The Horrifying Kyoto Animation Massacre

A question for you, folks. If I were to ask you to take a moment to think of the most atrocious criminal that you are familiar with, both from this channel, and just generally, what would spring to mind?

Certainly, and indeed tragically, we aren’t exactly lacking for choices; as just in my own back catalogue we find loathsome sorts such as Lam Kor Wan, Hong Kong’s most notorious serial killer, Iftikhar Ahmed, a Brit who murdered his own daughter, and the 2017 Las Vegas Mass Shooter, whose name I still refuse to utter.

Today, however, I may have just happened upon the most reprehensible one yet; a Japanese man who, back in 2019, took 40 litres of petrol to Kyoto Animation, a popular and highly successful anime studio based in its titular city, set it alight, and in the space of mere moments, killed 36 people, wounded a further 33, and left just a single uninjured survivor.

I’ll say this outright, no case I have written about has ever emotionally devastated me quite like this one. It’s a case in which there is no heroic and tireless policing in the aftermath, no silver-lined sub-narratives, and no comfort in its resolution—only a profound tragedy that leaves you as but a hollowed out and emotionally fragile husk of what you once were.

That is also why I opted against doing my usual highly dramatized and adrenaline pumping style of introduction; for a case such as this, extreme as it is in its horror, it just simply doesn’t feel appropriate… call me an overthinker I guess—as I suspect you’d likely be correct!

And so, with that said, let’s all take a big breath to steel ourselves, and begin the story of the Kyoto Animation Arson Attack.

Chapter 1: The Attack

The attacker, who I shall call ‘Zakō,’ first arrived at the scene of his massacre, Kyoto Animation’s Studio 1, on the 15th of July, a whole three days before his attack, having withdrawn 57,000 yen, or around $350 USD, from his bank account, and hidden six knives about his person.

And upon hearing that, I know full well what many of you will be thinking: that he must have gotten there nice and early to fully prepare for and plan out his wicked deed.

But while such an assumption would certainly be understandable, given the absolutely horrific death toll he wrought, that does not appear to be the case at all, because while he was hanging around Kyoto Animation, a lot, as in from sun up to sun down a lot, he did not actually appear to be proactively planning, with witness testimony speaking of how he was simply loitering aimlessly outside the studio; his eyes still and vacant, as if looking at absolutely nothing at all, and yet, directionally at least, being aimed right at the studio.

And it was a sight that only got increasingly bizarre as the days rolled on as well, because he hadn’t brought a spare set of clothes with him. Consequently, every day, his red t-shirt would become a touch more sweat stained, and his stone-washed jeans a tad more dirty. He clearly wasn’t washing too, as his heavyset face also became all the more grubby, and the hair atop it increasingly dishevelled as time went on.

His ever more revolting appearance is actually why his actions in the run up to the attack are remembered so well. You see folks, I don’t know if you know this, but us anime fans, at our very worst, aren’t exactly what you’d call a personable and amenable bunch, some of us can actually be rather socially awkward, and so, Kyoto Animation had gotten quite used to… how to put it… ‘unusual displays of affection’ at its door.

Therefore, for a time, Zakō loitering was simply marked up as another one of those well-meaning but rather awkward fans, and so he caused no concern. However, hanging around for days at a time, barely moving, never changing clothes or washing… that was just bloody weird, and there was no two ways about it, so soon enough people started to properly keep an eye on him, with one survivor of the fire even likening his behaviour to being on a “pilgrimage” of sorts: clearly in a place of great reverence to him, and yet fully retreated into his own mind.

He didn’t stay outside once the staff had gone home, however, with him first checking into a local hotel under his real name, and maybe, because my sources really are not consistent on this point, also staying in a 24-hour internet café near Kyoto’s main station on other nights.

Eventually, however, the loitering, and weird pre-massacre ‘pilgrimage’ came to an end, and Zakō was ready to put his plan into action the morning of the 18th. First, he had to gather his supplies, an endeavour for which he made two stops. The first took him to a shopping centre a couple of hundred metres north of Studio 1, from which he purchased two 20 litre jerry cans and a lump hammer, as well as a little cart to carry them, and from there, he made for the nearest petrol station to fill said cans up. This was also only a couple of hundred metres from Studio 1, only to the west, which meant he had to double back on himself, and so he took the opportunity to store his hammer and knives down the alley that ran beside his target.

Naturally, when he got to the petrol station, he also attracted some curiosity from the attendant on duty; I mean, one jerry can, sure, people run out of go-juice in their car, and people have various petrol-powered things in their garden, so it was totally normal to be filling one of those up, but two, that was all the more peculiar, so quite understandably, while making all the usual small talk he would with any customer, the attendant surrendered to his curiosity and asked what all of the petrol was in aid of; not that he was suspicious mind you, just nosey. And as quickly as the curious eyebrow had been raised, it was lowered once again, as Zakō brushed it off by explaining that he had a big generator he needed to keep juiced up. “Ahhh, that’d do it,” the attendant thought, and that was the end of that; Zakō was now fully tooled up, with everything he could possibly need to execute his foul and loathsome plan.

It would take him a little under half an hour to make the 200 metre walk back to Studio 1, with him having finished at the petrol station a little after 10am. Why so long, you ask? Well, partly, that was because he was pathetically idle and unfit, and so the mere physical task of pulling 30kg of fuel in a handy little wheely cart 200 metres down a perfectly flat bit of road was nothing short of an Olympian task for him, but further to just that, the closer to the studio he got, the more that bizarrely calm demeanour he had displayed while stalking the studio, and making excuses at the petrol station, began to evaporate, leaving in its place an ever more erratic and jumpy one—which didn’t do wonders for his pace.

In fact, CCTV footage of his approach to Studio 1 was eventually shown in court as evidence, and while it has never been shown publicly, one person who did see the footage spoke publicly about how utterly bizarre the transformation was: utterly calm and collected at the petrol station, to visibly shaking and physically ticking on his final approach to Studio 1.

And do you want to know something soul destroying, folks? Had the loathsome little urchin come to launch his attack on any other day, the story would likely have ended here, as he would have found the entrance to Studio 1 firmly locked, with a couple of heavies on the other side of it, who would have seen an erratic fella with a load of petrol trying to get in, called the police, and then raced outside to give him a right and proper shoeing before he could do anything stupid. But tragically, instead of attempting it on those days, he had to pick the 18th didn’t he… when the electronic lock that normally clamped the main door firmly shut was deactivated for the arrival of some very important visitors who were due to arrive a little later on… and so he slipped right in.

When inside, Zakō found himself a demon masquerading in the form of Man, as, without hesitation, he immediately leapt upon his jerry cans, yanked one clean out of his trolley, and began shakily tearing at the lid until it came loose. Then, with the unmistakable smell of petrol beginning to permeate through the air in Studio 1’s reception, Zakō, over and over again, at a volume barely louder than a whisper, began muttering “die, die, die, die.” And that was all he said, over and over again, that same foreboding word, “die, die, die, die.”

From there, with his proclamation of doom getting ever louder, he began pouring petrol on anything that was forthcoming: the floors, the walls, the furniture, and even some of the employees, as a small group of them had raced over to try and get a handle on what the hell was going on. And still, all the while, Zakō kept repeating that word; with him now screaming it as intensely as his lungs would allow.

The workers who had come to intercept Zakō were no fools, and they knew there was only one way this situation was going to end if they did put an end to it immediately, and so, a ferocious melee ensued. The court papers, which saw the incident play out on recovered CCTV footage, speak of this moment intently, of how the workers fought like lions to try and subdue the maniac before them, growing ever more frantic in their efforts as Zakō kept on pushing them away, and leaping back upon his jerry can, and when he couldn’t do that, in the brief moments where the workers managed to tip the scales against him, he would thrash out towards it with any limb he was able, his leg, his arm, his neck even, it mattered not, anything he could do to knock that can, and splash even a drop more fuel, he did, and of course, while doing this, he kept on screaming that word, over, and over, and over again.

Then, at 10:31am, with either a full jerry can emptied, or his feeling that he was about to be overpowered to a point from which he couldn’t recover, it is hard to tell which from available sources, Zakō felt the time had come, and so, when able, he broke momentarily free of the now rather sizable cohort of workers that was restraining him, pulled a disposable lighter from his pocket, and sparked the flint.

