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

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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.
 
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I'm be real with you, if they got burns on their hands, they will most likely never work in animation ever again. The nerve damage would ruin them forever. And we're not even mentioning PTSD, which could trigger when they do things such as drawing and animating because that's what they were doing at the time of the fire. Everyone involved will probably never pick up a pencil again, shame really since that's just gonna piss on their passion which would really fuck with their already fragile mental state

I can't even begin to state how right this is.

I injured my hand over the winter holiday and after the whirlwind of workmans comp bullshit, the first thing I thought of was, "Thank god it wasn't my drawing hand."
I can't even begin to imagine how I'd feel if someone took away my ability to draw (well, yes I could - I'd either be homicidal or suicidal), let alone have it be the thing that sets off a traumatic stress episode.

I can't stress enough on how important an artist's hands are to them, so I'll just say I'd be surprised if I don't hear some of these survivors committing suicide by the end of the year...
 
This is really upsetting. The anime angle is irrelevant to this feeling in me. Fire deaths are legitimately one of the worst ways to go. The only positive I can find is the possibility of progress in Japanese fire safety standards.

I think blaming Otaku at least would be the most expected thing, putting it purely on the Hiki seems a little odd.
Isn't there a lot of overlap between those groups?
I think the NY Times is using hikikomori as a Japanese analog to "incel" as the catch-all term for under-socialized young males who have weird interests and occasionally act out in mass violence. Which isn't likely off here.
 
I'm be real with you, if they got burns on their hands, they will most likely never work in animation ever again. The nerve damage would ruin them forever. And we're not even mentioning PTSD, which could trigger when they do things such as drawing and animating because that's what they were doing at the time of the fire. Everyone involved will probably never pick up a pencil again, shame really since that's just gonna piss on their passion which would really fuck with their already fragile mental state

Normally the only people that would be burned in a fire like this would be someone who had the flammable liquid thrown directly onto them, or someone who tried to put them out with their bare hands. Most injuries and victims from a fire are not burns unless they came in contact with the fuel and ignition source. Those hospitalized are probably from smoke inhalation. Avoiding the actual fire is not the hard part in a burning building it’s breathing. Your skin can withstand much higher temperatures than your lungs.
 
This is absolutely tragic. 33 lives lost forever and dozens more hurt, potentially with life-changing injuries. And for what? The specific targeting of an anime studio makes me think that it has to have been done by a very angry and probably radicalized otaku. The perpetrator is still alive so maybe we'll get his motive, but in the end it doesn't seem to matter much. A sick man lashed out against innocent people and now there's a lot of suffering. What a senseless waste.

I've seen a couple of anime produced by Kyoto Animation and they're top notch (especially A Silent Voice). KyoAni also deserves a lot of respect for paying their animators a livable salary rather than keeping them as freelance animators paid per frame. My heart goes out to the studio, the loved ones of those lost, and those who are now suffering with terrible burns.
 
If you told me that a foamer could be considered a homegrown terror threat just last week I'd laugh but now I've witnessed the power of autism that rivals pretty much everything I've seen before from sperg shooters to autistic bombers.
To be fair, if Japan had actual fire safety regulations, he might've killed two people if he were really lucky. Fucking 19 killed over a fucking "suicide-proof" fire exit.
 
I can't even begin to state how right this is.

I injured my hand over the winter holiday and after the whirlwind of workmans comp bullshit, the first thing I thought of was, "Thank god it wasn't my drawing hand."
I can't even begin to imagine how I'd feel if someone took away my ability to draw (well, yes I could - I'd either be homicidal or suicidal), let alone have it be the thing that sets off a traumatic stress episode.

I can't stress enough on how important an artist's hands are to them, so I'll just say I'd be surprised if I don't hear some of these survivors committing suicide by the end of the year...

Yeah, I'm gonna second (third?) this as an artist and someone who also is on the computer a lot and therefore loves writing. But despite also loving writing, drawing is my lifeblood, the air that I breathe. Artists literally should be born ambidextrous so they can avoid this cruel fate, but unfortunately, that's not how it works. Ambidextrous artists are the luckiest people out there, they can lose function in one hand and shrug it off. Artists with only one dominant hand have one true fear, and that is losing that hand, and therefore their ability to create. And unfortunately, we take that for granted because we don't think that it can happen to us.

We can only hope and pray none of these animators have lost function in their dominant hands, but the mental scarring is a different story and that's all it takes. Drawing is their life, their greatest passion, and to have it taken away by some dickweed who thought he was being mocked by people who didn't know of his existence is unfathomable. That is the second-greatest tragedy in all of this. If they get through this and create again, it'll be a miracle, but we'll notice a difference in the end-product for sure. And perhaps that's the biggest roadblock scarred artists will have to overcome is their biggest worry people will notice that drop-off, even though it's literally not their fault.
 
To be fair, if Japan had actual fire safety regulations, he might've killed two people if he were really lucky. Fucking 19 killed over a fucking "suicide-proof" fire exit.
It isn't the amount of deaths I was getting at, it was his motive if the foamer bit is true it truly is the most autistic thing I ever heard as a motive for killing people.
 
If you told me that a foamer could be considered a homegrown terror threat just last week I'd laugh but now I've witnessed the power of autism that rivals pretty much everything I've seen before from sperg shooters to autistic bombers.
It's like if Shaner snapped and decided to get off his fat, lazy ass to firebomb the railway he was banned from because they changed the color of the trains he liked seeing or sold all the signage he liked to steal. Only difference here is that this guy didn't settle for trains, but an entire animation studio and everyone inside it.

Though that does make me ask, why didn't he just try lighting a train on fire if he thought they ruined it so badly? Or even the people who run the trains?

To be fair, if Japan had actual fire safety regulations, he might've killed two people if he were really lucky. Fucking 19 killed over a fucking "suicide-proof" fire exit.
I seriously hope this situation forces them to look at those regulations and rework them greatly. Because 19 dead over a locked door is very tragic.
 
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I seriously hope this situation forces them to look at those regulations and rework them greatly. Because 19 dead over a locked door is very tragic.
Unless you want to see a bunch of nips throwing themselves out of the roofs, nothing will change
Atmost the japanese will start investing in fire sprinklers and fire proof safes/sending their art to the cloud
 
I'm just gonna leave this here:


Created by Sentai Filmworks
 
This is sad. They are the ones who made Clannad that shit makes me cry. Especially the Dango Daikazoku song(Dango Family) because it reminds me of Nagisa' and Ushio's death(Yes I know they come back to life, but it still made me sad). Lucy Christian did a good job doing Nagisa's and especially Ushio's voice. Ushio made me sad because Tomoya became a drunk after Nagisa died and abandoned her and I empathized with that.
They also did (Fullmetal Panic? Fumoffu). I still need to watch that show. They also did the popular movie the Silent Voice.
I know saying they are good studio is an unpopular opinion considering they do cutesy looking shit, but the cutesy looking shit they make looks good.
Edit: Sorry for the anime sperging. I hope the people who survive pull through.
 
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