33 dead after arson attack at Kyoto Animation studio, dozens injured | Hacker News Reader

33 dead after arson attack at Kyoto Animation studio, dozens injured

mainichi.jp

397 pointsxbmcuser179 comments

My favourite Anime of All time, Full Metal Panic were produced by Kyoto Animation. If you are are into Robot / Tech Anime it is well worth a watch, I simply felt in love with Chidori Kaname, female protagonist of the series, partly because the male protagonist is a ( Real ) nerd, and it is what some of the nerds first girl friend would act in real world. Its Companion Series Full Metal Panic Fumoffu is also hilarious.

Kyoto is one of the best Animation Studio not only in Japan but in the world, I remember they have a "Making of" section in the DVDs and show how much details they put into each drawing, taking thousands of Photos in Hong Kong and redraw them in the Story. So those places aren't made up and for anyone living in Hong Kong it would have been instantly recognisable, even accurate to the sign of a poster and banner of shops. And it isn't just the quality of those drawing, there are Studio which could do decent Animation but completely lack the skill in Story telling, Character Build up and Tempo etc. Kyoto not only has it all, but they have also been doing it consistently for the past 20 years if not more.

Those 20+ must have been some of the best in the industry.

I pray and hope there will be no more casualties from this incident. And those that passed away, RIP.

I read the Japanese Animation are still very much labour intensive, and not a lot of computer graphics involved, I am not sure if that is still true. ( And if it is, why are there little to no innovation to improve its efficiency ) And Animation, Manga industry tends to have long working hours even by Japanese Standards.

It's still true. Japanese animators are paid by the pennies and work ridiculous hours. Since they're often paid on a per-frame basis rather than hourly pay, sometimes it adds up to less than minimum hourly wage. KyoAni was actually one of the few who were known to pay reasonably well, and they also had sort of dormitories slash training facilities for their animators. As for computers, generally speaking the frames are still drawn on paper and scanned, and then colored digitally.

Why though?!

It frustrates me that the industry have to rely on fans / foreign distributors / bootleg to get an audience out of Japan. Leaves so much money on the table.

I would be more than happy to pay Eiichiro Oda and his team for an english .pdf of the latest One Piece delivered to my inbox the second it comes out.

Animation is still done on paper mostly for artistic reasons, not because they can't afford tablets. Drawing on paper and drawing digitally are different processes and skill sets. Same for manga. There are actually a lot of mangaka who work digitally these days, but it's less common in anime production. That said, I don't understand how that has anything to do with foreign distribution, to be honest.

Seems a weird argument to be making. You can't even pay them directly to get the Japanese version, you need a Shonen Jump subscription, but you want them to offer it for English speakers?

Relying on foreign distributors, especially when you need to translate, seems to make perfect sense to me. Should Oda provide translations into English, French, German, Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese? All of those are part of the "audience outside of Japan".

~1.5 billion or ~20% of the world’s population speak English. They also tend to be better off financially than the global average.

Written Chinese is a very large market and likely a good investment, though a significant percentage of the well off also speak English or Japanese.

After that it’s more questionable. Translation is not cheap, but US films are often translated for smaller markets.

Of those 1.5 Billion, how many speak it well enough to prefer to watch anime in it? I "speak" Spanish but I would never watch anime in Spanish because the cost of trying to comprehend translated Spanish is already too high for me to do it for casual entertainment.

> Why though?!

There's not a ton of money in the Anime industry. Especially over-seas, since translation is a very labor intensive and largely manual process.

There's also not a guaranteed audience for an anime. They have to rely on fans of the existing works (typically light novels) to view the (often drastically different) animes. I've seen a few of my favorite series get dropped due to being too niche.

> Especially over-seas, since translation is a very labor intensive and largely manual process.

Subbed translations at least previously were not usually very labor intensive if you didn't try to do heavy localization or typesetting everything (I remember someone translating every single book name in some bookcase). Fansubs managed to do pretty good job with just about 1MD worth of effort per episode (~20x length of the episode, extremely small amount compared to work required to actually produce the original episode). Old fansubs did need quite a bit more, but improved processes, tools & computers (just encoding & uploading used to pretty slow step) also improved the overall speed. No clue what how much CR & co need these days.

Of course, dubbing is very different case, but that's usually only done for DVD/Blu-ray releases. No clue if it's really worth to do it though, but my viewpoint is probably too biased.

That’s a fair point on the subtitling. I do know that translations for Japanese dialog can differ in difficulty - there are some more esoteric writing/speaking dialects which can take a significant amount of effort to turn into English dialog (for example, “The Irregular in Magic High School” novels have very poor official translations, largely due to how it was written in Japanese).

As for dubbing, there are instances where animes are “simultaneous dubbed” for international release. A recent example is Shield Hero.

> There's not a ton of money in the Anime industry. Especially over-seas ... There's also not a guaranteed audience for an anime.

How even did you arrive at that deduction?

