Go Nagai

Very few people invent a genre. Nagai is credited with several. Born Kiyoshi Nagai in Wajima, Ishikawa, in 1945, he made his professional debut in 1967 and then spent the years around 1970 producing an implausible quantity of foundational material: Mazinger Z, Devilman, Cutie Honey, Violence Jack, Harenchi Gakuen.

The innovation people cite most is Mazinger Z, and specifically one design decision: a giant robot with a person sitting inside it, in a cockpit, driving it, rather than a machine commanded from a distance. That choice created the super robot genre and set the terms for most of what mecha anime has done since, because it made the pilot's body and the machine's body the same problem. He is also credited with helping open the magical girl genre with Cutie Honey, the post-apocalyptic strand with Violence Jack, and the ecchi genre with Harenchi Gakuen. Devilman is the bleakest thing in the pile and the one whose standing has grown the most.

The credits on this page mostly show how often the work gets remade. The Mazinger family runs out through Great Mazinger, UFO Robot Grendizer, Mazinger Edition Z and Mazinkaiser SKL. Devilman runs from the 1987 animated version to a 2004 live-action film to Devilman Crybaby in 2018. Cutie Honey runs from Cutie Honey Flash to the 2004 film to Cutie Honey Universe. He also turns up in front of the camera in odd places, including a cameo in The Toxic Avenger Part II.

Since 2005 he has taught character design at the Osaka University of Arts, and he has sat on the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize's nominating committee since 2009.