The immediate scene was one of total and complete devastation. The few moments that Zakō had been frantically pouring petrol everywhere that he was able had been just about long enough for the petrol to begin evaporating, meaning that a small layer of vapourised petrol hung all over the floor and furnishings, what with it being heavier than air. Sparking the flint caused this layer to ignite immediately, creating an initial flash fire that ignited all the petrol in but the blink of an eye.

So bad was it in fact, that it even caused an explosion of sorts, as the petrol concentration was so high, and confined within such a small space, that it created what is called a ‘sudden overpressure,’ i.e. a small blast effect.

From there, it took a mere 30 seconds for the entirety of Studio 1 to be engulfed in flames, with the raging fire tearing down a hallway that lead out of reception, where it then found its way to a spiral staircase that took it right the way up to the third floor on top, and of course, it also spread into every single room it passed along the way, and into the ones adjacent to them from there.

And I really want to stress the whole 30 second detail, folks. Can you even begin to imagine such a situation? Try to picture it, if you can; and I mean that quite literally—close your eyes now and POV yourself at your place of work. You’re sat there, completely unaware of a brewing situation not even 100 paces from where you sit, and then, alerted to something peculiar by the vaguely familiar, and growing ever stronger smell of a fire in your nostrils, you turn your head to investigate, just to see that the doorway closest to you, and everything around it is on fire, and spreading rapidly. What the fuck do you do in that situation? Could you even do anything, or would you simply find yourself petrified on the spot, completely overwhelmed by this cataclysmic situation that has developed in the blink of an eye? Even if you do find yourself able to muster a reaction of some kind, what do you do, you have less time to react than it took to read this paragraph, and then the relentless flames are upon you.

As for what the real people of Studio 1 did, many were simply consumed by the flames at their workstations, but others did bolt from their desks, relying purely on their instincts to see them right. Tragically, many of the latter group soon found themselves flanked by smoke on all sides, and then, oxygen deprived and disorientated, they passed out, and were soon enough taken by the flames.

A lucky few even managed to get to the earlier mentioned spiral staircase in the few seconds they had before it was engulfed by flames. They made for the roof, which was intended to act as a last resort fire door, but the regulations that saw the building built in that manner hadn’t been written with such a rapidly spreading fire in mind, and so not one of them made it to the roof.

For what it was worth at that point, The Kyoto City Fire Department had at least been made aware of the situation. They had been informed almost immediately in fact, as a local resident who lived barely 20 paces from Studio 1 had heard the initial overpressure ‘explosion,’ and upon seeing the evidently rather terrible situation that was unfolding before him, he had raised the alarm.

Tragically, however, the fire had spread so damned quickly, that by the time that our unnamed local resident had dad shuffled over to investigate the ‘explosion,’ seen what was going on, and then raced to his phone, the fire had already taken hold of half the building, and further still, by the time he had then gone on to dial 119, which in Japan puts you straight through for a fire truck or ambulance, and then actually explained the situation, the whole building was engulfed.

Despite the crushing and unpreventable tragedy before them however, the Kyoto City Fire Department specifically, and indeed the cities other emergency services more broadly, were flawless in their response. Every vehicle that could be spared was immediately dispatched, with 49 fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars all getting their right peddles planted right to the floor as their occupants raced to the scene. This number would soon enough swell to 111 vehicles too; as on-call firefighters Kyoto over answered their pagers and sprinted for their stations, and dispatch room staff scrambled to free up any and every asset possible.

And with Fushimi Fire Station, Fushimi Police Station, and Kyoto Medical Centre only being 1.5, 1.8, and 2km away respectively, it took mere minutes for the initial first responders to start turning up, with the Fushimi Firefighters being first on the scene at 10:40am.

For those firefighters, the situation that greeted them seemed simply insurmountable, as by now, the modest little three-story office block had quite evidently been all but totally consumed by the flames. It mattered not to them, however, as be it a pokey little bin fire, or… this, their response was the same; get in there immediately and rescue survivors.

Six of the Kyoto Animation staffers had already made it out of their own accord by this time. Four of them had sprinted right through the flames and made for the front door the moment the fire started, another had gotten out the moment he saw the lighter emerge from Zakō’s pocket, dodging the fire outright, and the final one had smashed a window on the second floor when they found themselves cut off by the flames, and then taken a leap of faith onto the concrete below.

For that person, the call was a good one, as while the fall didn’t exactly do their bones any favours, it spared them from both the flames and the smoke, and they would go on to survive. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the four who sprinted through the flames, as they all were horrifically burnt in the process thereof, and all but one of them would pass with time.

Shockingly, however, and in quite the pleasant surprise for me it has to be said, as the firefighters entered Studio 1 and pushed through the flames, they actually managed to find a few survivors still clinging to life, and began pulling them out with all possible haste.

Three people, for example, who had taken refuge in the ground-floor women’s restroom, were found alive because they had retreated before Zakō had managed to light the petrol. Through little circumstance but the grace of God, the bathroom happened to have quite the substantial and tight door, and this had kept the flames back long enough for the firefighters to come to the rescue, and they all survived. Another three survivors were also pulled from inside the building, although details concerning their rescue were not forthcoming.

25 people, with nowhere else to go, had also retreated to the second-floor balcony. 20 of them were on the second floor when the fire broke out, and five of them had descended, somehow, from the third-floor balcony above, and I say ‘somehow,’ because the news articles I am using to piece this chapter together are really scant on details for how they achieved this—but achieve it I don’t doubt they did. Luckily, the firefighters had ladders up against the balcony no sooner than they were out of their trucks, and they were all off the balcony in no time; although again, some of them also succumb to their injuries later down the line.

Come 10:44am, a total of 37 survivors had made it out one way or another, and the paramedics in attendance began standard triage protocols, classifying them as ‘red’ for those who were staring death in the face, ‘yellow’ for those who soon enough could be if their wounds were left unchecked, and ‘green’ for those who were injured, but with ailments so slight that there was no rush getting around to them. From there, that which could be done to stabilise their conditions was seen too, and the 10 who had found themselves classified as ‘red’ victims were away to the hospital by 11:17am.

And of course, while all of that was happening, the firefighters were still hard at it trying to suppress the fire, and push their way further into Studio 1, having so far managed to get no further than the ground floor due to the intensity of the flames.

They would find no more survivors, however, as it just took too long to reach them; the firefighters having taken until 11:15am to get to the second floor, and 11:30am to make it to the third. And while I would hope this was obvious enough from how I characterised them, but I really want to make sure I’m clear on this matter, the firefighters did everything they could to get up to the higher floors, the flames were just too damned intense for them to realistically do so, and needlessly adding themselves to the casualty list would have helped anyone.

And if you want more evidence of their bravery, consider this: when they did reach the second and third floors, the flames had not been extinguished, only lessened—they were in there the moment they were able, and not a second later.

As for when it was finally extinguished, that wouldn’t be until 3:19pm, at which point it had been burning for just shy of five hours. From there, all efforts were naturally on the retrieval, cataloguing, and identification of the dead, with two being found on the ground floor, eleven on the second floor, and twenty on the third floor. 19 of that final 20 were found on a stairwell, a separate one to the spiral set I mentioned earlier, that led right to the roof. In any other fire, this likely would have been more than enough to ensure their survival, especially considering how quickly the Fire Department got to the scene, but there, in this fire, powered as it was by 40 litres of petrol… they never had a chance.

This initial death toll of 33 would rise soon enough however, because, as I have already said, three of the workers who had sprinted through the flames would later succumb to their injuries. This brings the final death toll to 36, just as I said in the introduction.

And we can’t forget the injured too, as all 33 of them were left with a harrowing range of wounds. Among them, several suffered severe third-degree burns that covered more than half their bodies and required immediate grafting. Many others faced partial limb amputations due to the extent of their injuries, and a number were left with respiratory complications from prolonged smoke inhalation, with some requiring oxygen therapy for weeks. Minor injuries were also widespread: dozens of people had cuts and lacerations from shattered glass, twisted ankles from stumbling through debris, and fractures from falling while trying to escape.

