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.
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.
 
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The problem isn’t lack of fire codes. Japan has some of the most stringent in the world. This sounds more like a failure of inspection and enforcement.
Maybe, although then I would've expected this to have happened a lot more often, especially in a city like Kyoto full of wooden buildings. The fact it seldom happens, causing panic, and fact nobody took notice of the perp early enough are what I believe contributed to the death toll.
 
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.)
 
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Oh Jesus I watched that Station fire video, it's easily the most effective "keep an eye out for emergency exits and WALK CALMLY AND DON'T FUCKING SHOVE PEOPLE" PSAs I've seen, I can still hear those fucking screams when it's mentioned.

@Null Can we have a "Trying too hard to be edgy" reaction in honor of the people on the first couple of pages who were mocking or justifying 33 people dying just because "hurr hurr, fuck anime lol"?

Station fire video?

Also, they didn't mock or justify 33 people dying. At the time, there were no confirmed or even rumored deaths.
 
To be fair though, in a building fire we don't usually imagine the occupants of the building getting trapped behind locked doors and killed inches from safety. We live in a society where that just does not happen anymore. There is more then one villain in this story. Whoever made the decision to keep the exits locked has to answer as well.
If you ask me, the real blame here should be put on the government of Japan for enforcing such stupid fire regulations to begin with. And if this doesn't make them rethink "How can we prevent suicides, but also make these escapes easier in case of fires?" Then I'm not going to be happy.
 
"I saw people who were totally black or covered in blood, or who had suffered burns all over their body. One of them claimed to have been splashed with kerosene or something like it," said a 53-year-old local woman.

I think it's better to be dead than severly burned, disfigured, disabled, traumatized & unable to draw again.
 
The attack occurred at Studio 1, which was built in 2015.
I just realized that and edited my post to remove that mistake.

Also, it amazes me the fire was only limited to the KyoAni building. Given how bad the fire was, the fact it didn't spread further is surprising. The arsonist doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd give two damns about who he killed. Be it the KyoAni staff or anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.
 
Also, they didn't mock or justify 33 people dying. At the time, there were no confirmed or even rumored deaths.
There was a single unconfirmed death at the time from the article I posted, which I believe was an hour behind from what was actually going on. I looked today in the Anime&Manga thread and another user had posted about the incident an hour or two earlier from my posting of this thread, and had included that there was already a death I believe as well.

I will say though from what I've seen, people generally in the ground floor of threads tend to make those kinds of posts to get zingers in while they can which I don't believe is a problem. Regardless of intent this generally seems to be a site built on comedy, which includes laughing or making jokes about things people in general would not even dare approach. Looking past that, once more information came out the general tone was more sympathetic with a few tasteless posts spread here and there which in turn seemed to get what would be considered more appropriate responses. Just as much that people are allowed to say things, you're allowed to respond however you feel which is a perfectly good system.

I just realized that and edited my post to remove that mistake.

Also, it amazes me the fire was only limited to the KyoAni building. Given how bad the fire was, I'm amazed that it didn't spread further.
The structure is entirely concrete so it seemed to be pretty well contained and limited to the inside.
 
If you ask me, the real blame here should be put on the government of Japan for enforcing such stupid fire regulations to begin with. And if this doesn't make them rethink "How can we prevent suicides, but also make these escapes easier in case of fires?" Then I'm not going to be happy.
Well hey, at least they're not cladding buildings with flammable material. Go figure, this came out just a bit earlier:
 
I'm sorry if anyone else shared this(I checked and didn't see)But apparently KyoAni has a shop that sells Free and Hibike Euphonium images in high resolution for 216¥each(2,01 $). These are digital so they don't have to do anything else afterwards. This seems to better option to support than Sentai Filmworks's GoFundMe if you want to support KyoAni.


 
I'm sorry if anyone else shared this(I checked and didn't see)But apparently KyoAni has a shop that sells Free and Hibike Euphonium images in high resolution for 216¥each(2,01 $). These are digital so they don't have to do anything else afterwards. This seems to better option to support than Sentai Filmworks's GoFundMe if you want to support KyoAni.


I would imagine this is a better way to solidly support them as of yet, as well as anything directly supplied through their stores. The GFM is still pretty nebulous and vague for where the funds are actually going too.
 
KyoAni as we currently know it has ceased to exist. I don't think we'll ever get that high watermark of quality animation back after this devastating loss to the creative industry.
 
Interior trough a behind the scenes video:
View attachment 846955
(Potential Heat Alarm instead of Fire Alarm?)

Windows from a picture, molten goop of plastic below a few of the windows, noticed it in a livestream where the windows were oddly becoming deformed really fast:
View attachment 846956

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.
 
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I'm sorry if anyone else shared this(I checked and didn't see)But apparently KyoAni has a shop that sells Free and Hibike Euphonium images in high resolution for 216¥each(2,01 $). These are digital so they don't have to do anything else afterwards. This seems to better option to support than Sentai Filmworks's GoFundMe if you want to support KyoAni.



I bought the $20 desktop toy pack. The download link isn't even working but I don't care. There's not enough alcohol in my house to cope with the fact the only animation studio that treated their employees like human beings is either suffering a major loss or outright shutting down. (:_(
 
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.
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.
diagram.jpg
 
Also, they didn't mock or justify 33 people dying. At the time, there were no confirmed or even rumored deaths.
Yeah, I'll grant you there weren't any confirmed deaths for the first couple of posts, but...
K-On?
Haruhi Suzumiya?
Dragon Maid?

All burning in hell (where they belong)?

FUCK YES!

Edit: Holy shit they did Lucky Star and Nichijou too?
It's like divine retribution
At that time someone had stated there were 11 confirmed deaths earlier in the thread.
I hope they all burn down. I work in Akihabara and I'm so sick of seeing greasy haired weebs eating 7/11 onigiri walking around the place. Anime was a fucking mistake. Maybe if Japan's stops exporting anime the weebs will stop flocking to Japan.
That was after the 30+ death toll.
 
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