Between this and the excellent Beastars getting an Anime, it’s a good year for Anthro fans.
Has anyone else checked out Astra: Lost in Space? I just watched the first episode and it’s pretty good. I was expecting Vinland Saga to be the new hotness of the season, but this show might be a serious contender.
Steamboy was disappointing, but I’ll keep an eye out for this.
Content Warning: (Extensive) Bad Language
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
Someone started a fire at KyoAni’s studios. Multiple people presumed dead.
Shit. That’s awful.
Sentai Filmworks has launched a GoFundMe for the studio. Please donate.
70 people were in the building at the time, at the time of this comment, 30 confirmed injured, 22 reported dead. Naoko Yamada is the only person I know of publicly confirmed safe right now.
Takemoto is dead. Christ and German tabloids are already piling on the “KyoAni’s ‘brutal’ anime made the guy do it!” hype. Because there’s nothing more brutal than high school girls playing in a pop rock band and eating cake.
Turns out the arsonist is a channer. Is anyone surprised?
I’m given to understand that Japanese -chan boards are not quite what current Western -chan boards are but its obvious he’s a nutjob.
Is a train otaku someone just really, really into light and heavy rail? whats a foamer? I’m at work so I’m afraid to randomly google terms if anyone can fill me in, otherwise Ill look in a few hours.
I googled, and yup, ‘foamer’ is literary a term for train nuts so obsessed with trains they freak out the other train enthusiasts. Although, granted the circumstances, I’m more inclined to say that this particular individual was not all there rather than saying train enthusiasts are psychotic.
It’s still not clear what the dude was mad about. Japanese privacy laws mean there isn’t much mainstream reporting on him.
I keep seeing mention of a few themes around him in the secondary media though.
- something about trains
- something about his “novel”
- something about the studio plagarizing something
- something about the studio ruining something he cared about (in relation to trains?)
- his neighbor saying he was completely nuts and scary
- he severely burned himself in the attack
- he tried to escape undetected after the attack despite his burns
The speculation seems to be that he’s a rabid trainspotter, and was angry that anime nerds were ruining his trainspotting because they were congregating at at a location that featured prominently in a KyoAni show. Alongside this, some of his statements while being arrested and possibly internet posts indicate he at least believes KyoAni plagiarized his novel and/or song about trains in one of their works.