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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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...
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.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
Explain to my why you value life over principles in a universe that neither designates value to either? Having a different world view does not make a person mentally ill. Willing to die for principles means strong feelings, no more, no less.
You may find what he did heinous but violent behavior is not necessarily indicative of mental illness. It just tends to be a combination of 3 things:
1) value of self biology/life
2) value of others biology/life
3) strength of belief that ideology and impact of events supercedes 1 and 2
It is convenient to claim every violent person is mentally ill when the reality is moreso the 3 aforementioned precepts, and a short-temper/hot handle.
It totally is a question of perception and philosophy. Death is literally a part of life. We all die. The value of life is what you make of it. The fact that this arsonist got roasted himself shows his perspective on the idea of "precious bodies" in general. He was wronged, palgiarized, steamrolled by an idomitable corporation and had no recourse. Je expressed in through corporeal action. You may disagree with the morality of his actions but your assessment of mental illness is just a way to end any discussion about what life is worth when it comes to being traded for political action, injustice, change, etc.
We all live for something. Everyone chooses what to live and die for unless circumstance chooses for them.
The people dead did not choose to die. They were killed by someone. And that person killed people and intended to kill people. By our society's definition, this person is mentally ill- they are ill because they have decided to kill people when their own life is not in imminent danger.
If one's morals justifies one to kill when one's own life or others' lives are not in danger, then they are mentally ill by our society's definition. Of course, mental illness being defined as holding behavior, emotional, or experience structures that deviate from the norm such that the person cannot function within their society in a productive manner.
I think you'd be fascinated by the twists of someone with a personality disorder or someone on the schizophrenia spectrum. If someone claims they are god, or claims they are a wolf, and thus justified by self-definition of predator to predate on other humans, are they mentally ill or do they have a different philosophy?
"The people dead did not choose to die. They were killed by someone. And that person killed people and intended to kill people. By our society's definition, this person is mentally ill- they are ill because they have decided to kill people when their own life is not in imminent danger."
I guess all those soldiers who invaded Iraq, for example, were mentally ill, as were the politicians who ordered them to. As were all those involved in the many other invasions of other countries when they themselves weren't in any imminent danger.
Same goes for guards who shoot to kill escaping prisoners and police who shoot to kill people to keep them from killing others while their own lives are not in danger. Then there are executioners who legally kill people sentenced to death by a court of law. All of these people must be mentally ill, by your definition.
You should distinguish your definition from society's definition, because by society's definition all of these people are not mentally ill. In fact, society often rewards them with honors and praise, calling them heroes or at least paying them for their work and legally protecting them from prosecution for the killing they do. The suggestion to lock up such people in mental institutions because they're "mentally ill" would be considered laughable, insulting, and not worthy of serious consideration by the vast majority of society.
All of this is not to say that any of the above are morally equivalent to the killings that were perpetrated in this tragedy, nor is this to claim that the perpetrator is not mentally ill (it's for psychologists to decide that), but if the perpetrator is mentally ill then they can't be branded as such merely because they "killed people and intended to kill people.. when their own life is not in imminent danger" without also branding as mentally ill all those mentioned above.
Plenty of military actions resulting in death have been taken when there were no lives in danger.
A guard may kill an escaping prisoner even when that prisoner is not in jail for any violent crime and is of no danger to anyone's life.
An executioner may kill a prisoner even when that prisoner is of no danger to anyone, as that prisoner may instead be kept in jail for the rest of their life and might have been non-violent to begin with.
> Are they mentally ill or do they have a different philosophy?
By the discussed points I would have to say it’s both. It’s certainly a different philosophy, but it would most definitely be classified as mentally ill.
The rhetoric I'm responding to discusses them as if they are mutually exclusive. I'm trying to respond that different philosophies can, in fact, be sick ones.
I think you are right about the gp's motivation, but it's really semantics. I would have called the guy selfish, cruel, maybe evil even, but probably not a sociopath or insane. Most murderers are not sociopaths. But when scared or angry empathy is impacted in even normal people. If that anger does not dissipate over time either due to repeated offense or reminders of an offense, an otherwise rational individual can have their empathy suppressed long enough to plan something like this.
Society don't really care about you philosophical reflection on life and death.
If this man was in fact defrauded by the company, he could have gone to court to solve the issue. Him considering that committing a mass murder, killing and injuring many innocent, is justifiable for the plagiarism is a mental illness.
Trying to spin the conversation around philosophy and moral views to justify a mass murder is useless and seriously worrying about your own mental state and moral compass.