There's a ton of untapped market potential in anime and manga, especially overseas. Japanese pop culture is probably second in worldwide popularity after America's.

And it's even more impressive in how most of its foreign popularity comes from unofficial, non-profiting fan efforts.

2-3 decades ago it was a relatively small handful of fans who contributed their time and effort for free, and worked against legal prohibitions, to provide anime fansubs and manga scanlations throughout the 1990s and 2000s, until the anime fandom grew to the millions today, with adaptations, inspirations (Matrix, Kill Bill etc.), cosplayers, conventions, and even pornstars jumping in.

This is a unique case where an industry was practically established by piracy!

Many of those fans still rely on unofficial translations, reviews and torrents to get their fix, and many of us would gladly part with our money for official translations of the same quality as fansubs (including cultural notes etc.)

Sadly, none of the suits who could capitalize on this seem to be able to see the larger picture. There are still tons of anime, manga and video games with lots of worldwide fans but they've never been officially ported outside Japan.

> There's a ton of untapped market potential in anime and manga, especially overseas.

That's just wishful thinking. There are decades of effort tapping into that potential with mildly success.

> And it's even more impressive in how most of its foreign popularity comes from unofficial, non-profiting fan efforts.

Which likely is a major reason why it is so popular. It's cheap for the consumer, the kids. Which is another problem, as anime is mostly for kids, not adults.

> and many of us would gladly part with our money for official translations of the same quality as fansubs (including cultural notes etc.)

Not enough. Market-localisation is too expensive to justify the risk of pampering a handful fans.

The whole japanese Pop-culture is divided in a very small number of big franchises, which make the gross of the money, and a very big number of very niche-productions which hardly make enough money to even survive. The big franchises can take the risk of going overseas, and they do that for a long time now. But the small companys don't have the money, often not even the knowledge for it.

On the other side, even with the niche-produtions we now have a rather good situation today. We now have many semi-official english localisations in timly manner for anime and games. It's just not the whole market, and not for the whole world, and manga is still very much a dead fish. But that's simply beacuse it's a different market.

> Sadly, none of the suits who could capitalize on this seem to be able to see the larger picture.

You also only see the fraction of the big picture which you are part in, not the complete big picture.

>Which likely is a major reason why it is so popular. It's cheap for the consumer, the kids. Which is another problem, as anime is mostly for kids, not adults.

This is patently false. There are lots and lots anime for adults and there are so many adult fans nowadays. To be honest this statement alone would probably disqualify you from giving any opinion worth considering in this discussion.

Can you please edit personal swipes out of your posts here? This comment would be fine without the last sentence. Actually it probably doesn't need the first one either.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> That's just wishful thinking.

That's just pessimistic thinking.

One Piece is not a great example because you can read it online at Viz[1], and the latest three issues appear to be free to read. According to Wikipedia[2], the latest chapter out in Japan is 948, which is available on Viz's website.

[1] https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/one-piece

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_One_Piece_chapters_(80...

Because not that many people outside of Japan are that interested in it. Similarly, there aren't that many people outside of India who are interested in Bollywood movies, so you don't see them played in cinemas except in places where there's a lot of Indian expats/immigrants. Art is highly cultural, so there's usually not that much of a market for it outside its culture of origin.

Anime/manga does do pretty well outside of Japan, compared to the cultural output of so many other nations (how many Czech movies have you watched lately?), but it'll as popular as you seem to wish it would be.

>but it'll as popular as you seem to wish it would be.

...it'll never be as popular...

>they're often paid on a per-frame basis rather than hourly pay

That's interesting. Is there any in-depth source on how the anime industry operates?

I don't know about in-depth, but a cursory google search brings up plenty of results regarding animator wages[1,2]. If you want to know more about how the industry operates, not so much salaries but how production works, working conditions, who's responsible for what, etc, then I highly recommend that you watch the anime Shirobako. It's an anime about anime production, and it's both very informative and simply very good in terms of storytelling, humor, etc.

[1] https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2005-11-02/animator's-...

[2] https://80.lv/articles/how-much-do-japanese-animators-make/

Indeed. And Kyoto Animation (a.k.a. KyoAni) is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, studios in terms of working conditions and pay, long-term hiring with training on the job, etc. It is usually held up as a model of what the anime industry could be, and not what it tends to be.

We just need a "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" [0] anime and 2019 will be complete...

[0] https://www.utilitarianism.com/nu/omelas.pdf

Just adding some relevant information: inbetweeners are paid per frame, but key animators are paid per cut.

KyoAni drastically changed around 2010, after the success of K-On. They also weren't involved in the last season of Full Metal Panic (2017). What they are now famous for are slice-of-life shows with lots of implied homosexuality, both girl-girl and boy-boy.

I don't think that's accurate to say, really. There's definitely some shows with gay undertones, but the vast majority of their post-2010 catalogue has either no romance or heterosexual romance (Hyouka, Chuunibyou, Tamako Market, Amaburi, Koe no Katachi, the Hibike film, Kyoukai no Kanata, VEG, and so on). Slice-of-life is pretty accurate, though. I don't think it's fair to say that they've changed drastically, either. VEG and their Key adaptations such as Clannad are really not so different in spirit, nor is something like Kobayashi's Dragon Maid really all that different from Lucky Star (which was SoL with heavy gay undertones all the way back in 2007).

