Leiji Matsumoto

Leiji Matsumoto was a Japanese manga artist, and creator of several anime and manga series. His widow Miyako Maki is also a manga artist.
Matsumoto was famous for his works such as Space Battleship Yamato, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, and Galaxy Express 999. His style was characterized by mythological and often tragic storylines with strong moral themes, noble heroes, feminine heroines, and a love of strange worlds and melancholic atmosphere.

Life

Early life

Leiji Matsumoto was born on January 25, 1938, in Kurume, Fukuoka. He was the middle child of a family of seven brothers, and, in his early childhood, Matsumoto was given a 35mm film projector by his father, and watched American cartoons during the Pacific War. During this time, he gained an interest in science fiction novels by authors Unno Juza and H. G. Wells. Matsumoto started drawing at the age of six, and began drawing manga three years later after seeing the works of Osamu Tezuka. At 18, he moved to Tokyo to become a manga artist.

Career

In 1954, Matsumoto made his debut under his real name, Akira Matsumoto, with Mitsubachi no bōken in the magazine Manga Shōnen.
Matsumoto's big break came with Otoko Oidon, a series that chronicled the life of a rōnin, in 1971. In 1972 he created the mature-themed dark comedy Western seinen series Gun Frontier for the Play Comic magazine, which ran from 1972 to 1975. Around the same time he started a series of unconnected short stories set during World War II, Senjo Manga Series, which would eventually become popular under the title The Cockpit.
He was involved in Space Battleship Yamato and created the highly popular series Space Pirate Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999. In 1978, he was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen for Galaxy Express 999 and Senjo Manga Series. Animated versions of Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999 are set in the same universe, which spawned several spin offs and related series, most notably Queen Emeraldas and Queen Millennia.
Matsumoto supervised the creation of several music videos for the French house group Daft Punk, set to tracks from their album Discovery. These videos were issued end-to-end on a DVD release titled Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.
Approximately two dozen bronze statues – each four feet tall – of characters and scenes from Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 were erected in the downtown area of Tsuruga in 1999. Each statue includes a plaque at its base explaining the character and features Matsumoto's signature.
File:Himiko Cruise Ship.jpg|250px|thumb|Himiko, a Tokyo Cruise Ship water bus designed by Leiji Matsumoto
Matsumoto worked with Yoshinobu Nishizaki on Space Battleship Yamato. Matsumoto created a manga loosely based on the series, and the Yamato makes cameo appearances in several of his works including the Galaxy Express 999 manga.
A later work by Matsumoto called Great Yamato featuring an updated Yamato was renamed Great Galaxy due to legal issues with Nishizaki. As of 2009, Matsumoto and Nishizaki were working on independent anime projects featuring the acclaimed Space Battleship Yamato, with the conditions that Matsumoto cannot use the name Yamato or the plot or characters from the original, and Nishizaki cannot use the conceptual art, character or ship designs of the original.
In August 2014, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his debut, Matsumoto launched the manga Captain Harlock: Jigen Kōkai, illustrated by Kōichi Shimahoshi, in the pages of Akita Shoten's Champion Red magazine. Dimensional Voyage is a retelling of the original 1978 Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga. It had been licensed in the United States by Seven Seas Entertainment.

Personal life

Matsumoto was married to manga artist and Licca-chan creator Miyako Maki.
On November 15, 2019, Matsumoto suffered severe respiratory problems and collapsed during an event in Turin, Italy, for the 40th-anniversary tour celebrating the Captain Harlock anime adaptation. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and had a breathing tube inserted after he was admitted to the emergency unit. However, he was considered to be out of danger two days later.

Death

Matsumoto died of acute heart failure at a hospital in Tokyo on February 13, 2023, at the age of 85. Various manga artists offered condolences, including Yasuhiro Nightow, Nozomu Tamaki, and his wife Maki. Galaxy Express 999 voice actress Masako Nozawa and translator Zack Davisson also gave their condolences.

Style and themes

Narrative structure

Matsumoto's stories are influenced by the Bildungsroman tradition, i.e. tales of formative education and self-discovery. Scholar Darren-Jon Ashmore notes that Matsumoto viewed his own space opera sagas, such as Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Harlock, as narratives of growth and transformation, where characters "make choices for themselves and others, giving up much of themselves so that a greater goal is served." Ashmore further explains that Matsumoto was inspired by classic works like Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, focusing on characters who are "initially the product of their times and circumstances, but ultimately come to be masters of their own fate." The concept of "Arcadia", an idealized, lost paradise of youth, is a recurring motif, stemming from Matsumoto's engagement with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Italian Journey.
A core philosophical concept in Matsumoto's interconnected "Leijiverse" is toki-no-wa, representing a cyclical view of history and destiny where heroes and events echo across ages. Ashmore describes this as a reflection of both Buddhist concepts of rebirth and Norse cosmology, where characters function as "eternal champions" navigating repeated epochs of conflict and renewal. This cyclical nature allows for a mutable, non-linear canon where stories and character relationships are constantly re-explored and redefined across different manga and anime adaptations. Central themes across his work include a resistance to societal apathy and conformity, a melancholic nostalgia for a lost heroic past, and the sacrifice of the individual for a greater, often cosmic, purpose.

Female characters

Matsumoto's female characters, while visually distinctive with their tall, willowy designs and long hair, often occupy narrow narrative roles reflective of 1970s Japanese gender norms. Scholar Stefanie Thomas analyzes that in his early space operas, female characters are statistically scarce among main casts and frequently conform to archetypes identified by sociologist Kimio Ito: the object of worship, the provider of sexual relations, and the source of nurturing. Thomas argues that while characters like the navigator Kei Yuki demonstrate professional competence, they are often tasked with "emotional labor" to soothe male egos, and female antagonists like the Mazone or Queen Prometheum are portrayed as threatening "Others" who reject traditionally feminine-coded empathy. Matsumoto stated that his female designs were inspired by the German actress Marianne Hold and by "spirited women" from his youth in Kyushu, whom he described as headstrong at home but observant of social proprieties in public.

Visual style

Matsumoto's artistic style is characterized by highly detailed mechanical designs, especially for spaceships, which incorporate numerous analog dials and gothic elements. His visual approach to characters creates a stark contrast between the delicate, elegant designs of his young women and the more grotesque or comedic appearance of secondary characters. The design of his female characters was refined in collaboration with his wife, manga artist Miyako Maki.