success, would develop several sequels and spin-offs of Mazinger Z, such as the equally popular Great Mazinger or the sophisticated Grendizer (known as Goldorak in France), which became a cult classic in Italy and the Middle East. He also created other original mecha series for Toei Animation, often in collaboration with Ken Ishikawa, such as the innovative Getter Robo, which introduced the concept of transformable and combinable robots. The influence of Mazinger Z on the anime and manga industry was so profound and transformative that Go Nagai is universally recognized as the ‘Father of Mecha.’ Another accolade, another transcendental innovation he propelled into Japanese popular culture, and all before he turned thirty. Nagai’s ability to conceive not only characters but also universes and machines as iconic as Mazinger Z required extraordinary vision and design skill. If you dream of shaping your own fantastical worlds and science fiction elements, or even specializing in creating detailed manga backgrounds, expand your horizons in creating complex environments and designs here.

Mazinger Z, the icon of super robots, in a cover illustration.

The Chameleonic Warrior: Cutie Honey and the Reinvention of the Magical Girl Genre

Go Nagai’s creative whirlwind seemed endless. In 1973, just a year after revolutionizing the landscape with Devilman and Mazinger Z, Nagai would bring to life another character destined to redefine the limits of a genre, and he would do so in more ways than one. Once again, it was Toei Animation that approached him with a new proposal. They asked him to develop another animated series, but this time with a different demographic target: the female audience. The idea was to create something along the lines of the popular ‘little witch’ (majokko) shows, an already established and beloved genre among Japanese girls. To add an element of commercial appeal, they suggested the heroine have multiple transformations, so that dolls with a variety of costumes and accessories could be promoted and sold. Nagai, always ready to experiment and play with expectations, accepted the challenge. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Tezuka’s classic Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), with its kind-hearted android protagonist, and Fritz Lang’s iconic expressionist film Metropolis, with its powerful and seductive gynoid Maria, Nagai created the basic concept of Cutie Honey.

The initial premise was that of a sweet and seemingly normal android girl who attended a strict Catholic school during the day, but, when night fell, transformed into a daring crime fighter. Everything seemed set for the Cutie Honey anime to debut in the Monday programming block, a typically family-oriented timeslot. Concurrently, the manga would be published in the shojo (girl-oriented) magazine Ribon. However, at the last moment, like an unexpected twist in one of his own stories, the project underwent a drastic change. The anime series was rescheduled for Saturdays at 8:30 PM, the same prime-time slot occupied by Devilman, implying direct competition and a potentially different audience. And, even more significantly, the manga’s publication was reassigned to Shonen Champion magazine, a publication clearly aimed at a young male audience accustomed to action, adventure, and, thanks to Nagai himself, a good dose of naughtiness. Faced with this new scenario, Nagai confronted a considerable challenge: how to convince the boys and male teenagers of Japan to give a female heroine a chance, in a genre traditionally associated with girls? Nagai’s answer was to resort to his ‘old tricks,’ those creative tools that had worked so well for him in the past: eroticism and violence, but taken to a new level of sophistication and spectacle.

He radically redesigned Honey’s costume, making it much more revealing and form-fitting, accentuating her curvaceous figure. He added the bold idea of Honey becoming completely naked during her transformation sequences, a brief but impactful moment of vulnerability and power that would become one of the series’ hallmarks. And, to complete the cocktail, he provided her with an army of much more grotesque, extravagant, and often sexually suggestive villains, against whom Honey would fight spectacularly and, at times, surprisingly bloodily. This gamble, which could have been risky, worked like a charm. Both the Cutie Honey manga and anime achieved considerable success, managing the feat of attracting both boys and girls. It quickly established itself as a pioneering work in the ‘Magical Girl Warrior’ genre, laying much of the groundwork for future series that would combine fantasy, action, and female empowerment. Cutie Honey, with its unusual and dynamic page compositions, where Nagai continued to experiment with visual narrative, became a Japanese cultural icon that remains relevant to this day, with multiple remakes, sequels, and adaptations attesting to its enduring appeal. It was another demonstration of Nagai’s versatility and his ability to take a concept and transform it into something completely new and exciting.

Page from Cutie Honey, showcasing Nagai's unusual and dynamic compositions.

The Indelible Legacy: Beyond Success, a Master in Evolution

After this impressive string of era-defining successes—Harenchi Gakuen, Devilman, Mazinger Z, and Cutie Honey—Go Nagai was solidly established in the Olympus of narrative mangakas. His name was synonymous with innovation, audacity, and a prodigious talent for connecting with the most primal emotions of his audience. However, despite having established himself in the realm of serious, action-packed stories, he never completely abandoned gag manga, the genre that had given him his first opportunities and where his wit shone brightly. In fact, he never hesitated to inject generous doses of humor, often irreverent and dark, even into his most serious and dramatic works. This ability to balance tones, to shift from epic to comedy, from horror to tenderness, is one of the hallmarks of his genius.