The shows that got them famous have implied homosexuality. They also made other stuff, but Hyouka isn't exactly the first thing people think of when talking about KyoAni. Also, Hibike definitely falls into the implied homosexuality category. I've got a friend who only watches it for this reason.

It's true that you can trace their change further back, but at least they did Haruhi until 2010. Since then they completely divorced with their previous fanbase, though. The people liking FMP and Haruhi, who gave them traction in their early years and who were disappointed by KyoAni favoring other types of anime, instead.

I haven't watched Hibike, but to my understanding the tv series has a lot of implied homosexuality while the movie is straightforward heterosexual romance. I also disagree that the shows that got them famous are the ones with homosexuality. They were already plenty famous after Clannad and Haruhi, and Koe no Katachi is at least as high-profile as Free or Maid Dragon. Let's agree to disagree on this one.

Anime fans don't have that long of a memory, because most anime fans drop out of the fandom after three to five years. So while I agree that they were famous for those shows back in those days, it's also a reality that the current generation of fans most likely doesn't even know something like Clannad exists. KyoAni is currently famous for slice-of-life shows with implied homosexuality.

Side question: What's wrong with making money from implied homosexuality?

Why do you assume there's something wrong with implied homosexuality, but not with slice-of-life? Both are quite common in anime. Not sure why you would single that one aspect out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerbaiting

“Queer fans have reacted with concern and anger to an identity they consider defining being used as a mere marketing ploy, a plaything for creatives, a mark of "edginess", or a commodity.”

Thank you for responding to me. That is a viewpoint that I had not considered.

The first season of Fullmetal Panic was produced by Gonzo. While not bad, the (animation) quality noticeably increased after Kyoto Animation took over. Definitely a great show.

Apparently the motivation for the attack was that "KyoAni has stolen something from the attacker", unconfirmed reports that the something in question was a Light Novel the attacker wrote but got rejected by KyoAni, which apparently then got turned into an original work by the studio (possibly stealing here and there from the LN or anyhow drawing inspiration from it) without crediting the attacker or compensating him. I can see this happening in all honesty, I am sure that editors get to read a lot of stuff from applicants which can then be polished to produce something in-house, kind of like when bigger companies fish for start-ups tech to reimplement it in-house.

Anyhow, the article doesn't mention it but I just though I would write this down in case anyone was curious about the potential motivation.

Japanese sources are reporting a eyewitness account of the suspect saying "パクりやがって", which could be translated as "they plagiarized" (and definitely not "I'm sorry" as Google Translate claims). See https://www.edrdg.org/jmdictdb/cgi-bin/entr.py?svc=jmdict&si...

https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20190718-00000075-asahi-s...

That's half of it (if true). The other half is a mentally ill person.

Intellectual property issues once again. People think they own ideas and glorify themselves as originators. In reality once an idea is communicated it is free. All people can really do is add value to an idea by promoting it, framing it, demonstrating it, aiding in its application, and so on. Yet here intellectual property has scaled beyond mere value into critical relevance and even a person's identity itself. An individual went way out of bounds here, but some unworkable ideas about intellectual property helped to define the path. Modern cultures really need to come to terms with the nature of intellectual property in the Internet era. It's not just about protecting a mouse anymore.

Could not agree more.

This isn't necessarily true in the field of artistic production, in my opinion. In this case this person presumably submitted their work for acceptance to a company, and the company rejected their work but then stole it. This is a massive violation of industry ethics, and still generates much fury to this day if it happens. (For example, if Tor published a novella under an editor's name, but the novella was actually written by an author who was told the work was not accepted into Tor, this would cause a massive uproar.)

Part of the issue is that the publishing party purchases first-publishing rights of the work submitted to them. By definition, they need to recieve unpublished, highly protected work that hasn't been shown to anyone else (or shown to an audience).

> Intellectual property issues once again. People think they own ideas and glorify themselves as originators.

A novel isn't an "idea", it's a work of art. Copyright law protects artists from having their work copied. You don't need to "glorify yourself" to believe that you should have that basic right.

Going on a killing spree because someone stole your idea is obviously insane, but I can understand the frustration. Someone can spend years of their life working on a single piece, and having it stolen is like someone stole those years from you. The incentives to steal work like this are huge which is why copyright law needs to exist, otherwise we'd have either more killing sprees or less art.

Based on my own reading of light and web novels, the amount of originality in a lot of them is less than you might imagine. It's not too hard to look at the landscape and read a novel that is virtually identical to another, only with slightly different names.

I'd also like to add that not only do people have too much confidence in their "ownership" of an idea, but people severely underestimate the extent to which their idea was influenced by the cultural zeitgeist (which frequently accounts for collisions and false charges of plagiarism).

