I had never heard of Kyoto Animation until this Wednesday. I happened to be watching a video on the huge influence of moe on anime culture (if you don’t know what moe is, look it up, it’s complicated). Kyoto Animation were responsible for the early rise to popularity of kawaii teenagers and moe through series such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and K-On! They are a big name in the business with a stellar reputation both for their work and for their attitude to their staff (they treat them as humans rather than rendering computers). Since Netflix picked it up, perhaps one of their best known works is Violet Evergarden.
On Thursday, I was sitting waiting for some work on my car to be finished when I noticed a headline being displayed on the TV in the customer waiting area. There was a fire at Kyoto Animations. I looked further, partially because I’d been in Kyoto less than a week earlier. I won’t go into detail here, but here’s the Wikipedia page on the incident. Basically, someone decided to set one of their studio buildings on fire, killing almost half of the 74 people in the building. It’s the worst massacre in Japan since the war. The company’s president, Hideaki Hatta, has indicated that they may demolish the building and replace it with a park and memorial, probably partially because the building is a write-off. There’s a Go Fund Me campaign to provide assistance for the victims, and that hit its target of $750,000 in less than a day. It’s currently sitting around $1.3 million. Fans have taken to visiting the company’s web site to buy digital content (which doesn’t need staff to ship) to support the company directly. This is a well-loved, well-respected animation company; one of the best in the business.
Various projects have been delayed by the fire. Ironically, this includes a delay in the completion of the third episode of Fire Force, a show about supernatural fire fighters (though they may have decided to put that on hold for a while due to the subject). On a personal note, today I discovered that Kyoto Animation make Nichijou and Miss Kobyashi’s Dragon Maid, which happen to be two of my favourite Slice of Life anime (more about me binging Slice of Life anime in a future post). Kyoto Animation will go on, it’s not just one building, but there are bound to be delays to popular shows that fans have been waiting for, just to drive home that something bad has happened.
So, my thoughts go out to those affected by this quite horrific act of violence. I don’t often say ‘horrific’ and mean it, but… Just read that Wikipedia page and think about it for a few minutes. Then try not having nightmares.
Witches and Ray-Guns 