Disaster Kyoto Animation studio set on fire - 35 Dead, Many Injured

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account

Article said:
A man started a fire at a Kyoto animation studio after spraying a liquid there Thursday morning, leaving nearly 40 people injured, several of them unconscious, and one person feared dead, local police and rescuers said.

The fire started around 10:30 a.m. at a three-story studio of Kyoto Animation Co., a company known for producing popular TV animation series "K-On!!" and "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu).

The man believed to have set the fire, apparently in his 40s, was among the injured and has been taken to a hospital.
846747

846748

This appears to still be ongoing and details are pretty sparse between any article covering it in english at least. This seems like a very unique case though, in that I don't think there is any precedent for this kind of thing at all.

10+ dead at this point.
View attachment 846932
According to Kyoto Police and fire department, one person died on first floor.
12 more cardiac arrest (dead).
36 more injured, 10 severe, 6 moderate, 20 meh.

View attachment 847467
Locations and Bodycounts based on areas of the building. The 19 on the staircase on the third floor are pretty much stacked on eachother as they tried to make a rush to the roof, but appearantly the door only opens from the outside (suicide prevention) or was a pull door.

How can I support?
There is no clear indication of where the funds are headed as of yet, other than that they will be on hold until they can coordinate a distribution method.
This is a direct link to the KyoAni shop. A Twitter user has provided a guide for creating an account and making purchases.

Who?: 青葉真司 AOBA, Shinji. 41, unemployed. He was not an employee at any point. He had a prior arrest in 2012 for robbing a convenience of 20,000 yen and was in jail for 3.5 years. In 2016 he was released and lived in a rehabilitation facility before moving to a single apartment somewhere in Saitama. In March and August of 2018 police went to his apartment over Noise Complaints. July 14 days prior to the incident he had grabbed and threatened to kill a neighbor after they complained about noise, police were called again. He was spotted the day before the incident within the area of the studio laying on park benches.

How?:He brought 40 liters of Gasoline between 2 tanks, a BBQ lighter, and a bag with knives and a hammer. He used a pushcart to transport everything to a nearby area. Poured the gasoline at the entrance by the spiral staircase, which funneled the fire and smoke upwards at a rapid rate. He himself was caught in the fire. Due to an event being held that day, the security system which used ID cards had been disabled that day for a guest event, allowing him entrance.

Why?: Currently the theories are taken from statements that have been connected to him prior on 2ch/annel, and something he said while arrested.
1; Music/A song he may have claimed ownership too was used in Sound! Euphonium
2; He was a Railfan that had snapped over wrappings on a train "dirtying" it (This is being disputed by news stations)

3; Possibly another undetermined claim of them "ripping him off". Now claimed to be over a novel he had written, which was "plagiarized" by KyoAni. This is the prevailing theory as of yet due to his statements to the police
4; His waifu he shipped with another girl was confirmed to not be gay, got a boyfriend or was interested in one, and is not "pure" anymore

How many people were injured or killed?: 35 Confirmed Dead, 33 others injured, with 8 of them in critical condition. 6 Escaped unharmed.
Police say 74 people were in the building at the time of the attack. Some of which were guests from an outside studio attending an event.

Who died? (this may partly be speculation, its built off of people not being accounted for):
-Takemoto Yasuhiro
-Kawanami Eisaku
-Nishiya Futoshi
-Ishida Naomi
-Tsuda Yukie
-Ono Megumi

Here's a newer article with a more detailed explanation of the situation
Asahi Times Article said:
KYOTO--Thirty-three people were killed and 17 others remain hospitalized after a suspected arsonist set fire to a three-story animation studio here on July 18, police and fire department officials said.

Some of the 36 people injured in the fire were unconscious, according to Kyoto prefectural police.

The studio, operated by Kyoto Animation Co., is located in a residential area in Kyoto’s Fushimi Ward about 100 meters north of Rokujizo Station on Keihan Electric Railway Co.’s Uji Line. There were about 70 people in the studio at the time.