The key thing people are misunderstanding about this issue is that not all points of view/ideologies/worldviews are morally neutral. The reasoning goes: Since no one could rationally choose to harm another person, there must be some pathological reason he chose to harm someone. But it's basically and simply true that people do things in their right minds all the time that lead to suffering. OP's point is that pathologizing behavior you don't like cuts off all reasoning about it.
John Brown killed people, but was he mentally ill? What about US soldiers in Afghanistan? Put another way, there are plenty of smart white supremacists. They're not all toothless knuckle dragging illiterates. Some are highly educated. It's possible to do bad things not due to a defect in education or mental illness, but through moral deficiency. People in their right minds do evil things.
I'm not going to acknowledge the legitimacy of his motives because it's what he wants. He wants to be viewed as a martyr and to have his grievances heard and discussed, but killing 20+ people over stealing some IP (and not even a life changing innovation but a fucking manga) is categorically unacceptable in any society and is a disgusting act. Therefore, I will not even acknowledge that he has rational motives; he will be considered insane and disregarded as a fool, and I will move on without paying him or his "grand gesture" any mind. This is the ultimate punishment for an angry idealist who is demanding to be heard.
You seem to miss the point. Japan is a sovereign nation that has managed to protect itself for centuries. If someone ignores the justice system of that sovereign nation and uses his own justice system then he is threatening the sovereignity of the nation. The primary way nations defend themselves is through war and violence. Everyone can found their own nation, even on the grounds of an existing one. This is how countries have managed to declare independence for all of human history. A new nation that cannot defend itself will never gain sovereignity and therefore never existed in the first place. In short might makes right. If you don't follow the rules then you will be locked up or killed (in war). Your conflict seeking moral values are incompatible with ours. It is only natural for a nation to engage in self defense for the purpose of self preservation. You can think whatever you like and we will punish you however we like, it's the only fair thing we can do.
Any action that leads to suffering is bad. Anyone suffering mentally is experiencing dis-ease. If you have a lasting or recurrent desire to inflict suffering on another for reasons that most reasonable people would consider unjustified or using methods that are excessive, then you are probably mentally ill. If you act on that desire you're definitely mentally ill.
Talk to me about principles of the universe when you are being burnt alive because of some rogue psycho.
Of course violence and mental illness aren't mutually inclusive - but serene individuals don't set fire to buildings full of people. So why bring up this edgy bullshit in this context?
> Explain to my why you value life over principles in a universe that neither designates value to either
That's quite the post-modernist psychopathic take on this, brushing away the value of life and claiming killing others is merely a "different world view".
Edit: I'm getting down voted for calling out the OP? Never more have I realized I do not belong here. Have a good one guys, I've had enough. Right and wrong are real. Good and evil are real. I don't feel comfortable in the company of people that disagree.
The comments deserve all the downvotes they get and more, on two levels.
On the moral level, they value human life less than copyright.
On the intellectual level, they appeal to the idea of "valuing principles" while simultaneously throwing away the concept of principles because the universe doesn't obviously value them.
That’s your opinion though. There are no hard and fast rules, what we think is reality may not even be so. What if we’re living in a simulation and there are unlimited respawns? Is that not a situation where principles may be valued more than “life”?
I’m just saying think outside the box, just because you don’t agree with an idea, doesn’t mean it’s “wrong”. All I’m saying is let’s not try to censor ideas.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
That is a gross simplification of criminal motives and you should strike the thought in it's entirety from your mind and re-evaluate it from first principals.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is terrible. There's been an uptick in attacks of this nature.
Clearly its time for some common sense gasoline control.
They should limit the size of gasoline containers. Why would anyone need more than a 1 gallon container?
They should also make all the gasoline container spouts pour slowly, that way this can't happen again. It will give victims a chance to get away or tackle the lunatic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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
>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/
Just adding some relevant information: inbetweeners are paid per frame, but key animators are paid per cut.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
(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".
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.
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".
Could not agree more.
That's half of it (if true). The other half is a mentally ill person.
Explain to my why you value life over principles in a universe that neither designates value to either? Having a different world view does not make a person mentally ill. Willing to die for principles means strong feelings, no more, no less.
You may find what he did heinous but violent behavior is not necessarily indicative of mental illness. It just tends to be a combination of 3 things:
1) value of self biology/life
2) value of others biology/life
3) strength of belief that ideology and impact of events supercedes 1 and 2
It is convenient to claim every violent person is mentally ill when the reality is moreso the 3 aforementioned precepts, and a short-temper/hot handle.
Putting so little value in other people life is a mental illness. Its not a question of perception.
Considering your intellectual / material property over someone life is being a sociopath.
