jul 18, 2019 - Kyoto Animation Arson Attack

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On the day of 18 July 2019, the smell of gasoline and burnt papers permeated Kyoto city, 36 precious lives perished. Most of them were young people whose lives have just embarked. Every day, they walked into Kyoto Animation Studio 1 with love and kindness toward their jobs and all the anime-lovers. Kyoto Animation has become a studio that generates hope and fulfills dreams with their presence. However, everything was ruined when a forty-one-year-old man, Aoba Shinji, walked into the studio and ignited the gasoline with pure malice. The reason why Aoba Shinji targetted at Kyoto Animation was because of the award called “Kyoto Animation Awards” (京都アニメーション大賞), which is an award conferred by Kyoto Animation to recognize rising novelists, mangaka, and play writers. In the novel section of this award, the first-prize winners’ novels can get animated while the second-prize winners could get one million Yen’s bonus. According to Kyoto Animation, a male named Aoba Shinji once applied for this award in 2010 but got rejected in the first round. This was probably when his dissatisfaction with KyoAni first started to emerge. In the next nine years, he deliberately transferred his anger toward his unsuccessfulness to Kyoto Animation and instilled himself with the idea that KyoAni ruined his life.

18 July 2019, Aoba carried out his arson plan. He first went to a gasoline station, which is 10 km away from Kyoto Animation Studio 1, where he bought 40 liters of gasoline. Aoba also said he is going to use them for his car repairing to dispel the seller’s doubts. Kyoto Animation Studio 1’s security doors were opened on that day because they were expecting visitors from the NHK, so Aoba could easily enter the building. He poured gasoline on the first floor near a spiral staircase and ignite it with a cigarette lighter. The staircase was filled with fire and smoke only ten seconds after the fire started. Gasoline has high volatility, and if the gasoline is ignited inside closed spaces, the flames will spread all over the building before the fire alarm reacts, said Professor Hasemi from Waseda University. Moreover, Studio 1 was the oldest building of Kyoto Animation; therefore, most of the works were done on papers, yet papers and other flammable documents fastened the spread of fire. The flames leaped to the second and third floor, devoured the entire building within only a few seconds, and turned it into a living hell. There were twelve people on the first floor, but five of them lost their lives, including three people who managed to escape through the front door. 11 out of 31 people died on the second floor. The rest of them went to the balcony then jumped to the ground. Only 7 out of the 27 people survived on the third floor. The firefighters found most of the bodies on the staircase from the second to the third floor. Unfortunately, the majority of the victims had succumbed to direct burns rather than Carbon monoxide poisoning. The blaze was brought under control at 6:20 a.m. the next morning, marked an end of the most devastating massacre of the Reiwa Era of Japan.

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