Go Nagai

Go Nagai (real name Kiyoshi Nagai) is a manga artist known for his revolutionary (yet sometimes controversial) works such as Cutey Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z. After a few successful manga releases, he founded his own management company Dynamic Productions to help publish his works.

Background

Kiyoshi Nagai was born as the fourth son to Yoshio and Fujiko Nagai. During his childhood, he read notable works of literature like translation for The Divine Comedy and spent time reading manga by the famed Osamu Tezuka. In high school, he suffered from diarrhea and was bedridden in the hospital with catarrh of colon. Believing his life was on a thread, Kiyoshi decided to make a name for himself by becoming a manga artist. His brother Yasutaka would often help him out, but several of his works were rejected. However, they were noticed by the famous manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori.

Taking the pen name Go Nagai, he became an assistant to Ishinomori and started writing one-shot gag mangas before moving on to more elaborate works for the Jump magazines. Although some of them were met with criticism for showing forms of erotica. But even, he was successful enough to found Dynamic Productions with his brothers to help fund his manga and anime production while managing relations and contracts with other companies like Toei. Ken Ishikawa had joined by this time and became Nagai's assistant for a while. After this, Nagai started his more famous works starting with Devilman.

Acting

Besides his role as manga artist, Go Nagai also served as an actor with his debut being a small role in The Toxic Avenger Part II. He often appeared in live-action adaptations of his works such as playing Dr. Kōshirō Kisaragi in Cutey Honey: The Live.