At the age of 85, Leiji Matsumoto, the creator of the iconic anime series Space Battleship Yamato and other works with fanciful design and antiwar themes, passed away.
Galaxy Express 999 and Space Pirate Captain Herlock, two of his manga creations were turned into television anime series in the 1970s and became tremendous successes both inside and outside of Japan.
Matsumoto, whose true name was Akira Matsumoto, passed away on February 13 in a hospital in Tokyo due to abrupt heart failure, according to his office, Studio Leijisha.
Matsumoto, who was raised in the southern Japanese city of Kurume, began painting when he was six years old. He rose to fame with Otoko Oidon, a manga series telling the story of a poor man from southern Japan who lives in a boarding house in Tokyo and struggles to balance work and studying.
Many of his manga were in the ‘battlefield comics’ genre with more than 150 stories depicting the tragedy of war.
His antiwar theme comes from his father, an elite army pilot who returned from Southeast Asia and taught his son that war should never be fought.
Post Your Comments