It totally is a question of perception and philosophy. Death is literally a part of life. We all die. The value of life is what you make of it. The fact that this arsonist got roasted himself shows his perspective on the idea of "precious bodies" in general. He was wronged, palgiarized, steamrolled by an idomitable corporation and had no recourse. Je expressed in through corporeal action. You may disagree with the morality of his actions but your assessment of mental illness is just a way to end any discussion about what life is worth when it comes to being traded for political action, injustice, change, etc.
We all live for something. Everyone chooses what to live and die for unless circumstance chooses for them.
The people dead did not choose to die. They were killed by someone. And that person killed people and intended to kill people. By our society's definition, this person is mentally ill- they are ill because they have decided to kill people when their own life is not in imminent danger.
If one's morals justifies one to kill when one's own life or others' lives are not in danger, then they are mentally ill by our society's definition. Of course, mental illness being defined as holding behavior, emotional, or experience structures that deviate from the norm such that the person cannot function within their society in a productive manner.
I think you'd be fascinated by the twists of someone with a personality disorder or someone on the schizophrenia spectrum. If someone claims they are god, or claims they are a wolf, and thus justified by self-definition of predator to predate on other humans, are they mentally ill or do they have a different philosophy?
"The people dead did not choose to die. They were killed by someone. And that person killed people and intended to kill people. By our society's definition, this person is mentally ill- they are ill because they have decided to kill people when their own life is not in imminent danger."
I guess all those soldiers who invaded Iraq, for example, were mentally ill, as were the politicians who ordered them to. As were all those involved in the many other invasions of other countries when they themselves weren't in any imminent danger.
Same goes for guards who shoot to kill escaping prisoners and police who shoot to kill people to keep them from killing others while their own lives are not in danger. Then there are executioners who legally kill people sentenced to death by a court of law. All of these people must be mentally ill, by your definition.
You should distinguish your definition from society's definition, because by society's definition all of these people are not mentally ill. In fact, society often rewards them with honors and praise, calling them heroes or at least paying them for their work and legally protecting them from prosecution for the killing they do. The suggestion to lock up such people in mental institutions because they're "mentally ill" would be considered laughable, insulting, and not worthy of serious consideration by the vast majority of society.
All of this is not to say that any of the above are morally equivalent to the killings that were perpetrated in this tragedy, nor is this to claim that the perpetrator is not mentally ill (it's for psychologists to decide that), but if the perpetrator is mentally ill then they can't be branded as such merely because they "killed people and intended to kill people.. when their own life is not in imminent danger" without also branding as mentally ill all those mentioned above.
Note that my specification is that they are choosing to kill with no other lives, including their own, in danger.
War is a contested topic in society, because of the ethical concerns above.
Plenty of military actions resulting in death have been taken when there were no lives in danger.
A guard may kill an escaping prisoner even when that prisoner is not in jail for any violent crime and is of no danger to anyone's life.
An executioner may kill a prisoner even when that prisoner is of no danger to anyone, as that prisoner may instead be kept in jail for the rest of their life and might have been non-violent to begin with.
> Are they mentally ill or do they have a different philosophy?
By the discussed points I would have to say it’s both. It’s certainly a different philosophy, but it would most definitely be classified as mentally ill.
The rhetoric I'm responding to discusses them as if they are mutually exclusive. I'm trying to respond that different philosophies can, in fact, be sick ones.
I think you are right about the gp's motivation, but it's really semantics. I would have called the guy selfish, cruel, maybe evil even, but probably not a sociopath or insane. Most murderers are not sociopaths. But when scared or angry empathy is impacted in even normal people. If that anger does not dissipate over time either due to repeated offense or reminders of an offense, an otherwise rational individual can have their empathy suppressed long enough to plan something like this.
Society don't really care about you philosophical reflection on life and death.
If this man was in fact defrauded by the company, he could have gone to court to solve the issue. Him considering that committing a mass murder, killing and injuring many innocent, is justifiable for the plagiarism is a mental illness.
Trying to spin the conversation around philosophy and moral views to justify a mass murder is useless and seriously worrying about your own mental state and moral compass.
There's no guarantee justice is upheld in court. Remember Dirty Harry? Most likely the legal route was already tried.
The key thing people are misunderstanding about this issue is that not all points of view/ideologies/worldviews are morally neutral. The reasoning goes: Since no one could rationally choose to harm another person, there must be some pathological reason he chose to harm someone. But it's basically and simply true that people do things in their right minds all the time that lead to suffering. OP's point is that pathologizing behavior you don't like cuts off all reasoning about it.
John Brown killed people, but was he mentally ill? What about US soldiers in Afghanistan? Put another way, there are plenty of smart white supremacists. They're not all toothless knuckle dragging illiterates. Some are highly educated. It's possible to do bad things not due to a defect in education or mental illness, but through moral deficiency. People in their right minds do evil things.
