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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Only gaijin market that really matters is the Chinese language one, and maybe South Korea if you want to put skeletons or time travel in your story. Let's enjoy our China pandering Japanese style I guess.

There's also Hong Kong and The Philippines:


Heck, they can have them do all the English dubs:



 
There's one stupid minor side thing I was wondering about that in no way detracts from the horror of the incident.

They say Kyoto Animation's computer archives of whatever was stored at the Studio 1 building are a total loss, and the computers will obviously never work again, but isn't it still possible that they could recover some of the data from the hard drives with the right forensic equipment? Even if it turns up only small fragments of what the animators had been working on before the fire, it would be worth it.
 
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.

From what I understand, KyoAni was already just barely staying afloat, with the Free! movies being the only thing keeping them going. IIRC, Free! was being worked on elsewhere and has been announced it won't be affected?

The biggest blow is that Studio 1 apparently had all their veterans they were using to train all the new talent -- talent that would have not only worked at KyoAni, but would have also moved on to make their own studios et all. Huge blow for the Weeb industry.

Hell, if it's true that the Nichijou team was taken out, that alone will completely change the direction the industry might have been heading in.

There's one stupid minor side thing I was wondering about that in no way detracts from the horror of the incident.

They say Kyoto Animation's computer archives of whatever was stored at the Studio 1 building are a total loss, and the computers will obviously never work again, but isn't it still possible that they could recover some of the data from the hard drives with the right forensic equipment? Even if it turns up only small fragments of what the animators had been working on before the fire, it would be worth it.

My take on that was that their workstations were taken out, but I don't know if they had a fileshare server in the building or something. I don't know enough about how digital animation is processed to be able to make a judgement call on what all would be stored locally, vs what would be uploaded to a server someplace.

But the problem is, beyond just the fire and the heat -- the smoke. The smoke is conductive and corrosive, which means those computers are probably doubly or triply fucked.
 
Even if they did stay in business, I imagine their works would look noticeably different what with all the animators who were lost at once.
Sadly, this is the reality fans of KyoAni now face. While there will certainly be more talented animators/directors/designers who will do their best to replicate the style and flow, many of the nuances and brilliant aspects of Kyoto Animation's work died with the victims.

To misquote a certain talking milkshake: "Art cannot be killed. It was murdered."
 
Naomi Ishida is confirmed dead
 
Naomi Ishida is confirmed dead



Colorist for a lot of stuff.

Edit: She was confirmed dead by her family, not the police / KyoAni / etc.
 
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.

In the US and Canada fire codes are very strict. And exit paths are well marked. It’s something the annual fire inspectors go nuts about. They are also strict in Europe, but you do have to be careful with regard to older “legacy” buildings (and Eastern Europe). In most of Asia you’re pretty much a dead man at the first sign of smoke. How fireproof the building is will depend on what bribes were paid to who? You’ll have no worries in Africa as the building will almost certainly fall down long before you are at any fire risk. (The new buildings being built by mostly Chinese companies, with maximum local corruption)
 
Because when right-winged people offer help, you should start bashing his political views rather than thanking him, right?

Takasu is a talented surgeon in his own right, and he RUNS hospitals goddamnit. How many doctors do you know offer free surgery when shit like this happens? Sure he loves tard slapfights. Sure he's a shitposter. Sure maybe he's doing this as a publicity stunt. But the fact that he's trying to help people with his expertise should be something to be rooted for regardless. Hell, he could be a fucking KKK member for all I care and I'd still support him.

Why is it that white trash like this weren't the ones burned alive?
 
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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Mm face too big.
 
Because when right-winged people offer help, you should start bashing his political views rather than thanking him, right?

Takasu is a talented surgeon in his own right, and he RUNS hospitals goddamnit. How many doctors do you know offer free surgery when shit like this happens? Sure he loves tard slapfights. Sure he's a shitposter. Sure maybe he's doing this as a publicity stunt. But the fact that he's trying to help people with his expertise should be something to be rooted for regardless. Hell, he could be a fucking KKK member for all I care and I'd still support him.

Why is it that white trash like this weren't the ones burned alive?

"That person has bad opinions ergo you should never do business with them even if it harms you" is a fairly standard tenant of leftist dogma in 2019. (Note that the "YOU" is intentional -- it's all about criticising others for perceived moral failing, i.e., they probably wouldn't say no to free surgery, but they expect YOU to.

I first encountered this mindset when someone explained they wouldn't buy some game from Stardock because Brad Wardel was a sexual predator a victim of a confirmed MeToo hoax. When I suggested this was, well, fucking exceptional, they literally couldn't understand why I would disagree with them on this.

Well, their exact words were "you're a fucking straight white male rape apologist, of course you would support him, you fucking incel puke" but I'm using my SJW to English translation matrix.

Hell, I remember when... what was it, Totalbiscuit or Notch? Retweeted some charity thing and the SJWs involved lost their goddamned fucking MINDS over it.
 
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