Even the one member of staff who had escaped uninjured had severe psychological trauma. How could he not, as, given that 70 people were working that day, 51% of his colleagues had just been murdered and a further 47% had been injured? Can we even begin to comprehend the degree of survivor’s guilt that comes from an experience like that?

As for the malevolent little parasite who wrought it all upon them, it brings me no end of joy to be able to report that he got royally messed up by the fire that he started! I don’t wish to sound cold folks, but I’m really not exaggerating when I say that this turn in the story pleases me highly. This prick killed thirty fucking four people; I can’t even begin to describe to you all the extent with which every cell and fibre of my being is absolutely burning with rage as I type this out, so yeah, I’m going to gleefully pour all the delicious schadenfreude this twist produces into a glass, and down it in one. Fuck him. Cunt.

As for just how messed up the consequences of his own actions made him, well, put it this way, 93% of his body was covered in burns, specifically third-degree ones that burn right down to the tissue below the skin and cause pain the likes of which can scarcely be appreciated by those who haven’t suffered it themselves, not mere first-degree ones that just blister the skin up a bit. So bad was it in fact, that his attending physician wrote in his notes that he believed Zakō’s chance of survival stood at a mere 2.35%.

Miraculously, however, Zakō overcame the odds after a night long session of surgery, which saw his condition stabilised, and I know what you’re thinking my friends; it’s weird that I didn’t begin that sentence with an ‘unfortunately,’ or an equivalent word to keep reminding you all of just how much I despise the very air that cancerous tumour made human breathes, but worry not, for there is method in my madness, which I shall explain simply by saying this: you all don’t know how this story ends, but I do, and oh boy is it a belter of an ending, one that makes me very, very happy that he survived his attack. But we will get to that in good time, for now, let’s get back to having a good old hearty chuckle at his self-imposed injuries.

With his condition stabilised, Zakō then found himself with a rather pressing need for one hell of a skin graft, but what would you know, it turns out that Japan, like most countries, never quite has enough organs on storage to go round. And through some truly rotten luck it has to be said, it turns out that at that time, they had enough skin going to sort out all but one person currently awaiting it, and the random lottery system they used to fairly and impartially decide who did and didn’t get it just so happened to pick out Zakō as that one person who was going to have to go without… the Goddess Fortuna truly is an enigmatic lady, isn’t she?

As a result of this totally real and in no way made up just to make him suffer shortage, Zakō had to sit there enjoying his open wounds while the world’s biggest epidermal sheet could be artificially grown from his remaining skin cells. A grand old time of it he had too; getting to enjoy near constant sedation to prevent his body from totally shutting down out of shock, which was only interrupted by sporadically being brought back around so that his condition could be assessed, during which time he would cry out in agony, and mumble some garbage about how much pain he was in.

Basically, for all the Doctor Who fans in the audience, you know that episode where Peter Capaldi’s Doctor happens upon the hospital full of soon to be converted Cybermen, who are all just sat there covered head to toe in bandages, unable to say any word but “pain” over and over again? It was like that, but in real life; good init—couldn’t have happened to anyone more deserving!

Eventually, however, Zakō got his skin graft, and all the other things that the wrinkle brained medical types deemed he needed, and with his condition nicely recovered, or as recovered as it could ever be given the severity of his injuries anyway, he was discharged from hospital on the 27th of May 2020.

And guess how long he got to enjoy his freedom for before he was arrested?

Barely even a single second, is the answer to that question. Because the Giga Chad’s and Giga Stacy’s of the Kyoto Prefectural Police, square jawed and bulging with muscle as they all are, were there waiting for him as he signed his discharge papers, cuffs already unlocked, ready to go—with them being slapped around his wrists before the ink had even dried on the paperwork.

Chapter 2: The Aftermath

For many in the world of animation, both creators and consumers alike, the attack on Kyoto Animation came as a real shock; not only because of the unprecedented barbarism and scale of it—but because the company was, and still is, known as one of the good guys of the industry; with them heavily prioritising employee welfare through only offering full time positions, paying wages that a human being can actually live off, as well as overtime pay on top of it, and that’s all in addition to offering very generous holiday allowances, by Japanese standards anyway, and an intensive effort to foster up and coming talent through in-house training programs.

In light of these considerations, many were simply dumbstruck, asking themselves why on God’s earth would someone want to attack such a studio?

Memorials were also held across Japan, where the public mourned not only the individuals lost but also the irreplaceable creative potential that had been extinguished, and naturally, Kyoto, as the city of the crime, saw by far and away the greatest concentration of them, with the local outpouring of grief being so profound, that for weeks following the attack, near continual vigils sprang up near the remains of Studio 1, where residents and fans laid flowers, messages, and artwork as tributes. For years, Kyoto Animation had been more than just a business; it was a source of cultural pride and identity for Kyoto. The community’s grief was palpable, but so too was its resolve to support the studio in any way possible.

As a long time anime fan myself, that’s right, I’m outing myself as a big old weeb folks, I remember the attack happening, and for myself and others similarly invested, it really is one of those ‘where were you on 9/11’ moments, with me able to still picture clearly how I was emerging from the Maidan Square Subway Station in Kyiv, Ukraine, in the early hours of the morning, having spent a thoroughly enjoyable night on the ale with an old friend who just so happened to be on the same flight out as me by pure chance, only to pop my phone open and see the still breaking news, next thing I knew, I was stuck to a bench, just digging through Twitter to try and get a handle on what the hell was going on—utterly bewildered by the situation.

And because I wasn’t alone in my sentiments, financial support for Kyoto Animation soon began pouring in from around the world. A GoFundMe campaign launched by Sentai Filmworks, a US-based distributor of anime, for example, raised over 2 million USD, while a fund opened by Kyoto Animation, which I remember paying into myself, ending up amassing a little over 3.3 billion Yen, or around 30 million USD. Kyoto Animation themselves also ended not even drawing a single Yen of it for their own rebuilding, and instead transferred the whole lot over to the Kyoto Prefectural Government, who established a special committee just for making sure the money was spent on the victims, and only the victims.

Among those left in Kyoto Animation, once they had grieved, thoughts eventually turned to how the hell was the company going to survive when, given that it only had a workforce of 176 prior to the attack, over 20% of its staff had been murdered, and a little under the same percentage again had been injured.

What followed was a lot of rising to the challenge, determination to not let the work of their murdered colleagues be squandered, and desire to not let the bastard win across the board. This saw their next film, Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll, which itself had only been finished the day before the attack, and through pure fluke of fate didn’t have its Digital Master Copies stored in Studio 1, released as planned in September 2019.

The film itself was also made into a memorial for the victims of the attack, with Director Haruka Fujita dropping the usual Kyoto Animation standard of needing one year’s service with the company to be included in the credits, so that his murdered colleagues could have some, quote: ”… proof that they lived.”

For the productions that were not already finished, however, there was simply no way to avoid delays, with Violet Evergarden: The Movie, having its January 2020 release pushed back to September of that same year, and Free! The Final Stroke, having to be delayed and eventually released as two parts to get it out of the door in September 2021 and April 2022.

As for the site of Studio 1, as far as I can tell from news reporting, it appears to be in something of a limbo at present. The building itself was demolished by April 2020, and not wishing to force their staff to have to return to the scene of such a horrific crime, Kyoto Animation CEO Hideaki Hatta instead wished to discontinue the lots commercial use and see a memorial built on the site. This effort has been resisted by some local residents however, with the Neighbourhood Association of Momoyama Cho, the area that Studio 1 was in, being publicly vocal about how it didn’t wish for a memorial to be built, citing concerns over the footfall it would bring to the quiet residential area. There was reporting in 2022 that the majority of local residents were now in favour of building a memorial park however, and that consultancy to see what should be built was actively underway, but as of the time of writing, construction has yet to begin, so who knows.

A memorial has been built elsewhere in Kyoto however, and designed by Kyoto Animation artists personally, it stands three metres tall, and is made up of 36 white birds, one for each victim, spiralling toward the sky, and bears the inscription, “Limitless dreams, told through animation. In every line drawn, years of cultivated talent and profound sentiment. From here in Uji, Kyoto, they spread out into the world, taking wing toward our uninterrupted future.”