Several neighbors called the fire department around 10:35 a.m. after they heard an explosion and saw smoke rising from the building. Thirty-five firetrucks were dispatched to the scene.

Police detained a 41-year-old man who is believed to have spread a flammable liquid in the area. Witnesses said he ran into the building screaming, “Die.”

He was injured in the incident and remains unconcious at a hospital.

A 61-year-old woman in the neighborhood said she initially mistook the suspect for a victim of the blaze.

She said she opened the front entrance to her home after the interphone sounded and found a large man kneeling on the ground. Both of his arms had burns and his right leg was on fire. His hair appeared singed.

The woman asked the weakened man if he was all right, but he did not respond. She used a hose to pour water on the man.

As she waited for an ambulance, a number of police officers surrounded the man and peppered him with questions about how he entered the studio and why he set it on fire, she said.

The woman said she could not catch much of what the man said, but she did clearly hear him shout, “They ripped me off.”

A woman in her 20s who works nearby said she went outside after hearing the explosion around 10:30 a.m. When she approached the burning building, she saw a man apparently in his 20s trying to escape along a support on the outer wall on the second story.

The woman and a co-worker brought a ladder to the building to help the man reach the ground.

The head of a local taxi company’s branch near the site said two men ran into the office around 10:40 a.m. and asked that the fire department be called.

One of the men was assisting the other, whose clothes were badly burned. The branch chief tried to support the two while they waited for an ambulance to arrive.

A 22-year-old man said he heard two or three explosions and saw black smoke emerging from a first-floor window. He said flames could be seen in many of the building’s windows.

Kyoto Animation has produced a number of popular TV anime series, such as “K-On!,” “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” and “Sound! Euphonium.”

Although many major animation companies are located in the Tokyo area, Kyoto Animation has kept its base of operations in the ancient capital since its founding in 1981 because the city has accumulated a long cultural history, company officials said.

Much of the work on the company’s TV programs and movies is done in Kyoto.

Sources-
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201907190042.html
http://archive.fo/WZ1Ed
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190719/p2a/00m/0na/003000c
http://archive.fo/zr1gf
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/...-repeatedly-caused-trouble-for-neighbors.html
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20190719_32/
http://archive.fo/qNZ6l

Edit: Cleaned formatting, additional information, trying to identify what is speculated, spelling/grammar.
Edit: Added information, added sources, archived sources.
 
Last edited:
According to a cursory search of logsoku.com I did just now, Barisaku-kun (the railsperg suspect) may have posted after the incident, ruling him out as the perpetrator. I say "may have" because it might be an imitator.


(I'm not sure about the "disgruntled LN author" theory either, though. Apparently that may be extrapolation on the part of Japanese mass media, since the perpetrator has yet to speak about his motives at length.)
So the 3 main theorys are:
  1. Yakuza nothing personel shit
  2. Disgrunted ex employee
  3. Travis touchdown train sperg from 2ch
Am i missing anyone?
 
There were also quite a few screencaps from a news station that showed the bloody footprints, the perpetrator on the ground surrounded by police, and 2 of some survivors on the street. I can't find the footprint picture or the police picture currently though. Mostly from the /a/ thread.
onscene2.jpg
onscene1.jpg

Edit:I think this was actually posted earlier in the thread but here's one picture of the perp surrounded by police, there is another floating around with a wider shot after they had body chalked him.
perp.jpg
 
Last edited:
Some of the news stations had pictures show the major areas where the fire was, both the spiral staircase and the stairwell were the primary areas where the fire had built up in their diagrams. Here's a screen cap of one, I know I saw a more dimensional representation of it earlier.
View attachment 848307

Thanks. I’ll have to hunt down some more views. That circular staircase would have acted as a perfect chimney to draw the fire up and throughout the building. It’s more concerning how the fire was able to climb the main stairs in the stairwell.
 
