His career started in 1982, publishing his comic Milk Report in the manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump.
[3] Izumi Matsumoto began working for Weekly Shōnen Jump when he cold called them and formed a relationship with Toshimasa Takahashi, then a junior editor in charge of answering phones.
[4] The five-volume Comic On was also possibly the first "trans-hemispheric manga compilation" as the semi-animated content set to music and dialogue also contained work by Jan Scott-Frazier and Lea Hernandez.
Matsumoto set up his own company Genesis DPC to fund the project and partnered with Toshiba EMI to sell it.
Manga publishers considered this a competitor, and Matsumoto struggled to get permission from Shueisha to use his own Kimagure Orange Road characters in the work.