That belief is promulgated by the media corporations fighting for strong copyright of "intellectual property." They have themselves drawn on the public domain culture, and use copyright as a tool to claim private ownership over it.

(I'm going to disagree with you in my comment, about your specific thoughts - but given the context of the thread we're talking in, let me be clear - this is a horrific attack that happened no matter what you think about IP, and nothing I'm saying below should in any way make it seem like I think otherwise. This kind of violence is horrible, and not the answer to anything).

> Yet here intellectual property has scaled beyond mere value into critical relevance and even a person's identity itself.

I mean, do you really think JK Rowling shouldn't consider "I wrote Harry Potter" to be part of her identity?

> In reality once an idea is communicated it is free.

If by "in reality" you mean "in nature, given that we don't have a government to change it", then, yes, of course, if I tell you an idea and you decide to use it, there is little I can do to stop you. But that's exactly why we have governments and laws - to not live only by nature, but to do things that we think makes more sense, both on a moral level, and a pure "what's better for society" level.

And say what you want, I think most people don't share your feeling that someone's work being copied without them getting any compensation for it is somehow more moral, and should be the way things work. I certainly don't share that intuition.

> I mean, do you really think JK Rowling shouldn't consider "I wrote Harry Potter" to be part of her identity?

Devil's advocate: sure, but that's different than considering "I am the originator of the concept of a story about a boy who goes to wizard school".

Hollywood deals with this by giving the originators of ideas story credit. There are fairly detailed rules about how much of the final product needs to derive from their contributions to the final product for the credit to apply.

Disney stole the entirety of The Lion King scene for scene from a Japanese anime while claiming it to be a 100% completely original Disney made story.

Both the Lion King and Kimba are based on Hamlet...

And the story of the Lion King has almost nothing in common with Kimba. Have you actually read the manga or watched the anime? The anime is about the cub growing up, which the movie entirely skips over. Kimbas life before the anime is completely different.

While minor scene elements and secondary characters were inspired by the anime they don't rise to the level of requiring credit.

There have been repeated accusations in Hollywood about just this sort of theft. It seems to be how two highly similar movies sometimes get made at around the same time. Studio 1 steals idea, studio 2 does the right thing and pays for it.

> In reality once an idea is communicated it is free.

No, it is not. It really depends on the "how".

And this is why most companies doing anything having to do with media will not ever even read/watch works that were sent to them unsolicited. There are so many ideas being in different states of development at any given time that there is a failry high risk of inadvertenly opening yourself up to being accused of plagiarism.

Well, not exactly this.

This is really sad. KyoAni (Kyoto Animation) is, as said in other thread, one of the current best animation studios in the world. I grow up watching their animes and thinking how they're amazing compared to the majority of japanese studios.

Some animes bought by them:

- Full Metal Panic (many laughs, amazing characters and great animation)

- Air (this is the first time that I did cry in a series of any kind)

- Kanon (really good adaptation of this great Visual Novel)

- Clannad (a really emotional series for me, even if the Visual Novel is better the anime still does a great service for this series)

- Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (this is the anime that made me fan of them, a unique approach of slice of life and overpowered beings that was great in its time)

- Lucky Star (funny otakus done right)

- K-On! (a good anime showing cute girls doing cute things)

- Hyouka ("Sherlock Holmes goes to a japanese high school")

- Nichijou (funny nonsense done right)

- Sound Euphonium (I still remember that amazing scene at episode 11)

- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid (a great surprise, this seems like a goof series on its premise however it is so heartwarming)

- Violet Evergarden (this is available in Netflix and I recommend simply because the animation is amazing and the story is really emotional)

I don't really care about the reasons of the suspect, there are better ways to claim copyright infringement, and even if it didn't, there is no reason to take human lives.

Very depressing to see news like this from a place like Japan that's generally well regarded for its safety and peacefulness, especially against a target like an animation studio, that has only ever provided joy to people.

They did not even produce anything controversial as far as I can tell.

The glaring issue here seems to be the death threats they received prior to this attack. That should have been taken more seriously by the authorities, anywhere.

> well regarded for its safety and peacefulness

Here, dig deeper:

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904170050.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/world/asia/japan-rape.htm...

https://web.archive.org/web/20190421032136/http://japaneseru...

It's not a competition...

There are boatloads of people out there who idolize Japan for peacefulness and never actually read about reality there. I'm just simply tired of the "ah, but Japan" attitude.

BTW, in my opinion, Japan is ~20years "ahead" of socilogical problems of the West - such as extreme isolation of elderly, young glued to the screens not even leaving a flats because everything can be done online, etc - mostly because their 80s housing boom bubble burst in the 90s and not in 2008. But this is unrelated.

> BTW, in my opinion, Japan is ~20years "ahead" of socilogical problems of the West - such as extreme isolation of elderly, young glued to the screens not even leaving a flats because everything can be done online, etc

Both of those examples highlight issues with human social constructs being incompatible with human technology and progress, globally, not just in Japan.

