Who is Go Nagai, Devilman’s creator?
The man who invented the cockpit-piloted robot also invented the modern dark hero, in the same year.
Go Nagai (born Kiyoshi Nagai, September 6, 1945, in Wajima, Ishikawa) grew up on Osamu Tezuka, assisted Shotarō Ishinomori, and debuted in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi. Within five years he had detonated two genres at once: Mazinger Z created the super robot as the world knows it, and Devilman dragged shōnen manga into the dark. He told Devilman’s story through his own company, Dynamic Productions, and he is still drawing.
THE CAREER IN SIX SHELVES
1968 to the presentHarenchi Gakuen · 1968
The controversial school comedy that made Nagai a star and, by his biographers’ account, revolutionized the manga industry, and made him enemies in every PTA in Japan.
Demon Lord Dante · 1971
The demon manga Toei wanted for children’s television. Dante’s DNA, an ancient demon waking in the modern world, passed straight into Devilman the following year.
Mazinger Z · 1972
The same year as Devilman: the first giant robot piloted by a human from a cockpit inside it, and the start of the super-robot wave that runs through Gundam to Evangelion.
Cutie Honey · 1973
A third genre founded in three years: Honey Kisaragi, the android heroine of a thousand disguises, became the template for the transforming magical heroine.
Dynamic Productions
Nagai’s own studio and rights house. Devilman and his other heroes cross into each other’s works constantly, Akira and Miki cameo across the Dynamic universe for decades.
Gekiman!
Late in his career Nagai drew Gekiman!, a semi-autobiographical manga about creating Devilman, Mazinger Z, and Cutie Honey, the making-of, by the maker.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
On Devilman“Pushed by an invisible power”
Looking back on Devilman’s creation, Nagai wrote: “I am the author of Devilman, yet throughout its creation, I felt as though I were being pushed by an invisible power.”
The warning
He designed Devilman as an anti-war work, and said so plainly: there is no justice in war, and the manga is a message of warning. The full context is on this archive’s history page.