Yokoyama Mitsuteru was a prolific manga author in the 60s and 70s, and IMHO was second only to Osamu Tezuka in historical influence on the genre. (Mitsuteru died in 2004, in a house fire, of all things.) He created the very first giant-robot manga, "Tetsujin 28-Go" in 1958, which became the black-and-white anime called "Gigantor" in its English dub. He created the very first magical-girl manga, "Mahoutsukai Sally", in 1966, which established most of the cliches that the genre still follows. His life's work was an absurdly lengthy manga series "Sangokushi", based on the Chinese epic historical novel "The Tale of Three Kingdoms". But that's not all! He also wrote a manga "Suikoden" based on another Chinese epic historical novel, a sort of psychic-powered superhero manga called "Babel II", a ninja manga called "Red Shadow", and yet another giant robot manga called simply "Giant Robo".

Giant Robo was made into a cheap Ultraman-style 1960s live-action TV show. It was shown in America under the gloriously stupid title "Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot".

More coming soon...