Thread:Jfgslo/@comment-1809047-20130907052630/@comment-901832-20130929063840

Zeromaro wrote: I noticed that a lot of Nagai manga in the 80s and 90s ended with cliff hangers or skipped events with little depth: Susano Oh, Devilman Lady, Iron Muscle, Cutey Honey ('90s). I guess their popularity dropped after a while and had to be cut short.

Well, I can confidently say that popularity was not a factor in two of those four manga. Devilman Lady was still quite popular even outlasting the anime series. However, Nagai does have the tendency to leave some endings ambiguous and I believe the Devilman Lady one was on purpose, where there is simply no hope for humanity and it will always lead to a Violence Jack-like world. Susano Oh was pretty popular and in fact had a videogame and several sequels, running from 1979 to 1990, and the ending seemed to hint to another sequel. But Nagai sometimes ended successful runs when other projects interested him, like he did with Abashiri Ikka and Omorai-kun, both of which were very popular and were dropped in favour of focusing on Devilman (he was at the time working in 5 serializations simultaneously). And, who knows, perhaps there is an ending in the novels. Sometimes it is the magazine itself that gets shut down like with the original Mao Dante. And sometimes, Nagai himself doesn't give much of an ending (Great Mazinger or Grendizer). The other two, particularly Iron Muscle, perhaps were indeed cut short due to lack of popularity. I know that Shin Violence Jack was cut short due to this, although I believe that ending was the one that Nagai was shooting for to begin with. I'm not so sure about Honey, because the original manga also ended with the death of Sister Jill (Panther Zora still lingered in the original one). More importantly, the magazine in which Cutey Honey 90s was originally published wasn't particularly known for long running series and wasn't even as popular as Shonen Champion. Cutie Honey Tennyo Densetsu was published by the same publisher, but in a different magazine and it did a lot better. But that kind of ending seems to be common in Nagai's more serious stories. I'd say in Nagai's serious comics, Shutendoji was the exception, with a clear cut and satisfactory ending (ironically, as I understand it, that wasn't the case with Gomaden Shutendoji). Violence Jack had a proper ending until Devilman Lady and Shin Violence Jack.