>>842015They Were Eleven was pretty influential for both sci-fi manga and shoujo in general.
Whether you like it or not, Dragonball is one of the most influential manga of all time outside of things like Astro-boy and Devilman.
While I'm thinking about robots, Mazinger Z was the first series to put someone in the mech. It's more famous for the anime, but it did start as a manga after all.
While thinking about Go Nagai, we might as well talk about Harenchi Gakuen which was the first "ecchi" manga, although we'd probably just call it a generic sex comedy now. It was also an important early hit for Weekly Shounen Jump, who would eventually become the biggest and most influential manga magazine.
For that matter, Cutey Honey was very influential for the magical girl genre. Hell, even having a famous lead in an action manga, period. But that's enough about Nagai.
Rumiko Takahashi is also massively influential and not just for one or two stories, but Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, and Ranma ½ all have influenced many prominent mangakas, like Adachi, who have themselves influenced many.
While thinking about Rumiko, I thought about Inuyasha and yokai in general and remembered GeGeGe no Kitarō. This work single-handedly caused Japanese yokai to become prominent in manga. Nowadays, you can hardly go through five manga before you run into something involving demons and spirits and without Shigeru Mizuki, that level of focus wouldn't be there.
Thinking about Kitaro made me think about horror in general and by far the most preeminent horror mangaka of the modern age is Junji Ito. But his major inspiration was Kazou Umezu, who has since retired but is still alive. His early works like Cat Eyed-Boy and The Drifting Classroom have greatly affected the horror general. That being said, it's interesting that Umezu has hardly been adapted into anime. But then again, that's also the case with Ito. I guess horror doesn't lend itself well to sound and motion.
