Cutie Honey is a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Go Nagai. First appearing in Weekly Shōnen Champion's 41st issue of 1973, the series ran until April 1974. It follows an android girl named Honey Kisaragi, who transforms into the busty, red or pink-haired heroine Cutie Honey to fight against the assorted villains that threaten her or her world. One of the trademarks of the character is that the transformation involves the temporary loss of all her clothing in the brief interim from changing from one form to the other. According to Nagai, she is the first female to be the protagonist of a shōnen manga series.

Kiyoshi Nagai , better known by the pen name Go Nagai , is a Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and erotica. He made his professional debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, but is best known for creating popular 1970s manga and anime series such as Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z. He is credited with creating the super robot genre; designing the first mecha robots piloted by a user from within a cockpit with Mazinger Z; as well as helping pioneer the magical girl genre with Cutie Honey; the post-apocalyptic manga/anime genre with Violence Jack; and the ecchi genre with Harenchi Gakuen. In 2005, he became a Character Design professor at the Osaka University of Arts. He has been a member of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize's nominating committee since 2009.