He continued to expand the universes of his most iconic creations, producing sequels, prequels, and remakes of Devilman, Mazinger Z, and Cutie Honey, adapting them for new generations of readers and viewers, and exploring new facets of his characters. But his creativity was an inexhaustible spring, and he also brought to life multitudes of original manga spanning a wide range of genres and themes. Works like the post-apocalyptic and ultraviolent Violence Jack, the folkloric and terrifying Dororon Enma-Kun, or the mythological and epic Susano-Oh, are just a few examples of his vast and diverse output. In all of them, he continued to explore his recurring obsessions: the nature of good and evil, human duality, social and political criticism, and, of course, his unrestricted love for eroticism and boundless adventure. During the early years of his major successes, more conservative and academic critics often ignored or disparaged him, considering him an author with a ‘crude’ style and ‘vulgar’ sensibilities, too focused on immediate impact and on topics considered coarse. However, time and the persistence of his quality would eventually prove him right. In 1980, an important official recognition silenced many of his detractors: he won the prestigious Kodansha Manga Award for Best Shonen Series for Susano-Oh. This work, with its more modern and refined style, yet retaining the incessant search for new and dynamic page compositions, demonstrated Nagai’s constant evolution as an artist. With this award, Go Nagai secured, once and for all, an undisputed place in the pantheon of great Japanese comic artists, recognized not only for his popularity but also for his artistic mastery and profound influence.

Page from Susano-Oh, reflecting Nagai's more modern style and his continued experimentation with composition.

Over the following decades, as Dynamic Productions consolidated itself not just as a management studio but as a veritable manga factory, capable of producing and overseeing multiple projects simultaneously, Go Nagai’s personal graphic style also underwent a gradual transformation. His line became neater, more controlled, though without ever losing that visceral energy that characterized him. He began to make more extensive and sophisticated use of screentones and grays to add depth and texture to his drawings. Although he never stopped creating purely shonen manga, with its characteristic epic battles and charismatic heroes, he also undertook projects of greater scope and intellectual ambition. He ventured into autobiographical territory, creating manga that recounted his own career, struggles, and triumphs with honesty and humor. He explored his country’s history, creating biographies of great generals and figures from the turbulent Sengoku period, demonstrating a remarkable capacity for research and historical recreation. And in a project that closed a vital and artistic circle, he embarked on a monumental adaptation of the Inferno chapters of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. In this work, Nagai paid a heartfelt and spectacular tribute to those Gustave Doré illustrations that had so impacted him in his childhood, those images that, in a way, had ignited the first spark of his artistic vocation. This project was a demonstration of his maturity as an artist and his profound respect for the sources that had nourished his imagination.

The Eternal Echo: Nagai’s Influence on Future Generations

Today, with the wisdom and perspective that his more than seventy-seven years grant him, Go Nagai remains an active and vital force in the world of manga. He is not a retired titan contemplating his past glories from a distance, but a tireless creator who continues to wield the pen, bringing new stories and characters to life. Parallel to his work as a mangaka, he shares his vast knowledge and experience teaching character design at the Osaka University of Arts, training future generations of artists who will undoubtedly walk paths he himself helped pave. His prestige is such that he participates as a judge in several of Japan’s most important manga awards, including the coveted Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, an honor that places him among the guardians of the legacy of one of his own idols. And, of course, he receives the warm and constant homage of millions of fans around the globe, an affection that extends across generations and cultures. Among these admirers are figures of the stature of Kentaro Miura, the late genius behind Berserk, and Hideaki Anno, the visionary creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, both masters of manga and anime who have openly acknowledged Nagai’s profound influence on their own works and their understanding of narrative and design.

Nagai contemplates his career with a mixture of humility and gratitude. Eternally grateful for having had the opportunity to follow his dreams, to transform a childhood passion into a career that has left an indelible mark on global popular culture, he continues to draw with the same fervor as in his early days. His restless mind never rests, always devising new adventures for his classic characters and conceiving entirely new ones. He doesn’t rest on the laurels of his innumerable successes, because for a true artist, creation is a vital impulse, a necessity as essential as breathing. Go Nagai’s legacy is not just a collection of masterpieces; it is a philosophy of creative audacity, of breaking conventions, of tireless exploration of the human condition in all its facets, from the most sublime to the most grotesque. It is a legacy that will endure in the hearts and minds of manga and anime fans for generations to come, an eternal echo that will continue to inspire dreamers and artists to take up their own pens and tell their own stories, without fear of challenging the limits. An artist’s journey is one of constant evolution, and the legacy of masters like Nagai reminds us of the importance of continuing to learn and perfect our art. If you are committed to your creative development and seek to take your skills to the next level, continue your artistic evolution and explore new creative frontiers with our specialized guide and resources.

Thus concludes, for now, the story of Go Nagai, the boy who feared dying without a trace and who, instead, sculpted his name in the firmament of imagination. His story is a testament to the transformative power of art, to the ability of an individual to change the world with the strength of his ideas and the magic of his strokes. And as long as there are readers avid for adventure, characters who defy darkness, and creators willing to dream without chains, the indomitable spirit of Go Nagai will live on, roaring like a demon, shining like a giant robot, and transforming, again and again, into pure legend.

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