The name of the hero he created instantly summons a sweet nostalgia in the minds of an entire generation. The legend of Japanese manga and animation, Leiji Matsumoto, father of the space pirate Harlock, died last week at the age of 85 of heart failure, announced on Monday February 20, the house produced by Toei.
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 Captain Harlock series (Harlock, in original version and in English), telling the adventures of the space corsair with a scarred face and a long black cape with a skull and crossbones, which has made it essential throughout the world. Released in Japan between 1977 and 1979 then adapted into a cartoon, this work in which the hero fights, aboard his ship Atlantis, for freedom in the galaxy was a worldwide success, notably broadcast on French television from 1980. .
“Traumatized” by the atomic bomb on Hiroshima
“Harlock 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 Albator, space corsair.
This convinced pacifist wore, like Harlock, a skull on his cap that he never took off. “The idea is not necessarily to scare but to show [this] determination, he explained to World in 2019. It is also a symbol of freedom, to say that you have to live without regrets. »
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 that 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 inspirational, 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 science fiction,” he said.
Decorated with the medal of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
Recalling his very first trip to France or his flight to Rio de Janeiro aboard the Concorde plane during an interview with Agence France-Presse in 2013, he said he had “already drawn all this in [ his] mangas, before having lived it. A sort of premonition.”
This pop culture icon had also signed a medium-length animated film in the early 2000s, for which the 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 sixty years of career at the Angoulême comic book festival, of which he was the guest of honor. . He had more recently participated in the Japan expo, a large exhibition dedicated to Japanese pop culture, in Paris in 2019 with another manga legend, his compatriot Go Nagai, creator of Grendizer, hero of another cult cartoon.