What inspired Bastard!!?

A demon manga, a dice game, a stack of gamebooks, and heavy metal.

Hagiwara has named his sources across decades of interviews, and they are unusually concrete. The artwork’s primary influence is Go Nagai’s Devilman, the 1972 demon epic he read as a boy and aspired to follow. The fantasy machinery comes from tabletop and print gaming: Dungeons & Dragons, the Dragon Quest video games, and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. And the surface of everything (names, places, spells) comes from his heavy metal collection, itemized on the naming page.

The influence runs forward as well as back. Guilty Gear creator Daisuke Ishiwatari has said Bastard!!’s fantasy setting was a major influence on his own series; the line from Hagiwara’s spell-slinging, music-drenched world to Guilty Gear’s is direct and acknowledged.

Devilman cover art by Go Nagai — **THE DEMON MANGA**Go Nagai’s Devilman: the documented starting point, read alongside dice games, gamebooks and metal records.

THE INGREDIENTS

Named by the author

Devilman (1972)

Go Nagai’s manga is the documented primary influence on Hagiwara’s art: the demonic transformation, the beautiful and terrible bodies, the apocalypse framing. Reading it as a youth is why he wanted to draw manga at all.

Dungeons & Dragons

The world is built like a campaign: four kingdoms, four seals, a party of overpowered old comrades, and a wizard whose stats broke the game. Hagiwara is an enthusiastic D&D fan, and the manga reads as one long, loving session.

Dragon Quest & Fighting Fantasy

The video-game and gamebook layer: monster manuals, spell lists, and choose-your-path peril. The spell catalogue in Bastard!! behaves like a game system that happens to be drawn.

Animators he studied

For character design, Hagiwara has cited Naoyuki Onda, Hiroyuki Kitazumi, Tomonori Kogawa, and Mutsumi Inomata; Princess Sheila exists because he admired Ciela in Aura Battler Dunbine, which Kogawa worked on. Kitazumi later designed characters for the Bastard!! OVA.

What inspired Bastard!!?

THE INGREDIENTS

THE FIRST WORD