'Galaxy Express 999' Manga Artist Matsumoto Reiji Passes Away at 85 Years Old

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] The original manga artist of the comic "Galaxy Express 999," which gained tremendous popularity through TV broadcasts in the 1980s, Matsumoto Reiji (松本零士) passed away from acute heart failure on the 13th, Kyodo News reported on the 20th. He was 85 years old.

Manga 'Galaxy Express 999' original author Leiji Matsumoto passed away at the age of 85 due to acute heart failure on the 13th, Kyodo News reported on the 20th.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Matsumoto was born in Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture in 1938 and debuted as a manga artist in 1954, when he was a first-year high school student, with his submission "The Adventures of the Honeybee" published in "Manga Shonen."

He rose to stardom through "Galaxy Express 999," serialized in "Weekly Shonen King" from 1971 to 1981. Riding on the manga's popularity, Galaxy Express 999 was also adapted into a TV animation and movies.

"Galaxy Express 999" is a work depicting the journey of the protagonist Tetsuro, who lost his mother to the Machine Count, as he travels through space with the mysterious woman Maetel, dreaming of revenge. It is a masterpiece that deeply explores civilization undergoing mechanization and human nature, and it continues to be widely discussed today.

Matsumoto is known to have entered the manga industry to earn money after giving up his dream of becoming a mechanical engineer due to his poor family circumstances. At a press conference during his visit to Korea in 2017, he revealed that the idea for the train-themed work "Galaxy Express 999" originated from a powerful experience on a train journey he took while moving to Tokyo.

Recalling that he wanted to work in Tokyo but could not even afford a train ticket, and that an editor in Tokyo sent him a train ticket, Matsumoto explained, "When I was on the train going to Tokyo and passed through a tunnel, I felt as if I had entered a cosmic world. At that moment, I thought I wanted to fly into space, which became the inspiration for Galaxy Express 999."

Besides Galaxy Express 999, he introduced various works such as "Queen Millennia," "Space Pirate Captain Harlock," and "Space Battleship Yamato," leading the animation boom in Korea and Japan during the 1970s and 1980s.