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Learn about Go Nagai, the creator of popular manga and anime series such as Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z. Find out his life story, influences, awards, and works.
Go Nagai is a Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and erotica. He made his professional debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, but is best known for creating Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z. He also pioneered the ecchi genre with Harenchi Gakuen.
Aug 19, 2024 · Kiyoshi Nagai, better known by the pen name Go Nagai, is a Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, horror and erotica. He made his professional debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, but is best known for creating popular 1970s manga and anime series such as Cutie Honey, Devilman and Mazinger Z.
- Overview
- Life
- Style and works
- External links
Go Nagai (永井 豪 Nagai Gō?, born Kiyoshi Nagai [永井潔 Nagai Kiyoshi], September 6, 1945 in Wajima, Ishikawa) is a Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, horror and erotica.
He made his professional debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, but is best known for creating Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z in the 1970s.
Early life
Go Nagai was born on September 6, 1945 —in the Ishikawa Prefecture city of Wajima. He is the son of Yoshio and Fujiko Nagai (永井芳雄・冨士子夫妻), and the fourth of five brothers. His family had just returned from Shangai. While he was still in his early childhood, he along with his mother and his four brothers moved to Tokyo after the premature passing of his father. As a child, he was influenced by the work of Gustave Doré (specifically, a Japanese edition of the Divine Comedy) and Osamu Tezuka (his brother Yasutaka gave him a copy of Lost World). After he graduated from the Metropolitan Itabashi High School of Tokyo, he entered the world of manga. While passing his ronin year in a prep school in order to aim at the Waseda University, he suffered a severe case of diarrhea for 3 weeks. Aware of his own mortality, he wanted to leave some evidence that he had lived, by doing something that he liked as a child: working on manga. He was determined to create one work of manga in what he thought were his last months. As Nagai prepared for the task, he went to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with catarrh of the colon, and soon healed. But this was the turning point in his life. Convinced that he would continue working on manga, he stopped attending school after three months and started living as a ronin. With the help of his brother Yasutaka, he created his first manga works. Aiming to be a mangaka, despite the fact that his mother opposed his manga career, he submitted his works for publication finding many rejected . It is said that when the young Nagai submitted his tables to publishers, his mother secretly convinced publishers to reject them. However, his work was noticed by Shonen Sunday, which contacted Shotaro Ishinomori. Thanks to some trial manga he created with the help of his brother Yasutaka, he was finally accepted in the studio of Ishinomori in 1965. The trial manga was about a science fiction ninja, and was a prototype for a different story, Kuro no Shishi. Nagai was 19 years old when he made this work; it started at 15 or 16 pages and ended up being 88 pages long after a year, and was untitled at that time. Ishinomori saw this work and praised Nagai for it, but commented that the design was too chunky and should improve it a little. Two or three days later, Nagai was invited to become an assistant with Ishinomori and this work was forgotten until 2007, when it was published for the first time, in the magazine Comic Ran TWINS Sengoku Busho Retsuden (コミック乱 TWINS 戦国武将列伝) by LEED, under the name Satsujinsha (殺刃者（さつじんしゃ）). His professional career began in 1967, despite the opposition of his mother.
First works
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First success and controversies
In less than a year after debuting, he met with a big success. After being an unknown mangaka, he became a protagonist of televised debates and journalistic investigations. In 1968, while Shueisha was getting prepared to launch its first manga publication, Shonen Jump, in order to compete with other magazines from rival companies (like Shonen Magazine from Kodansha and Shonen Sunday from Shogakukan), Nagai was invited to be one of the first mangakas publishing in the new magazine. He contemplated this, since he had to design a long running series instead of the autoconclusive short stories that he had been developing until that point. He accepted and the series became a big success, being the first for Nagai and making Shonen Jump sell more than one million copies. With Harenchi Gakuen, Nagai was the first to introduce eroticism in modern manga and became the creator of modern erotic manga, opened the door to a new era in Manga and also became the symbol of an entire generation. This work has influenced Japanese society radically, completely changing the common perceptions of manga. Until Harenchi Gakuen, Japanese manga had been relatively tame affairs, but things soon changed. The manga became so popular that several live-action films and TV series based on the manga were developed. Harenchi Gakuen is considered as probably the work that has had the most influence in the world of manga at the end of the 1960s, leading the newly born Shonen Jump magazine to sell millions of copies per week. A scandalous manga in its time, it is a very innocent series by today's standards. But at the time of his original publication, it met with severe criticism by some parts of the Japanese society. Harenchi Gakuen was criticized as vulgar because it introduced overt eroticism to children. Male students and teachers were depicted as being preoccupied with catching glimpses of girls' panties or naked bodies. Many parents, women's associations, and PTAs protested. In particular, the