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It has been said before. main influences are megadiver and godzilla. Then Takaya was asked to make it more grotesque. that's what gave us guyver. There may be more in it though of course so your suggestions are really interesting to consider.

Good subject, and if we're talking earliest influences, I think we have to start with the films Alien and The Thing ('79 & '82, respectively). Both films had a huge influence on the culture and popularised the themes of parasitism and symbiotics throughout the 80's. Japan was heavily influenced by American culture after the WW2 and the post-war economic boom that had it's height throughout the late 70's, 80's and early 90's. I believe Baoh, Guyver along with Venom were some of the earliest comic book characters to incorporate this theme, and I dare say they all had some influence on each other since they all appeared '84/'85. Being a huge "monster" fan, it's also inconceivable that Takaya wouldn't have been influenced by not only Mazinger Z, but also by Go Nagai's other classic, Devilman. I consider Guyver an awesome hybrid between symbiotic alien anti-hero and giant mecha genres. Throw in some classic Super Sentai and giant Kaiju (like you mentioned, Kamen Rider, but also Ultra-man) and mindless sci-fi body horror like Videodrome and you've got the perfect concoction! Of course you could always go back further to find roots in Superman/Godzilla, but they were pretty much the precursors to everything. Nice topic btw!!

sounds like legal troubles...............I bet Takaya doesn't own the publishing rights, and Kadokawa have decided to drop it. There's nothing Takaya can do. He can't get it published via another outlet without getting the rights signed over, and if Kadokawa don't want to publish or sign over then it's stuck in indefinite limbo. Even if he leaks the manuscripts on the internet, he's liable to get sued. Only chance we have is if another publisher comes along and purchases the IP rights, or there's a sudden increase in popularity (high profile endorsement), that makes it financially attractive for Kadokawa to resume publication. It's a shame. Probably explains why he continued with Zeorymer Omega, since Tokuma are still willing to put it out (He dropped a tank last year). If only they had the buying power to transfer guyver to them. It would be a much better fit in Monthly Comic Ryū. Only time will tell, but the poor dudes gonna be 59 next year!

Busy last few days. Great War of the Guyvers has being fully restored as to what it was before the change over to Wordpress. This also has a fully working Gallery section which is a nice upgrade to the way pictures used to work on the site. Note if you want to save pictures move the mouse to near the top of the picture when the mouse icon changes from a hand to a pointer. Rightclick and then you can save the picture. Along with that the Links section has also being fully restored and updated. There's still a lot of left to do. The ACTF Data files along with the other data files are still on going.