And don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the victims. As regular viewers will know, I’m always one to want to shine a spotlight on them and go into details as an absolute priority in my scripts, and today is no exception, I just think there’s a far better place in the script for it than here, and that would be at the end. Rather than simply cramming them into this otherwise more generally focused chapter, which frankly would make me feel like I was treating them as an afterthought, I’d far rather have them be the last thing on our minds before we cut to black; lest they be forgotten and overlooked with everything else I am throwing at you today.

Chapter 3: The Culprit

I was initially reluctant to include this chapter, as, to begin with, I wanted to reduce the perpetrator to little but a background character in the script, just like I did in my Las Vegas Massacre script, and yet, here we are, so what happened?

Well, eager to prevent today’s show from drifting into gore-porn territory, something that I happen to find absolutely abhorrent, I was eager that we should all come away from today’s episode with two things; firstly, a respectful understanding of the victims, and what happened to them, and secondly, some kind of an idea as to why massacres such as that which happened in Kyoto occur at all.

And unfortunately, it turns out that that second ambition is kind of difficult if you know nothing about the perpetrators, as they don’t exactly just decide to do these things on a whim, do they? I therefore found myself feeling like I had arrived at a proverbial fork in the road, with two places I wanted to reach, but a path to only one of them.

In the end however, if I looked closely, I believed I could spot a desire path down the middle of the fork, one that would allow me to curve towards wider understanding, while still ultimately arriving at the destination of respecting the victims, i.e., in less flowery language, just stripping the perpetrators biography right down to the bare minimum you need to understand why he did what he did, and not a word more… and so that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

With that in mind, I also have a confession to make folks, as I might have been telling you all a little porky in the last chapter. You see, the perpetrators name isn’t really Zakō; that’s just a name I came up with so that I didn’t have to use his real one; with it translating roughly to ‘pathetic and insignificant creature that isn’t to be taken seriously.’ As names go, that’s a bloody good fit if I do say so myself!

And naturally, no, I will not be telling you his real name—victims first, that’s our MO today.

So, with all of that said, here is Zakō’s identity stripped biography for you all.

He was born all the way back in 1978, making him 41 at the time of his attack. As for where he was born, I’m just going to say ‘Japan,’ we don’t need to know any more than that.

I can also tell you that, much to my surprise, he was raised in a wholesome and ever-loving nuclear family, one which provided the perfect conditions, both emotionally and materially, for the young Zakō to get a head start in life, and truly thrive… psych! Of course he didn’t come from such a household. Instead, he naturally came from a really, really terrible one.

His parents divorced in 1987, when he was only nine years old, after which, his mother totally vanished from his life for many years. I don’t know why she disappeared, as two explanations are commonly thrown about. The first one states that after enduring horrific abuse from Zakō’s father, his mother eventually reached her breaking point, made for the hills, and for whatever reason, simply couldn’t bring her to face her children, and the second one posits that she had simply found herself dissatisfied with her lot in life, and so, when a new bit of tarty man meat presented itself, she hopped right on top of it, and was having such a thoroughly grand old time doing so, that she just stopped paying any heed to her kids.

If you were to ask me for my pure gut instinct on which I thought was correct, I’d probably lean towards the second one, as it strikes me as peculiar that she would make no attempt to communicate with her kids for actual years, so maybe she indeed was shacked up with a Hiroyuki Sanada type somewhere living her best life.

That isn’t to say the abuse explanation doesn’t have merit, however, because as we shall soon see… well, let’s just say it’d check out.

Following the divorce, and the beginning of his mother’s estrangement, Zakō moved into a new flat with his father, and his two siblings. I didn’t find out many details about their new abode, but the ones I did find all spoke to the same truth, that it was little but a hovel: small, cramped, and very much dilapidated. Earlier, their material conditions, while modest, hadn’t exactly been those of destitution, but as maintaining them had been dependent upon both Zakō’s mother and father bringing something home to chuck in the kitty, poverty absolutely t-boned them at 100mph.

Nonetheless, they persevered, and the bigger of the wolves were kept at the door. Or rather, they were for a time, because soon enough Zakō’s father developed diabetes, and found himself unable to work. From there, things got bad, and the family had to get by on what scraps the Japanese Welfare State was able to throw their way… and that really wasn’t a lot.

Naturally, Zakō was attending school through all of that ever-worsening financial hardship, eventually graduating two years later than his peers at the age of 20. This delay was caused by the fact that his education had been absolutely devastated by his family’s poverty, as twice his father had repeatedly failed to make rent, was subsequently evicted, and had to set up somewhere new—at which point Zakō simply waited it out and resat the year when the calendar rolled around.

Eager to get his hands on some cash ASAP, Zakō took on a part time role at his local Prefecture’s Government Document Department at the age of 16, and eventually, at the age of 20, despite still being in high school, he even took on a second part time gig at a petrol station, working behind the till.

He may have had other motivations to spend as much time as possible out of the house, however, not that he ever said so outright. Remember when I said the ‘abuse explanation’ of his mother’s departure had some merit to it?

Yeaaaaaaaaaaah… Zakō’s dad was a bit of a monster it turns out, although, do note that all my sources say this started after the divorce, hence why I leaned away from the abuse explanation of why Zakō’s mother walked out.

As for what Zakō suffered, apparently, he, and indeed his siblings, would be used as both a verbal and literal punching bag whenever their father happened to find himself irked, be it by something minor like a stubbed toe, or something major like yet another tragic milestone on their unending journey into crushing poverty.

My sources disagree over how long this abuse lasted, with some saying it eventually subsided a year or two after the divorce, and others saying it persisted until he eventually left the family home.

It’s safe to say Zakō’s early life was pretty shit then, and to deal with it all, he naturally had an outlet for venting steam, which in his case would be otaku-ing.

Still maintaining some desire for dignity in his life however, and thus having a want to avoid descending into becoming a full-on NEET, Zakō decided to pursue his dreams, enrolling at a local vocational music school so that he could, and I’m quoting here, “become a person who makes music for video games.”

He even kept on working to pay for it too, swapping in all of his other gigs for a job delivering newspapers, which was nice and flexible around his studies.

Now, perhaps some of you are tempted to take pity on Zakō at this point, as he had had quite a bad time of it in his early years after all. To those of you finding yourself so inclined, however, I have but one thing to say: hold your horses, and strap in tight, because we are about to see one hell of a spiral.

It all began when he only completed six months of his music course, dropping out not because of financial hardship, or any other tragic and understandable circumstance, but due to the fact that unbeknown to his family, his friends, his lecturers, or anyone besides himself in fact, the sun had started to royally shine out of his arse, and as a result, he had come to realise that, actually, he was simply better than everyone else around him, dropping out of school because, and this is an exact quote: ”… they have nothing to teach me.”

Following that, when dozens of job applications the video games industry over all promptly found their way to the receiving office’s paper shredder, Zakō decided that the age of the NEET had finally dawned, with him quitting his newspaper delivery job, and taking up residence in a tiny little cupboard flat where, thanks to the unending generosity of the Japanese taxpayer, he was able to be alone with his ever growing piles of manga, anime tapes, video games, and of course, his own sense of self superiority. Personally, I like to think that the choice of a cupboard flat was not due to poverty, but rather because a smaller, less ventilated abode allowed him to huff his own farts in greater concentration, but I digress!

From there, Zakō simply wallowed in his own existence. He would wake up, play his video games, read his manga, and watch his anime, all day, every day, with his nonstop hedonistic indulging being interrupted only by the occasional trip to a bank to cash his Government issued NEET-bucks, and the odd trip to a convenience store to use as little money as possible to acquire as many calories as possible; leaving all the more money for his hobbies.

This, would you believe it, wasn’t exactly great for Zakō’s psyche, and he started to find it ever harder to relate to those around him, which caused the abject collapse of his social skills, and the distance he had to climb to emerge from the pit he had put himself into seemingly growing ever taller by the day. His elder sibling attempted to intervene for a time, and made regular appearances at his cupboard flat accordingly, but would you believe it, there is only so many times a well wisher can be told to go suck on a fat one until they just give up and leave you to wallow in your own filth.