Who said just Japan? I only mentioned they are experiencing them ahead of the rest of us.

Who said Japan had no problems, that it was a perfect paradise, when you felt the need to dig up 3 random links to bring it down a notch?

Why do people who like to make irrelevant contrary arguments seem to suddenly forget the simple concept of comparison?

3 random links, which I have a feeling, you completely ignored to follow and read.

> well regarded for its safety and peacefulness

You said these. I wanted to show that while many thinks Japan is so much better, both the basis of your comparison (US and is bare minimum public safety) and the target (Japan and it's phenomenal capability of keeping things hidden and silent) are flawed.

If you do want to pick a country to regard for safety and peacefulness, pick Switzerland.

> You said these.

Why do you keep leaving out a key word, "generally", when quoting that comment?

> If you do want to pick a country to regard for safety and peacefulness, pick Switzerland.

My ex was from Switzerland, and we can assure you, without even having to google "bad shit in Switzerland", that it's not a paradise either.

This is what I see as the top result when I do google bad shit in Switzerland:

"Rape and sexual violence levels staggeringly high in Switzerland with women failed by dangerous laws"

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/switzerland-...

You don't even want to understand the perspective I'm trying to make.

The links weren't random by "I just googled them". The third I found by accident more, than a year ago and certainly is an eye-opener. The first two are source materials for a longer piece on how sexual assault is overlooked or dismissed by law in Japan.

No country is ideal. Switzerland is ridiculously rigid, for example. I'm just tired of the idolized Japan image, the one I see from so many sources, from people who never actually read about the well hidden reality there.

Of course, I know nothing of your background, all I did was asking to look behind the "generally peaceful" thing. At least read the third link, please.

You just provided Switzerland as an example of a generally better place than Japan, without knowing about the sexual violence there.

You are not objective. You just have a different bias.

Will you in any way address the issues I brought up, or you just want to have the last word?

• Saying something is generally better != claiming that it's perfect, with zero flaws.

• Something can have problems and still generally be better than others.

• Pointing a flaw in something does not make it "as bad" as everything else.

A single tree in a desert does not make it a rainforest, nor a few dead trees in a forest make it a desert.

See cities in the US with varying rates of crime or corruption and people's desires to move to them.

> generally better

Compared to: - Switzerland? - Detroit, US? - Spain?

You feel attacked and I don't understand, why.

> Compared to: - Switzerland?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/switzerland-...

I mean I agree with you to some degree, but this is probably not the best place for that kind of discussion, kind of derailing the original comment.

Here, look at difficult-to-fudge statistics instead of anecdotes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

Edit: To answer the question from your other comment - it has less than half of Switzerland's homicide rate. So yes, it's safe even compared to that.

The number of casualties is horrific and hard to understand.

I'm not a huge fan of anime but I understand that this is a major studio with a long history. So I'm sure that this will have a major impact on the entire industry.

Yes. For those not familiar, KyoAni is not a "huge" studio, in that it usually only produces one show per season, and often none at all. They are highly respected due to the shows that they do make are very high quality (the animation is nearly always great, and stories are usually hand selected now as part of a competition). If you want to watch one of their recent series that received lots of acclaim, the show Violet Evergarden is on Netflix. Very hard to understand why anyone would want to attack them.

An attack with over 20 dead with more injured could mean over half of their employees are dead/hurt.

The BBC article mentions many died on the stairs to the roof. Sounds like a locked door could have been involved

Japanese buildings also are massively lacking in emergency exits. Almost no building would pass US safety codes or even come close to it.

Where did you come up with this? Japan has incredibly strict safety regulations and building codes.

The place I work at is about the same size as this office and only has one exit (and that's the main door). Many of the facilities I visit for work are similarly lacking.

Maybe the US really goes over the top, but there are plenty of places where I'd feel pretty screwed if some sort of disaster occurred.

> Japanese buildings also are massively lacking in emergency exits.

This does not sound right. On the contrary, I have always seen emergency exits in Japanese buildings.

Well, many things come here into play.

1) This is an animations studio. Many things are still done by hand - so they have lots of paper, paint, ink, etc you name it. Everything produces toxic smoke

2) Animations studio usually is an open space, pretty damn cramped to begin with and with lots of tools, tables, source materials and other things lying around. I'd imaging it is not the place you will find most suitable for an emergency evacuation.

3) People were going up. So did the smoke. It takes you just a few deep breaths to lose consciousness. It is possible they simple didn't even make it to the door.

There are rumors going about the arsonist jammed/ignited the fire escapes closed before the attack

Not necessarily - dying in badly ventilated staircases is a very common cause of death during fires in large buildings. During a mandatory fire safety training I was told that often it is better to stay in your room, close the door to the hallway (treat it as a fire barrier) and go to the window where the firefighters can come get you.

What I heard / read is that the perpetrator blocked the emergency exits.

And set fires in the stairwells.

