32 Facts About Moto Hagio

Moto Hagio made her debut as a manga artist in 1969 at the publishing company Kodansha before moving to Shogakukan in 1971, where she was able to publish her more radical and unconventional works that had been rejected by other publishers.

Moto Hagio subsequently emerged as a central figure in the Year 24 Group, a grouping of female manga artists who significantly influenced shojo manga in the 1970s by introducing new aesthetic styles and expanding the category to incorporate new genres.

Since the 1980s, Moto Hagio has drawn primarily adult-oriented manga in the manga magazine Petit Flower and its successor publication Flowers, notably Marginal, A Cruel God Reigns, and Nanohana.

Moto Hagio has been recognized with numerous awards both in Japan and internationally, including the Order of the Rising Sun, a Medal of Honor, and commendation as a Person of Cultural Merit.

Moto Hagio was born on May 12,1949, in Omuta, Fukuoka.

The second of four siblings, Moto Hagio's father worked as dockworker, while her mother was a homemaker.

Moto Hagio began to draw at an early age in her spare time, and attended private art lessons with her older sister.

Moto Hagio's parents discouraged her interest in illustration and manga, which Hagio states they viewed as "something for children not old enough to read" and "an impediment to studying"; this would be a major contributing factor to what would become a lifelong strained relationship with her parents.

Moto Hagio began to seriously consider a professional career in manga after reading Tezuka's manga series Shinsengumi in 1965, and in 1967 began submitting manga manuscripts to various publishers, including Kodansha, Shueisha, and Tezuka's own manga magazine COM.

Moto Hagio made her professional debut as a manga artist in Kodansha's Nakayoshi manga magazine, with the short stories Lulu to Mimi in August 1969 and Suteki na Maho in September 1969.

Moto Hagio began working for Nakayoshi under a new editor, but struggled under the editorial constraints of the magazine: Nakayoshi published primarily sports manga for children, while Moto Hagio preferred to write science fiction and fantasy stories focused on mature themes and subject material.

In 1970, Moto Hagio published the one-shot manga stories Cool Cat and Bakuhatsu Gaisha in Nakayoshi.

Shortly after her debut, Moto Hagio began pen pal correspondence with Norie Masuyama, a fan of Moto Hagio's who discovered her work through Nakayoshi.

Contemporaneously, Moto Hagio's editor assigned her to assist manga artist Keiko Takemiya, whose work had been published in Nakayoshi, COM, and Margaret.

Yamamoto agreed to publish Hagio's previously rejected manuscripts, and Hagio accepted Takemiya's offer to move to Tokyo.

Moto Hagio began to establish herself as a science fiction writer and moved away from the constraints of shojo magazines, publishing a manga adaptation of science fiction writer Ryu Mitsuse's novel Hyakuoku no Hiru to Sen'oku no Yoru in the shonen manga magazine Weekly Shonen Champion in 1977.

Moto Hagio did create science fiction works for shojo magazines during this period, notably Star Red for Shukan Shojo Comic from 1978 to 1979.

Moto Hagio moved to the magazine, where she was given full editorial control over the manga she produced.

Moto Hagio began teaching manga studies as a visiting professor at the Joshibi University of Art and Design in 2011.

That same year, the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred; with the publication of her manga series Nanohana, Moto Hagio became one of the first manga artists following Kotobuki Shiriagari to address the disaster directly in her work; Moto Hagio's prominence as an artist is credited with influencing other manga artists to address the disaster in their works.

Moto Hagio makes use of full-body portraits of main characters, a technique originated Macoto Takahashi, as well as superimposed close-ups of these characters, to mark the character as important in the narrative.

Moto Hagio uses mise-en-scene and lighting marked a strong contrast of shadow and light, giving a theatrical effect to her works.

When Moto Hagio began to create manga for an adult audience beginning with Mesh in 1980, she adopted a more realist style.

Moto Hagio gradually altered her page layouts, especially during the 2000s, to make her style more accessible to a new readership.

Moto Hagio has long had a difficult relationship with her parents, who disapproved of her career as a manga artist even after she achieved mainstream critical and commercial success; it was not until 2010, when Moto Hagio was 61 years old, that her mother accepted her profession.

Moto Hagio has described the process of writing the story as a means of making peace with her family, and following its publication, she became more comfortable writing works set in contemporary Japan.

Moto Hagio has described a "sense of liberation" that comes from writing male characters, as they allow her to express thoughts and concepts freely, in contrast to female protagonists who face the restrictions of a patriarchal society.

Moto Hagio first introduced bishonen protagonists to her works with The November Gymnasium in 1971.

Dissatisfied with the draft, Moto Hagio changed the protagonists to bishonen; this aligned the story with the then-nascent genre of shonen-ai, the precursor to modern boys' love.

The bishonen of Moto Hagio's works are both non-sexual and androgynous: socially masculine, physically androgynous, and psychologically feminine.

Moto Hagio is regarded by critics as the most influential shojo manga artist of all time and among the most influential manga artists in the entirety of the medium, and is referred to as the "god of shojo manga" by the Japanese press and critics, as styled off of Osamu Tezuka's sobriquet "the god of manga".

Moto Hagio is further credited with establishing science fiction as a subgenre of shojo manga, though Hagio's impact on science fiction extends beyond manga to literature through her illustrations of science fiction and fantasy novels, with science fiction novelists such as Azusa Noa and Baku Yumemakura citing Hagio as among their influences.