Harenchi Gakuen is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Go Nagai. The manga was one of the first to be serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine in 1968 and became the first big success for Go Nagai. Harenchi Gakuen is widely considered as the first modern erotic manga and credited for being the first ecchimanga series. The series has been adapted into five live action movies, a live actiontelevision series, and anOVA. The live action TV series contains an animated opening sequence which is a recurring element of Go Nagai's works where live action and anime are combined. Other examples include Pro-Wres no Hoshi Aztecaser featuring completely animated action sequences during scenes in which the hero uses his powers and Cutie Honey when the titular heroine appears before the cast, the next scene continues with a full animated opening sequence.
In 1968, while Shueisha was getting prepared to launch its first manga publication, Weekly Shōnen Jump, in order to compete with other magazines from rival companies, Nagai was invited to be one of the first manga artists publishing in the new magazine. He contemplated this, since he had to design a long-running series instead of the autoconclusive short stories that he had been developing until that point. He accepted, and the series became Nagai's first big success when Shōnen Jump sold more than one million copies. With Harenchi Gakuen, Nagai became the originator of ecchi manga, opened the door for a series of taboo-shattering gag comics, and also became the symbol of an entire generation. This work has influenced the world of manga, effecting both social mores and what was considered appropriate for manga. Harenchi Gakuen started with the idea of making a manga around a school. Nagai liked the word "Harenchi", which was used commonly to advertise adult movies. For him, scandal and school were like oil and water, and he thought that mixing them would be funny. At first, Nagai did not have an idea of what stories to develop, but his assistant at the time was boasting about how he had peeped on the girls during their physical examinations from a hole in the roof of his school; this idea was developed into the plot of the manga. Originally, open erotic references did not appear in Harenchi Gakuen. The first physical examination scenes only showed from the shoulders up, but there were a lot of girls drawn, and their images became popular. The editor asked Nagai to go further, which Nagai was eager to do. The inspiration for Harenchi Gakuen came from the West. Nagai liked foreign movies and used to read Playboy magazine. For the depiction of breasts, he took particular inspiration from the Venus de Milo. According to Nagai, what he in fact drew was not about eroticism per se, but about Japan's culture of shame. He wanted embarrassment to be the eroticism of the stories.