But no descent is entirely smooth, as invariably, their specific trajectory rises and dips with each passing day, while maintaining their overall downward course over a longer period of time, and sure enough, Zakō’s was no different, as, from time to time, when he happened to find himself on an upper of a day, an attempt would be made to grab the edge of the proverbial pit he had hurled himself into, with a view to pulling himself out.

The issue was that such moments of enthusiasm were fleeting, and when, say, he managed to land himself some part time work at a convenience store, a job which he reportedly only got out of pity from the manager, who had long since figured out the specifics of his tragic lifestyle thanks to his sporadic visits to stock up on NEET slop, a day later he would wake up bright and early, ready to carpe diem and all that, only to soon enough realise he’d actually really far rather sit on his futon, and bash out another bishōjo game.

Eventually, Zakō reached new depths of depravity, and began venting his frustrations through criminal acts, and sadly, as you no doubt have guessed from my characterisation of him, they were, of course, sexual ones—partly anyway.

I have no idea how many he committed, as details are only available for incident he was apprehended for, which was in September 2006, and ended up landing him with a Sexual Assault and Theft charge. But given that the whole incident was a tad… ‘extreme,’ I personally don’t believe it was his only sexual crime at this point in the story, there has to have been some escalation.

As for the specifics, Zakō climbed up onto a balcony to steal a pair of women’s underwear that had been left out to dry having been washed. But that, of course, only covers the theft charge, with the one for sexual assault coming as a result of what he did next, as he then proceeded to enter the home whose balcony he stood atop, and attempted to rape the woman inside, the key word is attempt, however, as thankfully, said woman managed to fight him off, and royally beat the ever loving shit out of him before calling the police.

Given the severity of the charges he faced, Zakō was held on remand until the date of his trial, which was in March 2007. I have to say too, that frankly, his sentence rather pisses me off, as somehow, after pleading guilty, and citing “sexual frustration” and “being frustrated due to a lack of money” as his motivations, he got an absolute slap on the wrist: two years in prison, suspended for four years—i.e., be a good boy for four years, and we’ll forget the whole home invasion and attempted rape malarkey never happened!

Now folks, I type before you now as but a man who has had the cuddly and fluffy liberal he used to be on matters of law and order stamped out by three years of being a professional true crime writer, but in my own personal dictatorial utopia, where I was free to act as the ultimate arbiter in all matters criminal, Zakō, given the fact that irrefutable evidence existed that he, you know, attempted to fucking rape someone, would be getting physically castrated, at the bare minimum, or just straight up fed feet first through a wood chipper if I was in a bad mood. I appreciate my position is an extreme one, but come on Japan, a suspended sentence… really?

Having gotten off scot-free, Zakō emerged from the court expecting to find what little life he had in tatters, as, after all, who had been paying his rent, and who had been collecting his NEET bucks from the Japanese taxpayers?

Well, actually, it was his Mum, it turns out, you know, the same one that disappeared 19 years prior without leaving so much as a trace of where she went? The Police had tracked her down following Zakō’s arrest, and feeling rather guilty over the absolute shit state of a Man that her now 28-year-old son had become, she decided to finally step up and do some parenting, having paid Zakō’s rent while he was detained, and giving him an offer to move in with her and her new husband.

He took her up on her offer, and just about managed hold down part time work until December 2008, at which point, he received the golden ticket for any aspiring NEET: social housing. This allowed him to cut his expenses to the point where he didn’t even have to bother with sporadic work to keep a roof over his head, with his basically free flat, and minimal monthly stipend being more than enough to cover his expenses, and so, he dropped out of the workforce all together and retreated to his latest goon cave permanently.

This, naturally, didn’t exactly do wonders for his connection to reality; something that, thanks to recent history, we can all relate to—remember how we all went a touch peculiar during Lockdown, after spending months on end getting basically no social contact or sunlight? Yeah, that was what happened to Zakō, but to an even greater extent thanks to his isolation being way longer lived.

And just like we all did during Lockdown, Zakō eventually found himself bored of his isolation and turned to a new hobby, which for him, was writing. I can certainly relate to that let me tell you folks, but whereas my own isolated dabbling with the pen got a bit out of hand and led to me accidentally landing my dream career, Zakō’s go at it less successful.

His efforts began in 2009, when he began writing novels inspired by the works of Kyoto Animation, with particular points of inspiration being things like Clannad and K-On!, both series’ which were based off of other works, a visual novel and a manga respectively, and whose on screen success had led to their writers making a lot of money as a result.

Certain that fame and fortune awaited him once he had pumped out a few novels, Zakō set to work.

I was originally going to include some extracts from his novels at this point, so that we could all have a good old point and laugh at them—I’m all about belittling and ridiculing the wicked, as long terms fans will be able to vouch. But what with the whole ‘minimum information’ thing I’m doing in this chapter… nah, let’s not shine that particular spotlight on him.

That’s not to say I didn’t find them however, as, with small extracts of them being tucked away in the corners of long since forgotten anime forums, they are absolutely out there, and trust me, they’re utterly horrific—and that is coming from a fella with crippling imposter syndrome, who pulls his hair out stressing over the quality of every piece he submits, so you know that Zakō’s work is really shit for me to be saying that.

And speaking of anime forums, that nicely segways us to the next development in Zakō’s story, because while he was attempting to drum up hype and support for his ascension into literary divinity, something that the other forum users made rather apparent might not be the most realistic aspiration, he also found himself utterly convinced that he had found the anonymous burner account of one of Kyoto Animations female directors, and of course, because Zakō was nothing if not predictable, he was utterly convinced that he entered a romantic relationship with her not long after, eventually believing that the line, “Why don’t you show your face,” from Kyoto Animations 2012 show Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions was aimed at him; a tacet message from his supposed lover that she wanted him to reveal himself to her and take their ‘relationship’ to the next level.

2012, incidentally, was also the year that Zakō, after a constant barrage of criticism from his anime forum, finally had to contend with the fact that, actually, he was an atrocious writer, and his dream wasn’t happening.

Naturally, he handled this revelation with all the grace and restraint that you would expect, and so, on the 19th of June, he found himself in a convenience store, knife in hand, demanding that the cashier get that till open and hand the Hideyo Noguchi’s over. He made off with 21,000 yen, about 140 USD, and handed himself in to police the same day. A lacklustre robbery to be sure by this show’s standards, but hey, at least his armed robbing was more successful than his writing!

And boy, did he say some stuff in his interview. For example, he spoke very highly of the perpetrator of the 2008 Akihabara Massacre, who killed seven and injured 11 more by way of the truck and knife, and further to that, he said the following when his family came up, quote: “When I lost my job, I wanted to set them on fire, including my mother and brother.”

Such rantings did little to endear the judiciary to Zakō when his time in court came, and as a result, they handed him a custodial sentence of three years and six months for violation of the Firearms and Swords Control Law.

In prison, he really didn’t do well, which is weird really, given the scant differences between prison life and the conditions he was willing to impose upon himself on the outside, but I digress.

So bad did things get in fact, that come July 2013, he was on suicide watch, with it being noted that he was suffering from both auditory and visual hallucinations. Things only got worse from there too, with him being placed into solitary confinement in November 2014, after he had tried to lay out a Prison Guard who had reprimanded him for tampering with an exterior window.

He was eventually released in January 2016, and with the consequences of his own actions having left him in quite the sorry state, he was immediately admitted to a rehabilitation facility, before he was eventually moved into supervised accommodation in July of the same year.

There, he immediately fell straight back into his old habits: living off social welfare, writing terrible novels, and being thoroughly convinced that he was sat atop the cusp of greatness. And the criticism that had caused his last spiral? Well, that was now but a long-forgotten memory.

I’m not exaggerating either when I allude to his being rather deluded, as he said the following about his ambitions for the future, quote: “I will debut as a writer in one year, buy a house in five years, and become a big name in ten years.”

But God, as they say, loves a trier, and so Zakō completed and submitted two novels for the Kyoto Animation Award, an annual competition by the titular company that finds and publishes promising new writers, and even teases the possibility of the winners being turned into an anime if they really crush it following their print publication.

Zakō’s two submissions, however, didn’t even make it past the first round, because they were shit.

Still undeterred, somehow, he then edited and self-published the novels online, but gave it up as a bad job when they attracted minimal attraction.