I'm a bit dumbfounded about the number of casualties. It must have been a very dreadful attack. Very troubling.

crammed working place plus criminal action generating toxic smoke, maybe toxic dyes and a lot of plastics burning also

NHK News posted a floor plan: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190718/k10011997791000.ht...

Not marked on the diagram, but the text says there are two exits on the first floor. Lots of open space though, so fire could spread quickly.

Makes me want to look into other office arsons. Perhaps thanks to orderly drills since childhood our expectations of survivability are way overblown in the event of any serious smoke-pouring fire...

I think I'll spend some time today looking into fire escape masks, maybe even a small oxygen tank etc. to keep at the office... Descending 19 floors is probably pretty dicey with any smoke in the stairwell.

Some producers and designers are under the people reported missing, notably the producers of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid , Free! and Violet Evergarden (afaict from people translating in a discord chat)

It's a tragedy one way or another, but somehow that makes me feel even worse. Kobayashi-san chi no meidoragon is one of the most heartwarming series I have ever had the pleasure of watching.

KyoAni is responsible for my favorite anime; K-On, as well as Hibike! Euphonium, another anime that moved me. I hope for the best for the families of the dead people, and I hope that the wounded people recover as soon as possible. An attack on KyoAni is an attack on passionate artists following their dreams.

A Pony bottle could fit under any worktable or coin and would provide pure air for five minutes or so, probably enough to avoid the toxic fumes in the stairs trap, or to alleviate the poisoning at least, and maybe to save two or three lifes if shared. Most people can stop breathing for another minute if avoid the need to cough (the dive mask regulator atached to the bottle will help)

Price around $170, oxygen portable cans are smaller and cheaper, around $50.

With people so disciplined and educated as japanese, a shared standard scuba dive bottle could had saved most of this people until reaching a safe vented place. The dismayed people could had been dragged outside also by the other.

The problem is that a scuba bottle could explode after catching fire unatended, but in a vicious fire the building will be damaged in any case and people goes first.

Arson, not an accidental explosion,

> A plastic container and a knife were found left at the scene. The 41-year-old suspect told prefectural police that he set fire to the building. Police are treating the case as arson.

Details from other outlets are much more lurid:

A man shouted “Die!” as he sprayed a flammable liquid all over an animation studio in Japan on Thursday and set the building on fire, killing up to 26 people, authorities said.

“We have received protests against our company, not a few of them if not on a daily basis. There were murder emails including those which said ‘die,’” he told broadcaster NHK.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/suspected-...

Technically, yes. Very likely at worst "just" a flash fire. Not likely any substantial overpressure, as you could get with with methane, propane, etc. Getting a large-scale gasoline-air explosion is nontrivial, I gather.

Three people in here immediately blamed this on mental illness/mental health. That feels like such a strange reaction and oversimplification to this.

If what I read is true: The work of the person who did this did get his work stolen and maybe as a consequence missed out on a lot of money. Then doing something like this might be quite an overreaction, but is at least in the realm of understandable, no? Revenge is in human nature.

It's not actually; whatever financial damage the perpetrator suffered is trivial compared to the loss of human life.

I mean he could've sued them instead. Or publically call them out on it. Instead he went for the nuclear option and went on a killing spree. This is morally abject and I can't believe you're even suggesting it might be a fair action.

I literally called it an overreaction. But there is a very strong motivation for this. It's not like it came out of nowhere - which calling him mentally ill somewhat suggests. Who knows how big the financial damage was - maybe he lost his marriage or whatever.

I just don’t think overreaction covers this. Even if there is no more appropriate word in the English language, it is still incorrect.

Having your family killed gives you a strong motivation. Losing out on a bunch of money? That doesn’t even come close to being anything worth killing over. Let alone mass-murder.

If he gets in front of a court, his stolen work will literally be called a motive. And that's all I'm saying. The rest is just about how much of an overreaction this was. And it certainly was very much that - as I repeatedly said.

That's liteally what an overreaction is.

Calling him mentally ill does not imply it came out of nowhere. It implies that his response to what was done to him was not reasonable, moral, or the reaction of what society considers mentally well.

Mental instability can mean that something small is more likely to push someone much farther than it should.

It is a bit difficult to comprehend this kind of behavior without believing they are also mentally unstable. I expect most people regardless of how much they have been wronged wouldn't turn to killing dozens of innocent people.

The attacker possibly believed they weren't innocent which to me makes it seem like he was mentally unstable. There is some disconnect between what he believes and reality.

>might be quite an overreaction, but is at least in the realm of understandable, no?

You think it is "understandable" to burn down a building because someone stole your work? If someone did that I would call them "crazy". I definitely see "mental stability" or "mental health" being a root cause here. Rational, healthy people do not respond in that way. Call it "temporary insanity" if you want.

Understanding the reasons for a crime does not excuse said crime, or say that you're ok with it.

If someone robs a bank, I can understand the motivation: He wants money. If someone punches another, he might want to feel powerful. If someone rapes a woman he wants sex.

