Devilman

Devilman was originally commissioned by Toei Animation as a toned-down anime spin-off of Go Nagai's earlier manga Demon Lord Dante, but the resulting story ended up much darker, reflecting Nagai's anti-war sentiments.

The manga and the TV anime were developed almost simultaneously using the same basic premise, but their plots diverge significantly: Go Nagai himself described them not as an adaptation of one another but as two separate works built from a shared foundation, with the anime script written by Masaki Tsuji.

As the manga's readership skewed older than the TV audience, extending up to university students, Nagai and his editors agreed to deepen his intended themes, causing the story to evolve into an apocalyptic, epic narrative over the course of serialization, whereas the anime kept a simpler episodic superhero format aimed at a broader audience.

The demon Sirene's name and visual concept were actually created by anime scriptwriter Masaki Tsuji for the TV series; Nagai designed her appearance from that concept and liked it so much that he reverse-imported the character into the manga.

Nagai has said that due to being overworked and losing veteran assistants who went independent, he had to rely on inexperienced staff during the original serialization, leaving him dissatisfied with parts of the artwork but with no time to fix them before publication, which led him to revise and add pages in several later reprint editions.

By March 2017, the Devilman manga had sold over 50 million copies worldwide, making it one of Go Nagai's most commercially successful works.

Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno has cited Devilman as an influence; the final scene of the original theatrical version, showing Shinji and Asuka lying side by side on a beach, directly mirrors the manga's ending image of Satan and Akira lying together on a beach.

Multiple Hollywood offers to produce a live-action Devilman adaptation were made over the years, but Go Nagai reportedly refused them all because the proposed concepts framed Devilman purely as a villainous demon rather than staying true to the character's dual nature, among other contractual reasons.

The 2004 live-action Devilman film used a technology called 'T-VISUAL', which blended live-action footage with animation to depict the demons on screen.

The 2004 live-action Devilman film was poorly received and won the 'Bunshun Ichigo Award', a Japanese film prize handed out by Weekly Bunshun that is considered a local equivalent to the Golden Raspberry Awards.

A completed OVA sequel titled 'Armageddon-hen' was planned with an unusually large budget of 120 million yen for an OVA, but it was never released because the director was not satisfied with the result despite the budget.