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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This is not what I said. I am not encouraging hurting people or banning artistic work. I am merely sharing my experience living and working in Japan. Anime is associated with otaku.

Adults who are into anime are look down upon in Japanese society. Furthermore, anime is seen as a corrupting influence on children. This is why after every otaku killing, talks occur in the Diet to possibly ban anime.

Many people in the west assume all of Tokyo is what they see in anime and all of Japan is Tokyo. Neither is true.

Anime is about as socially acceptable as pornography. It exists. It's easy enough to find. The people involved however are socially shunned.


Nigga, what the fuck are you talking about? Actual pornography isn't that unacceptable in Japan. AV Idols (read "actual porn stars") are well known in the Japanese mainstream. Many were entertainers, singers, tv personalities, etc. before becoming AV idols and many of them go right back to that after they leave it. There is even a well known AV Idol who used to be a nurse. Being a porn star doesn't carry the same stigma in Japan as it does in America, and yet you expect me to believe that the Japanese are going to treat one of the most storied Anime studios in the country less than they treat their goddamn porn stars? Get the fuck out of here.
 
Besides, if government bigwigs really wanted to "ban anime and manga", then popular characters like Sailor Moon, Goku, and Doraemon wouldn't have been Olympics ambassadors in the first place, and there'd be thousands of animators, mangaka, artists, and authors (be the source material G-rated or smutty) out of a job and royally pissed. Hell, Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo, wants to make the city "an anime land" for next year.
 
Interview with one of the survivors.

His name is not given, only his age which is 52.
On that day, more than a dozen people were on the first floor doing office work, about 30 on the second floor including the interviewee doing artwork, and the animators and directors were on the third floor. He heard shouts from the first floor at around 10:30, a woman's scream, then an explosion that sounded like a motorcycle revving.
Less than 10 seconds later, very dark, ink-like smoke rose up from the spiral staircase.
There were employees that ran up to the second floor via another staircase warning about the fire, and a woman pushed the emergency alarm. While it was ringing the smoke filled the room instantly, so dark he couldn't even see his hands.
Thinking that he would die if he stayed, he followed the bit of light coming from the veranda, and with encouragement from people who already jumped, he went for it. The studio was in flames now, and he and the others quickly ran away barefoot, not having time to get their shoes. He only had bruised elbows but he saw some people who were on fire and some with injuries from jumping.
Regarding the arsonist, he says he does not understand why he did this, that he still feels angry and frustrated, but wants him to be properly judged under the law.


As for Yasuhiro Takemoto, his family was recently interviewed and it's very likely he's one of the unidentified bodies. They're just awaiting official confirmation now.
 
Also, some more sad information has been revealed, according to this article:


Apparently the roof top door could be opened from the inside (and from the picture seen at the top of the article, it even opened outward), but the smoke spread so fast, those making a run for it were overcome before they could open it. It gets worse; the vast majority of the dead, 20 people, burned to death rather than suffocate (in most building fires, suffocation or poisoning via carbon monoxide inhalation is the leading cause of death; its not a pleasant way to go by any means, but its not nearly as bad as burning to death). Only three people died due to carbon monoxide poisoning and two suffocated. One cause of death is yet to be determined.

Edit:
All causes of death are for the current bodies whose autopsies have been released, which is 26.
 
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Interview with one of the survivors.

His name is not given, only his age which is 52.

I'm not exactly sure why but there seems to be a publication ban in Japan on naming the survivors that I presume will only be lifted once the names of the dead are confirmed. I know K-On! and A Silent Voice director Naoko Yamada has been confirmed as a survivor but it could be that she let it be known that she was a survivor soon after the attack, before the (seeming) restriction on naming survivors was in place.
 
The press put out a picture of the missing Ono Megumi, the 21 year old KyoAni artist whose grandfather was interviewed before, as well as a sample of one of her works.
According to her grandparents, she had been drawing since she was a child and would often draw on flyers and the backs of receipts. She saved money throughout highschool working part-time jobs just so she could afford to enter KyoAni's training camp for aspiring young artists. The company took notice of her and hired her just a year later, when she was 19, realizing her dream. She would often speak excitedly to her grandfather about her job, voluntarily staying late at the office so she could keep practicing and learning to catch up to the more senior members. She had a post-it on her bedroom wall which proclaimed she would be an animation director at 25 years old.
Her older sister Kaede called her the best little sister in the world, her pride and joy, crying all the while. She can't even watch TV because any reminder of the incident would set her off.
A former classmate and a former part-time coworker she kept in touch with were also interviewed. She was always drawing on something, and she would tell them of her difficult but fun time she had at the training camp, and how excited she was to be on the credits of KyoAni's works.

Sorry if this is a little heartbreaking, but personally I'd rather share stories of the victims to remember them as they were than to think about the arsonist himself.

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I'm not exactly sure why but there seems to be a publication ban in Japan on naming the survivors that I presume will only be lifted once the names of the dead are confirmed. I know K-On! and A Silent Voice director Naoko Yamada has been confirmed as a survivor but it could be that she let it be known that she was a survivor soon after the attack, before the (seeming) restriction on naming survivors was in place.

Apparently, the President of KyoAni has asked police to urge the media not release the names of the victims out of respect for their families, stating that "We understand that this incident is attracting a lot of interest, along with the number of victims, but given the feelings of their survivors, releasing their names does nothing to serve the public good":


My guess, a full account of the survivors, injured, and deceased will only be released when all bodies have been identified and families notified.
 
Yeah, I figured that Japanese newspapers are respecting someone's request to not post any names for the time being, even the names of survivors, if it wasn't a formal publication ban.

Another thought occurred to me, it could be that some of the survivors are terrified for their safety right now and would rather not be known as being "alive" lest some other deranged, vengeful hikikomori "blame" them for surviving when many other people at the studio didn't.
 
I suspect that KyoAni doesn't want these survivors to have a platform to demand compensation and whatnot.

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This is genuinely heartbreaking. I hope they get all the support they need to recover as best as you can after something like this.

Apparently this is one of the biggest massacres in Japan since WWII, at least according to Wikipedia. Even if the safest of places, life is still fragile.
 
How are they going to get the money and staff for this? As has been speculated they'll get insurance, the benefits of the GoFundMe, some money/incentives from the prefecture and city, and freelance animators and others to help, but can that really keep them afloat for more than a few years? I'm wondering if the name will survive but the company itself will be purchased by another group.
 
How are they going to get the money and staff for this? As has been speculated they'll get insurance, the benefits of the GoFundMe, some money/incentives from the prefecture and city, and freelance animators and others to help, but can that really keep them afloat for more than a few years? I'm wondering if the name will survive but the company itself will be purchased by another group.
The 2 mil from the GFM alone is going to go fast with the amount of people its going to be spread between. I don't know how the politics between companies work but I could see some collaborative work between a few studios or established people in the industry and their remaining staff. This opens up lots of jobs for people to make a name for themselves as morbid as that is as well, and I imagine people would jump at the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a reboot of the company. If not than maybe they do get turned into some sort of subsidiary studio of another group, and just keep the name. I don't know how the industry works at all though so thats baseless speculation.
 
My horrible sense of humor and petty grudge against certain anime aside, incidents like this do really make me worry about fire codes. Any time you find yourself in a large building like this you should plan an exit path even if people think you're autistic since its worth not being crushed to death against a burning hot iron door in the end. Its actually really easy in modern society to spread something flammable and throw down a match, I'm surprised incidents like this don't happen more often.
 
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