The adventures of the Corsaire de l’Espace, broadcast on French television in the 1980s, were a worldwide success. Albator “is my alter ego in his determination”, liked to say the one who died at the age of 85 years.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
The name of the hero he created instantly summons a sweet nostalgia in the mind of an entire generation. The legend of manga and Japanese animation, Leiji Matsumoto, father of the Albator space pirate, died last week at the age of 85 of heart failure, announced, Monday, February 20, the house production toei.
During a career of several decades, the mangaka was particularly made known by science fiction works like Yamato, the battleship of Espace (1974) or Galaxy Express 999 (1977).
But it is above all the Captain Albator series (Harlock, in original version and in English), telling the adventures of the Corsaire de l’Espace with the face barred with a scar and in the long black cape with a head of death, which has made it essential worldwide. Released in Japan between 1977 and 1979 then adapted in cartoon, this work in which the hero struggles, aboard his Atlantis vessel, for freedom in the galaxy was a worldwide success, notably broadcast on French television from 1980 .
“traumatized” by the atomic bomb on Hiroshima 2>
“Albator is my most faithful and older friend. He is my alter ego in his determination,” assured Leiji Matsumoto in 2011 at the Annecy animated film festival, where he came to present the trailer for Film Albator, Corsaire de l’Espace.
This convinced pacifist sported, like Albator, a skull on his cap which he never left. “The idea is not necessarily to scare but to show [this] determination, he explained to the 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 early genius, admirer of the great mangaka Osamu Tezuka, had published his first manga at 15, the adventures of a bee, after having won A creation competition. 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 a source of inspiration, like all my youth experiences. When I had 400 shots, climbing, swimming in dangerous waters. Personal experience is essential for A creator, even science fiction “, he said.
decorated with the knight’s medal of the Order of Arts and Letters
Remember his very first trip to France or his flight to Rio de Janeiro aboard the Concorde plane during an interview with the France-Presse agency in 2013, he said he had “already drawn everything This in [his] manga, before having lived it. A kind of premonition “.
This pop culture icon had also signed an animated medium film in the early 2000s including the discovery album of the French group Daft Punk provided the soundtrack.
Decorated in 2012 by France of the knight medal of the Order of Arts and Letters, Matsumoto had celebrated in 2013 his sixty years of career at the Festival of the comic strip of Angoulême, of which he was the guest of honor. He had more recently participated in the Japan Expo, a large fair dedicated to Japanese pop culture, in Paris in 2019 with another manga legend, his compatriot Go Nagai, creator of Goldorak, another cult cartoon.