With things not exactly going swimmingly for him, Zakō also started getting more and more violent during this time. For example, in May 2018, he grabbed a nurse by the collar, raised a knife to his throat, and screamed, quote: “You’re being too persistent, stop bothering me, or I’ll kill you.”

But tragically, persistency was the one thing that was really needed at this point, as in the coming year, he would begin descending down his greatest spiral yet; one that would culminate with his attack on Kyoto Animation.

By February 2019, he had flatly stopped attending his mental health check-ups.

By March, with the doctors being very eager to find him and get their hands on him, he started going to extreme lengths to avoid them; doing things like destroying his phone and discarding it, completely abandoning his flat on days when a check-up was scheduled, and barricading his door and leaping from the window if the doctors tried to spring an unannounced visit on him.

By June, he had completely snapped and was proactively planning a massacre. He began by acquiring his weapons; a set of six 20cm kitchen knives that he purchased from a department store, the same ones that he would take to Kyoto Animation incidentally, and then set about picking his target. At this point, however, he did not have his sights on Kyoto Animation, and instead he picked out Omiya Station as his target; as the long and open approach up to the station front would be perfect for his Akihabara Massacre inspired plan, which involved him ploughing a car into a crowd, and then stabbing said crowd until the police shot him dead.

Mercifully, he chickened out of that scheme, but the wish to commit a massacre remained in his mind, growing ever stronger and more firmly planted as time went on, and so, it was but a matter of time until he was suitably angered that he cared no longer for that niggly little voice of doubt that made him call off his attack in Omiya.

Obviously, it was something related to Kyoto Animation that made him cross the Rubicon, but what?

In a word: plagiarism. More specifically, plagiarism that Zakō had completely fabricated in his own mind to make Kyoto Animation the scapegoat for his own failures. After all, he was the greatest writer that the world had ever seen, wasn’t he? So, it made no sense at all that Kyoto Animation just rejected his scripts for being terrible, no, they must have been stealing his ideas for their own profit, it was the only explanation that made any sense—at least as he chose to believe it.

He found ‘evidence’ for this too, folks. You see, after stringent obsessing, he discovered a brief scene in episode five of Tsurune, a Kyoto Animation show that had dropped the previous year, in which the characters bought cheap meat, and right there, in one of Zakō’s stories, was a scene in which his characters also bought cheap meat. Coincidence? Zakō certainly didn’t think so.

I’m also not hyperbolising either, folks, that legitimately is all that he found in Tsurune as evidence of Kyoto Animation plagiarising him—that was just how far gone he was at this point.

He found other ‘evidence’ too, specifically a scene in 2018’s Free! - Dive to the Future, in which a banner reading, “Swimming club advances to regional tournament” can be seen blowing among other banners. To Zakō’s mind, this was a one-to-one rip off of a scene in one of his novels in which banners were described flying in the background, not with the same text mind you, not even in the same context, just a scene that also had banners in the background.

He also had a third and final piece of ‘evidence’ from the show K-On!. I’ll spare you the specifics of what he believed was copied, as it’s the same kind of thing as the other two: total twaddle. But I will tell you one thing about K-On! that makes Zakō’s accusations of plagiarism even more absurd, that being that it is such an old show, that I, now being 29 years old, first watched it in high school, with its two series’ dropping in 2009 and 2010, and its capping movie being released in 2011… and Zakō started writing the novels he submitted to Kyoto Animation in 2016… at the earliest.

But tragically, such realities mattered naught to Zakō at this point, and so the scene was set for the horror we had to hear all about in our first chapter.

And I don’t know about you all, but after all of that, I’m quite ready to start hearing about some justice, so let’s move on to look at…

Chapter 4: The Trial

Zakō’s first pretrial arrangement session was held on the 8th of May 2023, at the Kyoto District Court. This bit wasn’t anything too exciting in fairness, with the whole ‘pretrial arrangement thing,’ at least as I understand it, basically just a meeting where they sketch out what resources will be needed for the trial’s execution, and iron out some preliminary details before beginning proper; but nonetheless some interesting details did come up, chief among which was the fact that several of the names of several of Zakō’s victims were to remain confidential throughout proceedings.

As for why that fact is interesting, that’d be because keeping victims confidential in murder cases, and in fairness, all types of cases, is very rare in Japan, that is, with one huge and glowing exception anyway, and that’d be for sexual crimes. In such cases, victims are guaranteed confidentially, should they wish for it, as a matter of course; a move intended to help give victims the confidence to come forward and report their experiences free from worry over reprisal or social stigma, or, as the Japanese Criminal Procedure Code itself puts it, the “victim’s honour or social peace.”

But not every victim of the Kyoto Animation Attack would be kept confidential, do note, with the decision being placed entirely at the behest of the victim, had they survived the attack, or their next of kin, had they not. This led to the censuring of 19 out of the 36 deceased, all of the 33 who had been injured, and the one individual who had made it out of Studio 1 unscathed.

And if you’re wondering how they were referred to once censored, the Court established three ‘Appendices’ of victims, with ‘Appendix 1,’ ‘Appendix 2,’ and ‘Appendix 3,’ as they were titled, cataloguing anonymous deceased, injured, and uninjured victims respectively. From there, each victim was assigned a number within those Appendices, 1 through 19 for Appendix 1, 1 to 33 for Appendix 2, and just 1 for Appendix 3. In terms of the Court’s vernacular, this would lead to, say, an anonymous deceased victim being referred to, as, quite literally, “Appendix 1, Number 6.” This was a bit wooden, sure, but it certainly did the job of protecting the victim’s anonymity without turning the court proceedings into a convoluted mess—so it’s a smart solution as far as I am concerned!

Oh, and if you’re wondering why I mentioned this at all, and didn’t just craft my script in a way that smoothly circumvented the legalese word salad, that would be because firstly, I will be directly referencing specific victims later in the chapter, and also, because should my script spark your curiosity and send you off down your own rabbit hole of research, you will quickly encounter these terms, I didn’t want you to find yourself scratching your head, at a miss for what they mean.

And with the pretrial arrangement session bashed out, next came the selection process for the judge that would preside over the trial proper. We won’t worry too much about the actual process by which they were chosen, as that is way, way below the abstraction layer for our purposes today, but I will share this little fact nugget from within it with you all: in Japan, the more horrific, complicated, and high profile a case, the more judges the court will summon for consideration, out of an understandable want to make sure they get the right person for the job, and for the Kyoto Animation Arson Attack, 500 were summoned for consideration. My source for this, an article on a very proper and official looking Japanese legal site claimed that this was the second highest amount ever summoned in Japan’s history, with the highest amount being for the 2017 Kansai Cyanide Serial Murder Case, for which 920 were summoned. I personally doubt this claim, as Japan has had a lot of really quite extreme crimes, which you’ll be learning all about in my coming scripts, but either way, the key point of this paragraph remains the same; that being that summoning 500 judges is a huge amount, and it proves just how seriously the judiciary was taking the case.

As for which of those 500 ended up receiving the honours, that would be a fella by the name of Judge Keisuke Masuda. If you search for him in English, you get nothing, and I mean nothing: a million copy and paste articles talking about the verdict he rendered at the end of the trial, and a single photograph of him that you almost certainly are not seeing on screen right now, because it’s on Getty Images, and costs £375 quid to license.

If you search for him in Japanese, however, you are able to get the measure of him as an incredibly competent, but otherwise quite typical criminal judge: plenty of murder cases to his name, and a few academic articles discussing a range thrilling topics such as Japan’s steadily increasing bail approval rate, and the finer points of historic tax fraud cases. So, all in all, like I say: competent and normal as far as judges come.

With all of that said, the trial itself finally began on the 5th of September 2023.

And annoyingly, whereas I normally like to refer to original court documents for this section of a script, I simply was not able to get access to one this time. I even popped down to the court in person to have an ask about getting my hands on a copy, just to be told, very politely in fairness, that it wasn’t possible—but don’t worry, I was in town anyway to visit a theme park that had life-size copy of my favourite anime mecha, Evangelion Unit 1 if you are interested, as well as the Kyoto Railway Museum, so the trip wasn’t a wasted one! I’ve also stuck a picture of said trip down in the index for your entertainment, and the editor should be pulling it up… now. Look how happy I am; I had a grand old time!