So the 3 main theorys are:
  1. Yakuza nothing personel shit
  2. Disgrunted ex employee
  3. Travis touchdown train sperg from 2ch
Am i missing anyone?
Police confirmed he wasn't employed at any point by them. I've seen some rumors about him being in an affiliated company, but like everything else it seems to only be a theory.
 
I do not like feminists and all that, but damn this is sad. Producing shitty cartoons is not something you should be killed over.

But yeah Japan needs better fire safety rules.
 
Police confirmed he wasn't employed at any point by them. I've seen some rumors about him being in an affiliated company, but like everything else it seems to only be a theory.
Guess only way we'll know is if he talks. And lord knows he won't unless law enforcement force it out of him.
 
They made great shows. They didn't deserve this. Why couldn't this shithead have torched A1 Pictures after work hours? Could've given a lot of people 4 hours of personal life a week instead of 3 for a while.
 
So the 3 main theorys are:
  1. Yakuza nothing personel shit
  2. Disgrunted ex employee
  3. Travis touchdown train sperg from 2ch
Am i missing anyone?

Evidence seems to be pointing at an Alex Mauer tier sperg with some real or imagined belief that the company had stolen a story or idea from him. Complete with prior violent arrest record for holding up a convenience store with a knife. Like ultimately every other thread around here, the answer looks to once again be Autism.
 
Holy fucking shit! I’ve been trying to work out how the fire spread through this building and how it did it so bloody fast? It wasn’t making a lot of sense how it jumped floors so fast in a modern building. The fire pattern on the front facing looked weird to my eye. Plus I couldn’t figure out what that weird pinwheel shape was on the floor plans? But I just saw these pictures of the main central office. Holy Shit!

They had a circular staircase going straight up through the main open areas of all three floors. What the Holy Fuck!‽ 33 innocent talented people are dead today, because whoever designed this fucking office was never taught why you put staircases behind fire doors in commercial buildings. And this building was less than 5 years old and built for them, was it not? So that perfect chimney ideal for spreading fire to every corner of the building as fast as physics allow was probably a day 1 design feature, and not some idiotic later modification?

I mean, these poor people faced a perfect storm. They had an obsessive psychotic in some way upset over the anime toddies they draw, with 40 gallons of gasoline and matches. They had a blocked fire exit barring the only possible way out. And they were in a building seemingly engineered to spread fire as fast and far as possible, with apparently no functional firebreaks between floors or office spaces. I’m also suspecting that that rear staircase was not properly rigged for positive pressure. If it had been they might have been able to go down and out the rear. So incredibly sad.

Edit: to add to the overall impression that this building had no fire protection whatsoever, looking at the ceiling in the before photo, I don’t see any sprinklers? I see what I think is one smoke/heat detector, and that’s it. Also the “goop” dripping from the windows looks to be the remains of mesh summer window screens. You can see a few intact screens in the third floor windows.

Sounds like a whole bunch of people need to commit seppuku to redeem their honor.
 
Evidence seems to be pointing at an Alex Mauer tier sperg with some real or imagined belief that the company had stolen a story or idea from him. Complete with prior violent arrest record for holding up a convenience store with a knife. Like ultimately every other thread around here, the answer looks to once again be Autism.
Like, when is it ever not autism or something similarly exceptional?
 
This has been bringing a lot of the "I was just pretending to be retarded" types out:
848389

If you're gonna be edgy, at least have the balls to stand by it.
 
Last edited:
Granted, everything in Japan these days is concrete, and gas valves are the main problem, but even then everything is mostly fireproofed. This isn't even counting, as I've been ninja'd before, everyone keeping their shit morally together and not sperging out like everywhere else in the world. I'll give Japan's civil planners shit and that they need to make building standards and specifications fireproofed, but this was pretty much a crime of essentially premediated murder. You don't get that much gasoline unless you're on a tanker, gas station, or distribution plant. This shit sounds as planned as my conspiracy theory on Shonen Jump, and this isn't even a conspiracy with how everything is out in the open.

