26 Facts About Go Nagai

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.

Go Nagai has been a member of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize's nominating committee since 2009.

Go Nagai is the son of Yoshio and Fujiko Nagai, and the fourth of five brothers.

Go Nagai graduated from the Metropolitan Itabashi High School of Tokyo.

Go Nagai was determined to create one work of manga in what he thought were his last months.

Thanks to some trial manga he created with the help of Yasutaka, Go Nagai was finally accepted into the studio of Ishinomori in 1965.

Go 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.

Two or three days later, Go Nagai was invited to become an assistant to Ishinomori and this work was forgotten until 2007, when it was published in the magazine Comic Ran Twins Sengoku Busho Retsuden by LEED under the name Satsujinsha.

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, Go Nagai was invited to be one of the first manga artists publishing in the new magazine.

Go Nagai contemplated this, since he had to design a long-running series instead of the auto-conclusive short stories that he had been developing until that point.

Go Nagai accepted and the series became a big success, being the first for Nagai and making Shonen Jump sell more than one million copies.

Go Nagai was bombarded with interview requests from newspapers, magazines and TV.

Go Nagai was branded a "nuisance" and even an "enemy of society".

At first, Go Nagai did not think that the opposition was against him, since he was aware of the standards that applied with movies and similar things for an audience below 18 years old.

Go Nagai would become Nagai's second assistant after Mitsuru Hiruta, who had been working with Nagai since the beginnings of Harenchi Gakuen.

Go Nagai would become one of Nagai's regular partners and his best friend.

In 1970, Go Nagai started a company, Dynamic Productions, to fund his manga and anime ventures.

Go Nagai considers the Devilman and Mazinger series to be his life's work due to their massive popularity all over the world.

In 1972, Go Nagai managed the very difficult feat of both drawing and writing five weekly manga publications at the same time, an accomplishment only equalled by other manga artists Shinji Mizushima and George Akiyama.

Years later Go Nagai revamped Devilman featuring versions of the protagonists as young adult women and altering the storyline, which eventually became another sequel story to the original.

Go Nagai had less success a few years later with Majokko Tickle, a more traditional magical-girl series for younger children, although the accompanying anime was popular on TV in some European countries.

Go Nagai is currently being more prolific in manga production than ever.

Much of Go Nagai's work has been adapted into anime and tokusatsu.

Go Nagai has made cameo appearances in some live-action films, including The Toxic Avenger Part II, the Cutie Honey 2004 live action film, and in a special DVD-only episode of Cutie Honey: The Live as Dr Koshiro Kisaragi.

Go Nagai is credited with pioneering the super robot genre with Mazinger Z and the magical girl genre with Cutie Honey.

Anime director Hideaki Anno cited Devilman and Mazinger as a source of inspiration for Evangelion during a conversation between him and Go Nagai published in Devilman Tabulae Anatomicae.