Go Nagai in Egypt
Go Nagai has created approximately 8,000 popular manga series, half of them about giant robots and the other half with ‘Devil-’ in the title. In my mind, the fact that he created Devilman Lady means he is one of the Great Manga Creators, and should have his face carved into a mountain next to Tezuka and Urasawa (Shairo Keats agrees, but for different reasons; namely, Mazinger).
Recently he took a trip to the Middle East, of all places, to discuss his awesomeness with people there. Here are some excerpts from an interview with Egypt Today, the magazine of, um, Egypt.
I thought this quote was interesting. Go Nagai is sort of considered the typical shonen manga-ka who writes and draws tons of glamorous ultra-violence and boobies, but that’s not what he means at all (at least the violence part):
Having said this, the war experience surely affected my whole childhood and the formation of my personality. Even if I have not experienced any bombing or fighting, all the adults around me kept telling me horrible stories about the war, so I grew up with [the awareness] that my works should deliver a message of peace.
I was particularly saddened when I found out that in many countries I was considered to be an author who loves to depict battles and destruction just for the fun of it. [] The reason why I depict the effects of war in my comics is because I strongly believe that a person should learn from childhood how war can be destructive and how much people and societies may suffer from it, just the same way I learned it from the stories of adults around me when I was a little child. If we raise a child telling him only the nice and happy things of life, he will be unable to cope with all the hardships he will inevitably meet in his adulthood; if he doesn’t know the devastating effects of violence and repression, he could [...] cause incredible damage and suffering to the people around him.
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