Leiji Matsumoto

Leiji Matsumoto passed away eleven days ago, I just found out two days ago. A legendary manga creator whose influential works in the 1970s helped forge the distinctive identity of Japanese comics and animation, his style was nonetheless appreciably atypical.

His most famous works are Space Battleship Yamato, Captain Harlock, and, my favourite, Galaxy Express 999. Japanese fiction is too often plagued by an overabundance of sentimentality but Matsumoto's work balanced sentimentality with extraordinary brutality. When the child protagonist witnesses the brutal killing of his mother, and quickly exacts violent revenge, the ghostly sentimentality of his encounter with an android who resembles his mother is well earned. The scale of destruction that sets up Space Battleship Yamato, both within the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth and in the aftermath of World War II in real life Japan, justifies its depiction of a desperate crew relying on a symbol of Japan's past.

I hadn't seen Captain Harlock so I watched the first episode last night. As a fan of the Golden Age of Piracy, I loved the show's indulgence in that fantasy. Like Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999, it marries futuristic imagery with anachronistic, antiquated aesthetics and technology. It's all held together with an honest emotional core. It's not hard to see why Matsumoto has left such a lasting impression and will continue to do so.