PTA protests over Harenchi Gakuen were notorious. Nagai was bombarded with interview requests from newspapers, magazines and TV. Whenever he flew outside of Tokyo, TV cameras were waiting for him. He was branded a "nuisance" and even an "enemy of society". He, however, had a clear sense of what things he could or could not do with the manga. At first, Nagai didn't think that the opposition was against him, since he always knew when to draw the line and was aware of the standards that applied with movies and similar things for an audience below 18 years old. At that time, he never drew sex scenes, avoided pictures of genitals and made nudes cute rather than sexy. His fans supported him throughout the PTA protests. They sent him letters where they expressed how they were aware that the adults cracking down on them were reading much raunchier stuff than what Nagai was producing. The protests were not only against the manga, but also against the TV series. The PTA even managed to prevent the distribution of the magazine in some parts of Japan. As a result of the protests, when the series was about to be cancelled because of the PTA. Nagai changed the theme in Harenchi Gakuen into a more mature and serious matter. From nonsense gags with sexy touchs, to a full scale war where murder was depicted in the bloody way for which many know him. This led to the famous ending of Harenchi Gakuen, symbol of freedom and of rejection of the hypocrisy, where all students & teachers, while defending their freedom of expression, are killed by the PTA and other parental forces. This was the ironic answer that Nagai gave to the PTA. It wasn't the true ending of Harenchi Gakuen, as it would return to be published for several years. It was also around this time that he created Gakuen Taikutsu Otoko (ガクエン退屈男), also known as Guerrilla High, another school-themed manga, but this time war between youths and adults was the main theme. A little before that, in 1969,Abashiri Ikka (あばしり一家) was created. Both titles are a direct result of the PTA protests, being both a form of parody of what happened. Abashiri Ikka became a big success, and along with Harenchi Gakuen, the most popular series of Nagai's juvenile period.
Further information: [[Bibliography of Go Nagai]]
In his series Harenchi Gakuen (ハレンチ学園, Shameless School, 1968–1972, Weekly Shonen Jump magazine) Nagai used eroticism and extreme, graphic violence in kid's manga for the first time in Japan, thus breaking taboos and becoming quite controversial. His use of violence and gross humour was widely loathed in many corners of Japan's society and became a concern for many PTAs at the time. The series temporary ended dramatically when all the characters died during a massacre. This type of content would be a trend in most of Nagai's later work and in those of other directors such as Yoshiyuki Tomino. A Harenchi Gakuen live-action TV series followed in the early 1970s, as well as several other live-action movies and an OVA version (Heisei Harenchi Gakuen, or "Modern-Day Shameless School") in the mid-1990s.
In 1970, Go Nagai started a company, Dynamic Productions, to fund his manga and anime ventures. Dynamic Productions' first titles were Getter Robo and Abashiri Ikka (あばしり一家, Abashiri Family).
After Harenchi Gakuen Nagai created the Mazinger Z (マジンガーZ) series, later expanded into Great Mazinger, Grendizer, and - many years later - Mazinkaiser, where he developed the concept of giant mecha. Mazinger was the first manga where a giant robot was piloted by the hero, thus creating one of the biggest staples of the industry. Mazinger is considered the first successful "Super Robot" anime show, and has spanned numerous imitations.
Simultaneously to Mazinger, he created one of his most popular manga, Debiruman (デビルマン, Devilman), about a demonic hero fighting against hordes of demons. Nagai also turned Devilman into a series which was less violent and gritty than the manga. Years later Nagai revamped this popular series by introducing the main character as a female and altering the storyline. This series is called Devilman Lady (デビルマンレディー, Devil Lady in the US). It was first released as a manga and then later as an anime. Go Nagai considers the Devilman series, as well as the Mazinger series, as being his life's work due to their massive popularity all over the world. In 1972, Nagai managed to have 5 weekly manga publications at the same time, drawing and writing. This hasn't been achieved by other mangakas with the exception of Shinji Mizushima and George Akiyama.
Another long-running series, Violence Jack (ヴァイオレンス ジャック) spanned multiple volumes and dealt with a giant brute of a man fighting evil warlords in a post-apocalyptic setting where Japan has been devastated by a massive earthquake and isolated from the rest of the world.
•Go Nagai (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan)
•(Japanese) 永井 豪（ながい ごう） (日本ＳＦ作家クラブ) — a Japanese version of the page.
•The World of Before the Apocalypse Fan Page: Go Nagai
•Go Nagai at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
•Revelation, An Essay on Devilman by Go Nagai
•(Japanese) The World of Go Nagai, with lists and pictures of various Nagai and Nagai-related works, and many notes on them.
A comprehensive list of manga titles created by Go Nagai, a prolific Japanese manga artist known for Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z. The bibliography covers his works from the 1960s to the 2010s in various genres and media.
Born under the name Kiyoshi and growing up in a somewhat large family (he was 4th out of 5 brothers), Go Nagai has went from college student to internationally famous and genre creating integral piece of anime history. Born a few weeks after the A-bombing of Japan on September 6 1945, he was...
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Gô Nagai is a pioneer of manga and anime, known for his works such as Devilman, Mazinger Z, Cutey Honey, and Getter Robo. He has also created parodies, sequels, and original stories in various genres and media.
