Leiji Matsumoto, Japanese manga and animation legend and father of space pirate Harlock, died last week at the age of 85 from heart failure, production company Toei announced on Monday. During a career spanning several decades, the mangaka was particularly known for science fiction works such as Yamato, the space battleship (1974) or Galaxy Express 999 (1977).
But it is above all the Captain Albator series (Harlock in the original version and in English), telling the adventures of the space pirate with his face crossed out with a scar and the long black cape marked with a skull, which has made it essential worldwide. Released in Japan between 1977 and 1979 and then adapted into a cartoon, this work was a worldwide success, notably broadcast on French television from 1980. “Albator is my most faithful and oldest friend. He is my alter ego in his determination, “assured Leiji Matsumoto in 2011 at the Annecy Animation Film Festival, where he came to present the trailer for the film Captain Harlock, space corsair.
Born in 1938 on the island of Kyushu (southwest of Japan), this precocious genius, admirer of the great mangaka Osamu Tezuka, had published his first manga at the age of 15, The Adventures of a Bee, after winning a contest of creation. The artist also said he was inspired in his work by the atomic bomb dropped by the United States in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, when he was 7 years old and lived in Fukuoka, 300 km away. “It traumatized me, but was inspiring, like all my early experiences. When I was doing the 400 shots, rock climbing, swimming in dangerous waters. Personal experience is essential for a creator, even of sci-fi,” he said.
Recalling his very first trip to France or his flight to Rio de Janeiro aboard the Concorde plane during an interview with AFP in 2013, he said he had “already drawn all this in (his) manga , before having experienced it. A sort of premonition.” This icon of pop culture had also signed in the early 2000s a medium-length animated film whose Discovery album by the French group Daft Punk provided the soundtrack.
Decorated in 2012 by France with the medal of knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, Matsumoto had celebrated in 2013 his 60 years of career at the Festival of the comic strip of Angoulême, of which he was the guest of honor. . He had more recently participated in the Japan Expo, a major exhibition dedicated to Japanese pop culture, in Paris in 2019 with another manga legend, his compatriot Go Nagai (Goldorak).
