Manga Dante. Comunicazione interculturale e tradizione figurativa in Dante Shinkyoku di Gō Nagai

Gō Nagai is universally recognized as one of the most important mangaka in the history of Japanese comics. Author of stories related to crucial characters for both the Eastern and Western imaginary, such as Mazinga Z, Gō Nagai (real name Kiyoshi Nagai), for a good part of his career, entertains a dialogue with Italian culture and, in particular, with the Divine Comedy by Dante. On the one hand, Nagai is inspired by the Dante’s poem, adapting atmospheres, moods and individual characters in sagas like Mao Dante and Devilman (whose protagonist is openly inspired by the Dante’s Lucifer). On the other hand, Nagai accepts the challenge of completely transposing the play into a comic book of mighty dimensions, Dante Shinkyoku (3 voll., 1993-1994). The creative effort of the Japanese mangaka reveals two important qualities of the comic book medium: its ability to act as an instrument of communication and intercultural translation, able to bring together and make perceivable cultures seemingly distant, and to reconfigure, in the highly immersive spaces of reading clouds and cartoons, other figurative traditions – specifically the legacy of illustration by Gustave Doré, a true “filter” of Dante’s poetry in audiovisual mediums.