Who knows?! Maybe the extraordinary mind of Nagai Kiyoshi, aka Go Nagai, will bring yet another immortal character to life while visiting Rome! Regardless, his art never ceases to amaze. Go Nagai is coming to Rome to participate in Romics XIX from April 7 to 10, and is expected to walk away with the Golden Romics.
Go Nagai is considered to be one of the greatest authors of Japanese comics and animation, having created a universe of characters which have accompanied entire generations: Ufo Robot, Goldrake, Mazinga, the Devilman cult, Cutey Honey, Jeeg Robot, and Violence Jack.
An incredible innovator, both in Japan and throughout the entire world, he proliferated the Mecha genre – that of giant robots – which has dominated the market for more than 40 years.
There are so many original ideas and themes that are addressed in his works: a unique interpretation of the fine line between good and evil, the human-science-technology relationship, and eroticism. He’s a complex and multifaceted author. His works have truly created a sociological phenomenon on an international level, profoundly influencing comics authors worldwide.
Italy has a particular relation with Go Nagai. In 1978, Ufo Robot Goldrake was broadcast on Italian television for the first time – three years after its first showing on Japanese stations – and the impact was enormous, with the original graphics and theme turning the series into a cult phenomenon. Then, in January, 1980, Rai 1 broadcast the beginning of the robot saga created by Go Nagai: “Mazinga, out!” along with his “fists of steel” launched in defense of a threatened humanity, soon fascinating the entire planet.
His following continues strong, having lasted at least three generations, spanning the discovery and rediscovery of his works from the seventies and eighties up until his most recent ones. After 40 years, Nagai continues to produce almost relentlessly, even renewing and rewriting his most beloved characters.
Romics will celebrate Go Nagai’s attendance with numerous engagements for all four days of the Festival and with the rewarding of the Golden Romics which, as always, will take place on Sunday, April 10, at 12:00 o’clock, at Pala Romics – Padiglione 8 Sala Grandi eventi e Proiezioni.
We await you at Romics, Sensei Go Nagai!
Kiyoshi Nagai, known to the public as Gō Nagai, is considered among the greatest authors of Japanese comics and animation. He's created a universe of characters that has brought up entire generations - including UFO Grendizer, Mazinger, Devilman, Cutie Honey, Steel Jeeg, and Violence Jack.
His career began in 1965, but just two years later he created his first manga, Meakashi Polikichi. In 1968, he published Harenchi Gakuen, considered one of the first works of modern erotic manga.
In 1968, he founded Dynamic Productions, the company through which he produces his immense masterpieces. We remember Demon Lord Dante, with which he began his exploration into religious and demonic themes in 1971. The author has stated that the inspiration for Lord Dante came from an edition of the Divine Comedy illustrated by Gustave Doré.
That same year, he published Devilman - one of the most famous and influential works of the seventies. Nagai took splatter to the limit, with an apocalyptic finale that left readers speechless. From the comic came a significantly less violent TV series, with prominent references to the iconography of the Western superhero.
1972 was a very important year for Japanese animation and for Nagai - a great innovator of the Mecha genre that gave way to Mazinger Z, the first Japanese anime to star a super robot controlled from within by a human being. The idea of a large, pilotable robot came to Nagai while stuck in traffic, imagining what it would be like if the car could extend limbs and climb over the other vehicles. Various versions were published in comic book format, the most important of which was scripted by Nagai and drawn by Gosaku Ota, who faithfully followed the plot of the TV version with an emphasis on its violence, introducing many new innovations to the work. Over the course of the comics and television series, Archduke Gorgon was also introduced, the first member of the Mycenaean people, who would go on to battle Mazinger Z's successor, Great Mazinger.
In 1973 he created Cutie Honey, an android girl living under the secret identity of blonde Honey Kisaragi, yet taking on various alternate identities when necessary, each with a different appearance, special powers, and gear. Her main identity is that of Cutie, a swordswoman with short red hair, decidedly more mischievous than the female Japanese archetype, who often teases her male friends and makes a mockery of her enemies in combat. It was at this point that Go Nagai began combining superheroic and erotic themes.
The same year, he began the long epic of Violence Jack, a series in which the Kantō peninsula is isolated by a cataclysmic event and becomes the setting of savage fights for survival, which Nagai worked on sporadically, only completing it in 1990.
As for Great Mazinger, the 1974 TV series would deepen and exaggerate the themes present in Mazinger Z; this time, the mech pilot was a real soldier, trained to achieve just one goal - the defeat of the Mycenaean people, who are presented with the monstrous features of enormous robotic creatures with human heads, usually embedded in their bellies.
Also in 1974, as proof of his genius, Nagai invented the "modular mechas," with Getter Robo. In this series too, he returned to the theme of the "enemy from the past," a race of highly intelligent, reptilian humanoids from the Dinosaur Empire that emerge from centuries-long hibernation to take over the Earth. A comic adaptation was made from the TV series, which once again exaggerated the violence of the cartoon and saw the nature of the characters change, becoming much more extreme and disturbing. 1974 also saw the release of the comic Kekko Kamen, yet another fusion of superheroes and eroticism in which the protagonist fights crime wearing only a mask.
In 1975, he produced the sequel to Getter Robot - Getter Robot G - and, most notably, Steel Jeeg and Grendizer - two highly beloved series in Italy. This time, the themes were more in keeping with "classic" science fiction, with a real alien invasion.
Grendizer was particularly well received in Europe, where, especially in Italy, it gave rise to a true cultural phenomenon, which has even been studied by sociologists. Grendizer officially marked the entrance of anime into television programming. The impact was powerful; it had many differences from the usual cartoons, both in its themes and techniques of drawing and animation. Even the Italian theme songs, created by Luigi Albertelli and Vince Tempera, became famous.
Grendizer also finally demonstrated, with great clarity, that many of Nagai's characters belonged to the same fictional universe; Koji Kabuto (Alcor in Italy) appears in the series, the pilot from Mazinger Z, behind the controls of an innovative disk-shaped, flying craft. A number of films and OAVs followed as well, in which Nagai's robots would unite for a common cause, like The Great Mazinger vs. Grendizer, Mazinger Z vs. Devilman, Great Mazinger vs. Getter Robo, and the spectacular teaming up of Grendizer, Getter Robo G, and The Great Mazinger against the Dragosaurus.
In 1976, Nagai collaborated on two series that, while perhaps less original, were also broadcast in Italy with success: Gaiking (Daikū Maryū Gaiking) and Magne Robo Gakeen (Magunerobo Ga Kiin). In a disagreement over the rights to Gaiking, Nagai engaged in an aggressive dispute with Toei Animation, which until that point had produced every series, and they subsequently parted ways.
From that point, Nagai's career took an interesting turn - in addition to producing new work, he would focus almost maniacally on the "rewriting" of the works that made him famous, often aided by the drawings Ken Ishikawa, and later Yu Kinutani. That way, Mazinger (God Mazinger, Z Mazinger, Mainstage, Mazinkaiser), Getter Robo (Getter Robo Go, Shin Getter Robo, Shin Getter Robo: The Last Day, Shin Getter Robo vs Neo Getter Robo, Getter Robo āḥ) and Devilman (Neo Devilman, Devilman Armageddon, Devil Lady, Amon - The Darkside of The Devilman, The Apocalypse of Devilman: Strange Days) would be reread.
As confirmation of this Japanese author's greatness is the fact that even he, or rather, his characters, have become, just like the international stars, the subjects of the super deformed parody CB Chara Nagai Go World, in which all the characters of his most famous series make an appearance.
