Na-Ga is a male Japanese artist who is employed as a graphic designer and illustrator for the company Key known for such famous visual novels as Kanon, Air, and Clannad among others. Na-Ga has been working for Key since the production of Air as one of the computer graphic artists, but was able to majorly contribute to character design in Key's sixth visual novel Little Busters! with Itaru Hinoue, along with the later released Little Busters! Ecstasy and Kud Wafter. For Key's ninth title Rewrite, Na-Ga contributed to the game's computer graphics. Na-Ga worked in collaboration with Jun Maeda and ASCII Media Works' Dengeki G's Magazine to produce the mixed media projects Angel Beats! and Charlotte as the original character designer. Na-Ga once worked for the company Pearlsoft R between 1997 and 1999 where he contributed to two visual novels, Hakanai Omoi: Anemone, and Sweet Days, as the main artist before coming to Key. He also participates in a dōjinshi circle named "from-D".
Nāga (IAST: nāgá; Devanāgarī: नाग) is the Sanskrit and Pali word for a deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a very great snake—specifically the king cobra, found in Indian religions, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. A female nāga is a nāgī or nāgiṇī.
In Sanskrit, a nāgá (नाग) is a cobra, the Indian cobra (Naja naja). A synonym for nāgá is phaṇin (फणिन्). There are several words for "snake" in general, and one of the very commonly used ones is sarpá (सर्प). Sometimes the word nāgá is also used generically to mean "snake". The word is cognate with English 'snake', Germanic: *snēk-a-, Proto-IE: *(s)nēg-o- (with s-mobile).
In the great epic Mahabharata, the depiction of nagas tends toward the negative. An epic calls them "persecutors of all creatures", and tells us "the snakes were of virulent poison, great prowess and excess of strength, and ever bent on biting other creatures" (Book I: Adi Parva, Section 20). At some points within the story, nagas are important players in many of the events narrated in the epic, frequently no more evil nor deceitful than the other protagonists, and sometimes on the side of good.
The Naga (Sanskrit: नाग) are traditionally considered one of the ancient-most kshatriya tribes of India and to have spread throughout India during the period of the epic Mahabharata. The demi-god tribe called Suparnas, to which Vishnu's mount Garuda belonged, were arch-rivals of the Nagas.