Toei, a Japanese production firm, announced on Monday that manga maestro Leiji Matsumoto, 85, has passed away. His epic science fiction works had a significant impact on the Japanese comic book and animation industries.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, animated TV programmes and films based on Matsumoto’s cult works like “Space Battleship Yamato,” “Captain Harlock,” and “Galaxy Express 999” were internationally popular.
And he oversaw the making of an anime based on the music of French electro band Daft Punk, whose 2000 single “One More Time” used footage from the film.
According to a statement released by Toei, the artist passed away from heart failure last week.
Matsumoto, a young fan of the legendary manga artist Osamu Tezuka and a precocious talent, released his first comic, “The Adventures of a Bee,” when he was only 15 years old.
Matsumoto’s fanciful representations of engineering and space travel, which included anything from interplanetary steam trains to fights against aliens carrying radioactive meteorites, won him widespread acclaim in Japan and beyond.
In 2012, he was honoured with France’s highest literary honour, the Order of Arts and Letters, and to this day, brass bands in Japan often perform songs from his animated films as karaoke at baseball games.
Matsumoto spoke on his experience of the atomic bombs that ended World War II in 1945 in an interview with AFP in 2013.
“The plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima went right over my head. The second was meant for a town close to Fukuoka where I was living. It was bad weather that condemned Nagasaki,” he said.
“That traumatised me, but was a source of inspiration, as were all the experiences of my youth… personal experience is essential for a creative spirit.”
»Manga master Leiji Matsumoto dies aged 85«