And if someones believes that this company stole his money, I can understand his motivations to seek revenge. That does not mean it is right, just or something to look up to. But saying this is completely crazy is a bit naive IMO.

There is a lot of ways to retaliate against a company that do not involve setting fire to a building with 70 people inside.

This is pretty much the definition of crazy, though apparently not self destructive because they survived.

I fully expect the death penalty if he doesn’t prematurely manage to commit suicide though.

Some of your reasonings seem a bit simplified. If someone robs a bank, they might want money. Is it because they are trying to feed a starving family? Is their life being threatened due to gambling debts? Or do they just value the safety of others less than they would the money?

And that is the only arguably victimless crime in your list of 3. A crime can be committed by a rational person (if I don't do this, my child dies), and it can be committed by someone who is not mentally well. I would argue that these, especially the last crime, are all crimes likely to be committed by someone who is not in a stable or healthy state of mind.

My reasoning was grossly oversimplified - I talked about three major crimes in one sentence.

Would you say that every crime is either a "rational" crime (if I don't do this, my child dies) or done by someone crazy? If so, I understand the heavy resistance of you and others here.

You're assuming that the mass murdering arsonist who says that he was robbed was actually robbed. You should instead seriously consider the possibility that he's insane and his claim is factually incorrect.

I've met very few rational and healthy people in my entire life. Everyone has some problem, and everyone can be pushed to do seemingly crazy things.

By your definition, literally the entire human race is mentally ill. And if that is the case, then the word has no meaning.

That's really just reductio ad absurdum. I would not burn down a building if someone stole my work, would you?

reductio ad absurdum is a perfectly logical syllogism.

I guess it depends on how angry I was?

Would you kill someone who slept with your wife? Regardless of your answer, it would be absurd to call everyone who did crazy.

In fact, courts never do.

Its not money, its honor.

The article says "At least 36 people were injured, 10 of them seriously." but doesn't mention deaths anywhere. I really hope the title is wrong and this is just some kind of horrible mistake. That's so many good people to have died for one selfish asshole. Can anyone confirm/deny ?

Maybe it's denial stage but something doesn't add up about 25/"33" dead[1]. Is it possible that there's something being lost in translation? EFL People often mistake casualty to mean a death/mortality when it's also used as (deaths+injuries). I could see that easily being mistranslated by an ESL person as deaths.

[1]Seems to be corroborated by: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/18/national/dozens...

GoFundMe page for charity: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-kyoani-heal

From what I've read, at least the "25" figure came directly from a police statement

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190718/k10011997921000.ht...

I'd say the majority of native English speakers not from a military background also make the same mistake.

At all the places I've worked at, a stranger would not have made it far past the front entrance without being stopped by security, or even been able to enter the building at all (access cards, etc.) Maybe it's a cultural difference, or does the tech industry just have a much higher concern for securing offices?

At all the places I've worked at (Germany), a stranger could basically just walk in, take the stairs / the elevator and enter the office. No locked doors, no security, nothing. Often left my keys, smartphone or wallet on the table when going to lunch. Never had any problems whatsoever.

It's not a cultural difference, but a question of company size.

Jupp.

My dad was an small-time advertising exec in Germany during the "Mad Men" era... being able to make unannounced visits to senior offices (with a ton of charm to pull it off) was a central part of his strategy for acquiring new customers.

I imagine that is due to the combination of easily available firearms in the US and the ethically dubious position of a lot of SV companies.

I work in the UK and I have only worked in one office with a security desk. Most are very relaxed.

I’d say in Japan this type of thing “doesn’t happen” so people leave their iPhones on tables to hold seats at busy coffee, and do other things that give the benefit of doubt to strangers.

At both places I work at right now, this scenario could easily happen. The lobbies are open and only the elevators and stairs have access cards. Actually, most places I've worked at were like this.

However, I can't imagine setting fire to the lobby would kill 20+ people in any of these places, since they all have many emergency exits. To me the craziest part of this story is the amount of destruction this person caused with just a can of gasoline.

IIRC, the arsonist set fires in all the emergency stairwells.

Every newsroom I've worked at or visited had a security guard and required an access card.

I’m curious where you live? I live in Minneapolis and basically all the places I’ve worked, as well as visiting friends working a stranger could walk directly into the building. Especially multi-business centers. At one of the places they might have been asked if they needed help, but they wouldn’t be stopped, the receptionist would have just assumed they knew where they were going.

I mean certainly major business like BestBuy Corporate and Target Corporate have security, but most small to medium don’t.

It depends. Capella Tower has card reader access at the elevators, along with some other buildings. Many tenant spaces have card reader access as well, typically ones with health/financial records.

Note: I work for an electrical contractor and run work in Class A office space in DT Mpls

Really? I've worked and seen a few places in Minneapolis and they all had pretty decent security.

Granted, only the 'office' areas were secured--every building, which was shared by multiple offices--had a common area which was not secured at all.

Minneapolis has a fair amount of those group office buildings that provide security as part of rent.

