Taiyō Matsumoto (松本大洋 Matsumoto Taiyō, born 1967) is an influential manga artist. He made his debut in Afternoon, Kodansha's monthly seinen manga magazine, but is probably best known for his works with Kodansha's rival publisher Shogakukan, including Tekkonkinkreet, Ping Pong and Number Five. He has received critical praise for his unconventional and often surrealist art style. Ping Pong and Aoi Haru (Blue Spring) have been adapted into live-action feature films, much more famous than the original manga in the west, and acclaimed animation studio Studio 4°C adapted Tekkonkinkreet into an animated feature film. In 2007 he received an Excellence Award for manga at the Japan Media Arts Festival for the art of Takemitsu Zamurai.
He is the cousin of Santa Inoue, another critically acclaimed manga artist.
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Originally he wanted to become a famous soccer player, but he decided to turn to artistry as an occupation instead. After his initial success in the Comic Open contest, he began touring France in 1986, an event that became a significant point in his career. Artists like Moebius influenced the works of Matsumoto such that they bore both European and Japanese artistics features on their pages. Most of his art is today described as surreal, with frenzied line-work and bizarre backgrounds. The manga he produced covers a variety of topics, from sports to family comedy to science fiction epic.[1]
In 1993, he began work on the Tekkonkinkurito trilogy, which became a success in the Big Spirits magazine, and published a series of short stories in a collection called Nihon no Kyodai that was publicized at the time by Comic Aré magazine. Ping Pong appeared in Big Spirits in 1996, soon followed by the series Number Five in the Shogakukan magazine in 2001.[1]
The Tekkonkinkreet anime was released in Japan in late 2006 and is now under Sony Pictures licensing in the United States. VIZ has announced plans to republish the manga (previously published in English as Black & White) in one volume and under the original title.[2]
The ISBNs are those of the most recent English editions. Publication dates: (Japanese/English if applicable).