Fortunately, however, while said trip might not have got me any transcripts, when I got back home, and put my mind to figuring what sources I could collect from the comfort of my office chair, I discovered that even had the Courts put a transcript together for me, it would have been moot anyway, as Kyoto Shimbun, a local Kyoto newspaper, had a reporter in the court room throughout it all, and so diligent was said reporter and their colleagues, that the paper ended up essentially producing a publicly accessible court transcript anyway, publishing hundreds of thousands of words on the matter… that’ll certainly do for us today I think!

They began, naturally, by reading out the charges being levied against Zakō, which specifically were 36 counts of murder, and one violation of the Firearms and Swords Control Law for the knives that he had brought along with him.

And while we already know what he did very well, thus making going over the specifics of those charges a tad redundant in some ways, I’d like to give you a slightly lengthy exert from what was said nonetheless, as the tone used is really interesting, quote:

“The victims were engulfed in flames, black smoke, and intense heat immediately after the defendant spread gasoline and ignited it. These individuals perished under horrifying circumstances: some had no time to escape from the first floor, while others succumbed to burns as they tried to flee to the second-floor balcony or the rooftop. Others suffocated due to being trapped beneath others near the second-floor balcony or rooftop staircase, or as a result of inhaling smoke and high heat near the rooftop. Additional victims died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Three victims, who managed to escape despite being directly doused with gasoline and set alight, succumbed to their injuries shortly after. One died the next day from severe burns, another passed away about a week later due to sepsis caused by their injuries, and the third endured more than two months of suffering—undergoing multiple surgeries, regaining consciousness but unable to move freely—before dying from septic shock caused by extensive burns.

These victims, engaged in their usual work producing animations, were suddenly and without warning thrust into a living hell. They suffered unimaginable fear and pain, ultimately meeting untimely deaths. The scale of terror, suffering, and the cruelty inflicted upon these victims is indescribable.

The 36 deceased employees represented a wide range of dedicated individuals: veteran staff who had worked at Kyoto Animation since its inception, striving to improve the harsh working conditions of the animation industry and mentoring their juniors; mid-career employees who joined Kyoto Animation with great admiration for the studio, excelling in their roles and passing down their skills to the next generation; and young staff who had only recently overcome significant challenges to join the studio, eagerly pursuing their dreams in animation. These individuals had come from all over Japan to work as a unified team, pouring their love and care into every creation. Despite leading peaceful lives with their families, they were suddenly and unjustly robbed of their futures by this crime. The grief and frustration over such an irreparable loss are beyond comprehension.”

See what I mean about the tone? Although worded very professionally, of course, it’s also highly emotive, the kind of language that only comes out when the prosecutor knows he is sat before an absolute demon of a man, and that he is banged to rights with absolutely irrefutable evidence.

Next came the testimonies, both from the bereaved, and from the survivors, and I’m going to give you a few choice examples as quotes, as there is simply no way I could regurgitate them to you second hand that would convey even a fraction of the emotion of the original.

Starting with the testimony of a bereaved victim then, quote:

“I am the father of ‘1-32.’ My son was the second of my children. I was running a market shop, and life was busy, so I couldn’t spend much time with him. I remember coming home when he was in elementary school and seeing him watching anime in the kotatsu.”

A kotatsu, if you are wondering, is a type of low table they use in Japan, that comes with a built-in heater and thick blankets dangling off the side to keep you warm in winter. Back to the quote:

“He loved Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999. He attended local schools through high school, never going through a rebellious phase. He was kind, always observing others and acting thoughtfully. During the Great Hanshin Earthquake, I called him, and he immediately came to help.

He always decided his own future and made his own plans. He studied animation at Yoyogi Animation Academy in Osaka, and we always supported his decisions. After graduating, he joined Kyoto Animation. I never saw his drawings and didn’t know he was talented.

I’d initially recommended other jobs, as I’d heard animators worked under poor conditions. He only came home two to three times a year, but after marrying, he visited about once a month. The last time I saw him was June 23, 2019. As he left, he high-fived his child.

I said, ‘Take care,’ and he replied, ‘You too.’

On the day of the incident, I was watching TV with my wife when news of the fire broke. My calls to my son went unanswered. At first, with only one casualty reported, I thought he would be fine. But by noon, the death toll kept rising.

I knew he worked at the First Studio. Kyoto Animation confirmed they hadn’t been able to contact him, and he wasn’t among those transported to hospitals. At that moment, I felt an overwhelming despair. On July 24, DNA analysis confirmed his death.

The police advised against viewing his body, but now I regret not doing so.

He became an animator at 20 and worked for 28 years. He would have continued his career and his family life, and he likely had so much more to share with the world. The perpetrator stole all of that in an instant.”

Appendix 1, Number 32’s wife also offered her testimony to the court, quote:

“My husband worked at Kyoto Animation, where we met and started dating. He handled video and key animation, often acting as a team leader. He taught younger staff the basics of animation and how to create motion. We got married ten years ago and had two children, aged 7 and 3. We were living a happy life together.

He was meticulous, always arriving 10 minutes early for appointments and somehow always making it to work on time, even if the train was delayed. He had many hobbies: photography, castles, planes, and fighter jets. He loved comparing old maps to new ones, spotting differences. He’d even say, ‘If I were building a castle, I’d put it here,’ while walking down the street. Every night, he practiced drawing, setting goals for himself and often staying up until 2 a.m. after the kids went to bed.

At this point, photos were then shown to the court, one of 1-32 with his family on holiday, another of him at home, smiling as he played with his daughter, and a third one which was taking at his parents house on New Years Day 2018. Continuing the quote: “These are just snapshots of our everyday life. He attended animation school before joining Kyoto Animation.

He worked on props and instrument designs, adjusting the accessories and instruments characters used. He contributed as an animation director on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Clannad. At work, he was dedicated to mentoring younger staff.

If they struggled to understand his explanations, he’d leave notes on their desks the next morning or patiently guide them until they understood. On the morning of the attack, it was just like any other day. My son went to school, and my husband left for work.

We said, ‘Have a good day,’ as usual. I dropped our daughter off at daycare and headed to work myself. While I was at the Second Studio, I heard there was a fire at the First Studio.

I didn’t know the extent of the fire and felt uneasy. My husband would always contact me in emergencies, so I waited anxiously. Watching the news and seeing the building engulfed in flames, my worry grew, but there was nothing I could do but wait.

We gathered at the Fifth Studio, where we were told my husband wasn’t among those transported to hospitals and that unidentified or lightly injured individuals were receiving treatment. That evening, I went home. My husband and I shared our locations via GPS, and I saw that his was still near the studio.

I thought he must have been receiving medical care and couldn’t contact me yet. The next day, my in-laws came, and we submitted DNA samples to the police academy. On (the 24th of July), we were notified that he had passed away.

We talked about everything: work, the kids, trivial things. Life together was always fun. After the incident, our son, who used to play outside every day, couldn’t bring himself to go out anymore.

We didn’t go anywhere during summer vacation. Our daughter stopped wanting to go to daycare, and she began skipping often. I told them he died in the fire, but when they asked, ‘Why did he die in a fire?’

all I could say was, ‘I don’t know.’ I cannot forgive the perpetrator and want him to take responsibility.”

Normally I chop up and condense the longer quotes folks, but I’ve only done the most gentle of condensing here, and even that was only in order to make sure the quotes match up with the grammar and structuring of the rest of the script. The raw outpouring of grief in these testimonies is something that, in my opinion, would be an afront to overly streamline. These are statements whose authors spent weeks, if not months, pouring over, knowing full well that when they were spoken, it would be during their one and only time to ever communicate directly to their loved ones killer; and as such, they represent a vital part of their grieving process, with every word and cadence being chosen very specifically to perfectly communicate their emotions as they were at the time.

That, in my opinion, means that we owe it to them to listen to their words as they intended them to be heard, well, baring their being translated anyway, but there isn’t exactly much we can do about that.