I work at a Minneapolis area company. A few years ago there was an employee who was showing signs of mental illness. He was let go, and the next day we were issued key cards for entry into the building - it was open prior to that.

Crime rates in your area must be off the charts.

It's a little three story building that looks like an apartment tucked into a residential street. And it's an animation studio. There's no way they have the size or resources to retain full-time security.

Something as simple as a lock on the entrances would've been enough deterrence, and that's not exactly resource-intensive.

Judging by the downvotes, I may have given the impression that I've only worked in places with very high security with guards patrolling and such; that's not what I meant. I have worked in such offices, but I've never worked in one that didn't at least have a locked entrance that needed an access card to open.

According to the news, the doors had keycard locks but they were opened for the day because of a meeting that involved a lot of visitors

Their bottom floor had a shop anyway, because so many fans made the pilgrimage to their studio.

The shop is in a different building around the corner.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kyoani+%26+Do+Shop/@34.924...

how can 33 people out of 70 for in 3fl building? why not jump out of window, even top floor must be survivable. hard to understand unless they were attacked directly with knife or he made some kind of flamethrower

For those who are able to and want to help, there's a GoFundMe campaign right now to help the studio recover [0]. There isn't much of an explanation of what the money will go towards, but it's better than doing nothing IMO.

I'm not a huge consumer of anime/manga, but some of my favorites (namely, Nichijou and Full Metal Panic) have come from this studio. I'm also aware that the industry as a whole is considered to be in a bad state right now, with this event certainly not helping things.

My condolences to those effected by this. I do hope, though, that this serves as a springboard for better things to come for the industry.

[0] - https://www.gofundme.com/help-kyoani-heal

Do we know if the (apparently Texan) organizer of that fundraiser is affiliated with the victims in any way, or is credible, or might that be a scam?

Sentai Filmworks shared the campaign on their Twitter: https://twitter.com/SentaiFilmworks/status/11517265318966435... so it's at least not someone masquerading as the company.

Sentai Filmworks is a reseller of KyoAni works (amongst others) in the west. They linked to this campaign from their official Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/SentaiFilmworks/status/1151726531...

From what I can tell, yes.

According to their about page [0], they're a licensing/localization company for Japanese animation. Looking at their catalog [1], they've localized various Kyoto Animation productions.

As other comments on this thread have pointed out, the company also shared the campaign on their Twitter account.

[0] - http://www.sentaifilmworks.com/about

[1] - http://www.sentaifilmworks.com/catalog

Donating to that GoFundMe (set up by a foreign reseller) may not benefit KyoAni as much as buying something from KyoAni directly:

https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/cerv4w/before_you_do...

Wow, more than half million. This is amazing! I hope the victims family gets the money.

This wasn't arson, it was an attack. Some news reports the fuel was used on people. Sounds so far like mental illness, so perhaps 'attack'

Seems probably 30 dead.

Presumably more charges can be added as the investigation continues. The police arrive at the scene with enough clear evidence of arson they can hold and charge the suspect. But it certainly looks like additional charges, including murder, will be added.

Is "arson" generally not considered a targeted attack?

I can imagine not, that is, if you set fire to a car it's arson, if you set fire to a car with someone in it it's attempted murder.

I wish Japan and most of East Asia did more to recognize and tackle mental health. And overwork. And a lot of things.

Major US cities are overrun by drug addicts suffering from severe mental illnesses, with literally thousands dying from overdoses every year.

This is pure whataboutism. The parent comment said nothing about the US to even imply there isn’t also a problem there.

On the contrary, the GP is a (light) instance of the chinese robber fallacy. https://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/03/08/the-chinese-robber... They're using "a generic problem to attack a specific person or group, even though other groups have the problem just as much (or even more so)" and should be called out on it.

Super light

This is why businesses need strict security. You never know what kind of nutjob is going to just try and waltz right in. I assume Japan's culture around workplace security is a little different, since they're statistically safer than most countries, but I wouldnt leave anything to chance.

I presume that you avoid all cars and locations in the vicinity of cars due to their much higher risk of causing you injury than a crazy at your office in Japan. After all, you don't want to leave anything to chance do you?

What's the point of responding with idiotic rhetoric that only presents two extremes of virtually no security or hermit lifestyle. This guy reportedly had enough time to lock up their fire exits and then toss gasoline around. AND was waiting to toss gasoline on people trying to flee out the main exit where he was waiting for them. A couple of security guards on duty and a camera system could have prevented the murder of over 30 people. I can buy a set of 5 cameras and a pc to operate a camera network for under $1000, surely an reputable business can afford a few guards and a security system a little more sophisticated than consumer cameras so some psycho doesnt go around blocking all of the safe exits to your building and still have time to prepare his attack, and then stick around with gas to attack fleeing victims. So spare me the braindead, false dichotomy because you felt like being a smartass. When someone tells you to always check your stove twice before you go out do you respond "HURR JUST STAY HOME AND WATCH YER STOVE ALL DAY"? Moron.

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