Leiji Matsumoto was a Japanese manga artist and anime creator born as Akira Matsumoto on January 25, 1938, in Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture. He died of acute heart failure on February 13, 2023, in Tokyo at the age of 85. Matsumoto began drawing at age six and was heavily inspired by the works of Osamu Tezuka, which led him to create his own manga three years later. His early creative life was also influenced by American cartoons he watched on a projector given to him by his father and the science fiction novels of authors like H. G. Wells. He made his professional debut at age fifteen or sixteen with the manga Mitsubachi no Bōken (The Adventures of a Bee) in the magazine Manga Shōnen. After graduating from high school, he moved to Tokyo to pursue a full-time career as a manga artist.

Matsumoto's breakthrough came in 1971 with the series Otoko Oidon, a story about a young man struggling to pass university entrance exams. His major success, however, arrived with his involvement in the anime Space Battleship Yamato, which began airing in 1974 and later became a massive hit in its 1977 film edition. In 1977, he created two of his most famous series, Space Pirate Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999. These works, along with others like Queen Emeraldas and Queen Millennia, became iconic examples of the space opera genre. His distinctive artistic style combined precise, mechanical depictions of spacecraft with fantastical and melancholic atmospheres. The stories often featured mythological and tragic storylines, noble heroes, and strong moral and anti-war themes, which were informed by his personal interest in World War II history.

Many of Matsumoto's manga and anime series are set in a shared, interconnected universe, often referred to by fans as the Leijiverse. This allowed characters and ships from different works to make cameo appearances in each other's stories. For instance, the spaceship Yamato appears in the Galaxy Express 999 manga, and Captain Harlock appears in multiple series beyond his own. This interconnectedness was a deliberate part of his creative vision. In the late 1990s, he even experimented with publishing manga online, with works like Harlock Saga being among the first of their kind.

Matsumoto's influence extended beyond Japan and beyond the traditional boundaries of anime. In the early 2000s, the French electronic music duo Daft Punk requested his collaboration, leading him to supervise the creation of a series of music videos for their album Discovery. These videos were compiled into a full-length animated feature film titled Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. This project brought his unique visual style to a new global audience. Throughout his career, he received numerous honors, including the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1978 for Galaxy Express 999 and Senjo Manga Series, the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the Japanese government, and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government. He was married to fellow manga artist Miyako Maki.