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Leiji Matsumoto in front of an exhibition poster at the Paris House of Japanese Culture
Photo: Jean-Baptiste Quentin / picture alliance / dpa
Influential Japanese manga artist Leiji Matsumoto is dead. The author of acclaimed manga like Space Battleship Yamato and Captain Harlock died last week at the age of 85.
Many of Matsumoto's works have been made into films or made into television series.
The Japanese had also created an anime film based on the songs of the French electronic duo Daft Punk.
A portion of this film was used in the video clip for the 2000 Daft Punk hit One More Time.
In 2012, Matsumoto was honored with inclusion in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Matsumoto witnessed the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 when he was seven.
"It traumatized me, but it was also a source of inspiration," he said in a 2013 interview with the AFP news agency.
His anti-war stance dates back to his father, who served as a pilot during the World War and lost many of his subordinates.
He taught his son that war should never be waged.
"War destroys our future," Matsumoto said in a 2018 interview.
Matsumoto published his first manga at the age of 15.
He rose to fame in 1954 with »Otoko Oidon«, a comedy-manga series that illustrates the story of a poor young man from southern Japan who is preparing for an entrance exam for Tokyo University.
Matsumoto's classic »Space Battleship Yamato« from 1974, which dealt seriously with science fiction and space travel and therefore reached a new audience in Japan and later the USA, is considered to be formative for the manga story.
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Galaxy Express front page
Many of his manga works such as "Galaxy Express 999" and "Space Pirate Captain Harlock" have been adapted into anime television series and gained wide popularity both at home and abroad.
Born in 1938 in Fukuoka Prefecture in southwestern Japan, Matsumoto was one of the first manga artists whose comic and animation work attracted fans outside of Japan.
Matsumoto, whose real name was Akira Matsumoto, died of acute heart failure in a Tokyo hospital on February 13, his office Studio Leijisha announced on Monday.
He lived to be 85. In a tribute, Matsumoto's daughter Makiko wrote that he "set out for the Sea of Stars."
feb/dpa/AFP/Reuters