Thread:Zeromaro/@comment-189.220.94.4-20140916005241/@comment-2229724-20140916083612

Not to sound presumtious but it may also be worth mentioning the manga series by Gosaku Ota, released alongside Nagai's manga as each of the three anime series aired (Z, Great, Gren) Ota's manga again followed similar plotlines to the origonal's but half way through each series he would often shake things up, such as the Japanese government turning on Great, or Duke Fleed trying to take over the earth himself.

His run on mazinger started very episodic taking a Mechanical Beast from one of the episodes (Like Holzon V3 or Gromazen R9) and having a basic monster-of-the-week style format, until about half way through the run of the series when Minerva X is introduced and slain, after wards Ota starts to turn the formart more stroy arc based and includes several real world problems at the time and begins adding his own characters and mecha into the story, he also expands on the characters backstory and history a whole lot more, giving more of a reason as to why Dr. Hell was the way he was, and the backstorys for both Asura and Brocken (Brocken also plays a very large part in the final few parts).

the Z run ends with a combination of both the last episode of the anime and the Vs. Great General of Darkness movie with Z being ultimately destroyed by a horde of Mecha Beasts only to be saved by Tetsuya.

The following series had a much differnt format afterwards, some chapters designed to give character backstory, other long reaching story arcs like the Mycenae vs the Vegans or Duke Fleed turning totally evil.

In the Great Mazinger manga he also added some of the Warrior Beasts seen in the opening to the series such as the Samurai.

The manga is sometimes critisised for its artwork, but is very well looked apon for its story, many elements from the series have been later copied into other series, (Such as beserker mechs destroying the planet, or Koji gainig a cyborg body).