In other topics, Japan and citywide fires are as synonymous as Japan and (insert Japanese cultural item here). Not even counting bombings by the USA, Japanese city planning just somehow is flammable in the fucking blueprints. Before modernization, everything was (thank you @RodgerDodger ) made of wood, rice paper, straw, and lime shell plaster. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1928 even showed how majorly underequipped modern buildings in Japan were against its own topography and tectonics. Fuck, Yakuza around the 1960s and 70s were setting fires around Tokyo to establishments and residences post rebuilding era to clear out prime real estate and sell at inflated prices, and this continued well into the bubble economy of the 1980s. It would be nice to see Japan update its fire ordinances for buildings, but Japan itself is like Sim City on Hard Mode; the moment you fix one thing, it just opens up more doors for more problems.
 
Like, when is it ever not autism or something similarly exceptional?

Well, you have the New Zealand mosque shooter who was motivated for political reasons. And then you also get the occasional sexless male mad at society for not simply handing him a wife and a career. I don't know if that qualifies as retarded, though there are usually reasons as to WHY they remain isolated and unable to succeed. Autism is certainly one such reason but not always the only one. I have no doubt that this will be the fact the media will go with in this case, and it will be nothing other then a determined effort to slag all men in general, and men with with no girlfriends/wives in particular with absolutely no self awareness.

This is something modern society has a VERY hard time grappling with. the "incels" are spergs, but they are right about one thing. Unmarried men are a danger to society, because they have no investment in it. In the past we had two methods for dealing with the chronically virgin. Religious service as a monk where whatever anti-social issues they had could be focused to spiritual pursuits, or as cannon fodder in a war. In modern society god is dead, so there are no longer any good monastic orders to dump autists, and we are in an unprecedented era of peace so there are no wars to send them off to die in. So what happens? Well, they latch on to whatever caused their disconnected brains view as appropriate. 8chan /pol/ sperging about muslim invasions of the west like Tarrant, or an anime company ruining a pure 2d waifu like this guy. The two events are not so far unrelated as we might think, but I am sure the nuances of it will be lost in the inevitable reeing. Remember, before 9-11, the worst terrorist attack in the USA was the Oklahoma City Bombing. Guess the marital status of Timothy McVeigh. Yep. Single.
 
Evidence seems to be pointing at an Alex Mauer tier sperg with some real or imagined belief that the company had stolen a story or idea from him. Complete with prior violent arrest record for holding up a convenience store with a knife. Like ultimately every other thread around here, the answer looks to once again be Autism.
Reading his translated messages, I don't think he cared for the "stealing" part in of itself, but because he thought it made him lose his e-identity or something. Can't bother to find the post again, but (if the translation is correct) he said he just cared about making the news in whatever way possible.

His main priority was just getting attention.
 
I'm reading comments on the GoFundMe for the victims (which is currently at 1.1 million dollars) and they're really sweet. There are even a lot of Japanese and Chinese comments, so this seems like a global effort to pitch in and help KyoAni.

Screen Shot 2019-07-18 at 9.29.20 PM.jpg

848406
848409
848411
848412


It just goes to show you the impact this studio has had on countless fans. So many people want to give back to them.
 
Miku Kadowaki is safe and has been in touch with a relative so I've taken her name off of the suspected dead.
 
There were also quite a few screencaps from a news station that showed the bloody footprints, the perpetrator on the ground surrounded by police, and 2 of some survivors on the street. I can't find the footprint picture or the police picture currently though. Mostly from the /a/ thread.
View attachment 848316

Edit:I think this was actually posted earlier in the thread but here's one picture of the perp surrounded by police, there is another floating around with a wider shot after they had body chalked him.
View attachment 848330

In the last picture it says the perp claimed they had stolen his anime. However the prevailing theory on 2/5channel is that it was the barisaku poster, who was angry over his catch phrase "barisaku" supposedly being copied.
 
Back
Top Bottom