I'm not going to acknowledge the legitimacy of his motives because it's what he wants. He wants to be viewed as a martyr and to have his grievances heard and discussed, but killing 20+ people over stealing some IP (and not even a life changing innovation but a fucking manga) is categorically unacceptable in any society and is a disgusting act. Therefore, I will not even acknowledge that he has rational motives; he will be considered insane and disregarded as a fool, and I will move on without paying him or his "grand gesture" any mind. This is the ultimate punishment for an angry idealist who is demanding to be heard.
You seem to miss the point. Japan is a sovereign nation that has managed to protect itself for centuries. If someone ignores the justice system of that sovereign nation and uses his own justice system then he is threatening the sovereignity of the nation. The primary way nations defend themselves is through war and violence. Everyone can found their own nation, even on the grounds of an existing one. This is how countries have managed to declare independence for all of human history. A new nation that cannot defend itself will never gain sovereignity and therefore never existed in the first place. In short might makes right. If you don't follow the rules then you will be locked up or killed (in war). Your conflict seeking moral values are incompatible with ours. It is only natural for a nation to engage in self defense for the purpose of self preservation. You can think whatever you like and we will punish you however we like, it's the only fair thing we can do.
At what point would you draw the line over "killing for something?"
How about religion? Voices in someone's head? What if they affected you or your loved ones? Will you still laud their ""principles""?
Any action that leads to suffering is bad. Anyone suffering mentally is experiencing dis-ease. If you have a lasting or recurrent desire to inflict suffering on another for reasons that most reasonable people would consider unjustified or using methods that are excessive, then you are probably mentally ill. If you act on that desire you're definitely mentally ill.
Talk to me about principles of the universe when you are being burnt alive because of some rogue psycho.
Of course violence and mental illness aren't mutually inclusive - but serene individuals don't set fire to buildings full of people. So why bring up this edgy bullshit in this context?
> Explain to my why you value life over principles in a universe that neither designates value to either?
Context.
Principles don't matter if there is no life.
> Explain to my why you value life over principles in a universe that neither designates value to either
That's quite the post-modernist psychopathic take on this, brushing away the value of life and claiming killing others is merely a "different world view".
Edit: I'm getting down voted for calling out the OP? Never more have I realized I do not belong here. Have a good one guys, I've had enough. Right and wrong are real. Good and evil are real. I don't feel comfortable in the company of people that disagree.
It literally is a different world view. You only have to look at the Middle East.
Whoa, suddenly racist. The vast, vast majority of people in the middle east value life just as much as anyone.
Are you seriously calling me a racist or are you joking?
Edit: Sorry didn't see the greyed out comment above yours on my screen.
They weren't responding to you, but to goldenkey's flagged/dead comment.
I may not agree with you, but I do appreciate your viewpoint. I think you bring up valid points, and are being downvoted undeservedly.
The comments deserve all the downvotes they get and more, on two levels.
On the moral level, they value human life less than copyright.
On the intellectual level, they appeal to the idea of "valuing principles" while simultaneously throwing away the concept of principles because the universe doesn't obviously value them.
That’s your opinion though. There are no hard and fast rules, what we think is reality may not even be so. What if we’re living in a simulation and there are unlimited respawns? Is that not a situation where principles may be valued more than “life”? I’m just saying think outside the box, just because you don’t agree with an idea, doesn’t mean it’s “wrong”. All I’m saying is let’s not try to censor ideas.
> let’s not try to censor ideas
Downvoting isn't censoring. But on that topic, what if we're living in a simulation where the goal is to censor every idea except one?
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...
• 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-...
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
There are rumors going about the arsonist jammed/ignited the fire escapes closed before the attack
Japanese buildings also are massively lacking in emergency exits. Almost no building would pass US safety codes or even come close to it.
> 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.
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.
I'm a bit dumbfounded about the number of casualties. It must have been a very dreadful attack. Very troubling.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
That is a gross simplification of criminal motives and you should strike the thought in it's entirety from your mind and re-evaluate it from first principals.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jupp.
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.
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
Just because of one case people are not going to lock everything and everywhere, especially not in Japan which is way more safer than the US.
Crime rates in your area must be off the charts.
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...
Every newsroom I've worked at or visited had a security guard and required an access card.
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 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is terrible. There's been an uptick in attacks of this nature.
Clearly its time for some common sense gasoline control.
They should limit the size of gasoline containers. Why would anyone need more than a 1 gallon container?
They should also make all the gasoline container spouts pour slowly, that way this can't happen again. It will give victims a chance to get away or tackle the lunatic.
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.