With that in mind, let us now move onto the one type of testimony which is arguably even more important than that of the bereaved, which would be that of the survivors, starting with ‘Appendix 2, Number 29,’ quote:

“I participated in the meeting where we decided on the scenario for Tsurune, which you claim was plagiarized. Your name was never mentioned. No one read your novel. I didn’t read it either.

The same applies to other works. We never referenced your work during production. Your plagiarism claim is entirely delusional. I can firmly say this is not the kind of company that would commit such acts.

Those who were in Studio 1 had absolutely no connection to you. None of them read your novel. You killed 36 people over a baseless assumption. Please engrave this truth in your heart.

Every day, the faces of the deceased appear in my mind. Time has stopped in 2019 for those friends we lost, for those who still suffer, and for their families. I find myself wondering whether it’s okay for me to enjoy life or be happy.

On that day, I was on the first floor of Studio 1. The moment I grabbed a man-catcher after noticing an intruder, I was caught in the explosion. The moment I saw friends I drank with and colleagues I was close to engulfed in flames is seared into my memory. As the fiery explosion spread, I thought I was going to die. Not only was I unable to stop the attack, but I also had to leave my senior colleagues and teammates behind. I feel I can’t face their families.

Are you listening, (Zakō)? You’re still alive. There are people who wanted to live but couldn’t. Yet you are still alive. Think deeply about the meaning of that.”

Then there is the statement of Appendix 2, Number 30, quote:

“I joined the company in 2018, and 2019 was the first year I had junior staff under my guidance. In my first year, I was doing my best to keep up and thinking about what I could do as a manager. I could only manage because I had my seniors. My juniors were absorbing knowledge and trying to create works. The lively and dynamic environment, filled with passionate clashes over our projects, was something I truly loved.

On the day of the incident, I instinctively fled to the restroom. ‘Why? Everyone’s okay, right? Everyone’s here. They have to be.’ I kept telling myself this. Alongside two others who took refuge, I repeated, ‘We’ll make it out alive. We’ll get out of here. Everything’s going to be okay.’ I kept saying these words. After being rescued, I searched for everyone in the manager’s room. But all I found were bloody footprints, people covered in blood, people burned so badly they couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to do.

I reminded myself that I was a manager. I told myself I should know my team and act. I asked them, ‘Where does it hurt?’ ‘Stay with me.’ ‘You’ll be okay.’ ‘Help is coming.’ But I never saw the three people from the manager’s room who were consumed by flames. I kept thinking, ‘I’m sorry. It’s my fault.’ Even as my heart felt like it would break, I continued providing aid.

Even after four years, it’s painful and heartbreaking to remember. I keenly feel the loss of so many lives. I wonder why I couldn’t have noticed something was wrong earlier or resisted more to prevent this. Why couldn’t I grab the hand of the senior in front of me or the junior next to me and escape together? I still can’t forgive myself.

I want to keep watching my seniors lead, to laugh over silly things, to see my peers become animation directors, to see my juniors grow into exceptional professionals.

The works we created will never disappear. I take immense pride in the fact that I was able to create those works with everyone. Creating works is a battle between schedules and quality, but we pour our hearts into it to deliver our creations to those who watch them. I hope such a tragedy never happens again. I also hope a heavy judgment, befitting the lives lost, will be rendered.”

And finally, we have the statement of Appendix 2, Number 2, quote:

“On (the 18th of July 2019), during the Kyoto Animation arson attack, I suffered third-degree burns on my upper body. In particular, the skin on both of my hands was completely removed and replaced with grafts from the skin on my back. After multiple surgeries and rehabilitation, I’ve made it this far. At the time, I was 21 years old and in my second year at Kyoto Animation.

At the age of 12, I was deeply moved by Kyoto Animation’s Hyouka. It inspired me to dream of working there, and for eight years, I worked tirelessly to achieve that goal. At 20, I finally joined the company, fulfilling my long-held dream. I was so happy—it was the most wonderful time of my life.

Then came the day of the attack. Suddenly, my hands were transformed into raw, red-black masses of flesh. When the bandages were removed, my hands were unrecognizable—mangled, with some bones exposed. The charred, twisted nails barely clinging on were the only indication they were once hands. I wanted to believe it was a nightmare, unable to accept that this was my reality.

Because of scar contractures, my hands, shoulders, and even shoulder blades are pulled tight and unable to move. Everyday actions became impossible. Though I had a wheelchair and walker, I felt as if I had nothing. I couldn’t even hold a pencil as an animator, and I was left despairing about my future, wondering if I’d have to give up the job I loved so much.

Rehabilitation was grueling. Every day, my white bandages turned red with blood. The pain was excruciating, but even when I tried to say ‘it hurts,’ I couldn’t make a sound because of the tracheal tube inserted due to my airway burns. My face was severely burned, and my vision was poor. I later learned that I was at risk of going blind at the time.

Talking with friends my age is painful. Over the three years I fought to recover, they lived their lives in peace, never doubting the ordinary. I envied them deeply. I was just starting my second year at the company—everything had only just begun for me.

I want to say to the defendant from the bottom of my heart, ‘Give it back.’ My upper body is covered in unsightly burn scars. My hands, especially, are so disfigured that I can’t appear in public without gloves that reach up to my upper arms. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, I couldn’t wash my hands in public. When no one is watching, I hurriedly remove my gloves to wash my hands, feeling as if I’m doing something shameful. It’s heartbreaking, and I can’t stop the tears.

When I saw the defendant’s hands on the news, they looked just like mine—scarred and deformed from burns. It made me nauseous. I cannot accept that my hands resemble those of a murderer. No matter how well I groom my nails or wear accessories, I hate the sight of my disfigured body every time I undress.

I often wish to die and be reborn. I’m not strong enough to feel grateful for surviving. Thinking about living the rest of my life with burn scars fills me with despair. It feels like a living hell.

If I had died, I wouldn’t have to endure this pain.

The defendant must know, from his own burns, how painful this is. But the suffering we’ve endured is beyond anything he could imagine. Despite the pain, I refused to give up on my dream of drawing for Kyoto Animation. I stopped crying out in pain during rehab, screamed only in my heart, and devoted myself to rehabilitation with a fierce determination. I kept telling myself to persevere, over and over.

Although I still have minor issues with my left hand, I’ve regained almost full function in daily life and returned to my original department, working as an animator. Overcoming my burns to return to Kyoto Animation and continue creating beloved works is my form of revenge against the defendant. This feeling will never change.

That day, I fled to a window that wouldn’t open and was burned alive. I can understand the fear and agony of those who died—feeling the searing heat, pain, and the horrifying awareness of one’s body burning while desperately wishing to lose consciousness. I will never forget the sensation of my body burning, the countless hands reaching toward the window, the screams and groans. Everyone who was behind me perished. I can still feel their hands.

I carry immense guilt and regret, constantly thinking, ‘If only I had noticed the danger sooner,’ or ‘If only I had helped someone behind me escape.’ I can’t stop imagining the ‘what ifs.’ I want my colleagues, seniors, and juniors returned to me.

The defendant said, ‘Each person has a face.’ If that’s the case, then I want him to understand the name, face, and life of every single victim and atone for his actions. I want him to die and pay with his life. I want him to feel the agony of being burned alive.

Does the defendant feel secure, thinking no one will seek revenge against him? I earnestly hope the judges and jurors will deliver a sentence that reflects the magnitude of the defendant’s crimes.”

Now, with my having posited that as being the final testimony we were looking at, I imagine you are all now expecting me to smoothly segway into the discussing the next part of the trial; but alas, no.

I type before you now, folks, my keyboard damp from the tears, quite literally I might add, as but a husk of a man, one whose usual innards have been carved out, and replaced with… well, sadness, there’s no other word really for it.

Describing the attack itself, sure, that wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs for me, but there’s something about the exact words of the people who were actually there, and those whose lives were devastated by it, that just conveys emotion in a way that no second-hand retelling ever can.

So, with my having been emotionally filleted in mind, folks, there’s something that we’re all going to do together now, and its very important. So important in fact, that you’re banned from watching slash listening to the rest of the show if you don’t do, and that thing is picking up our phones, and letting someone we love, be it either romantically or platonically, how much they mean to us; because just like we are all doing right now—every single person who died in Studio 1 on the 18th of July went to work assuming they’d be making it home, and yet, none of them did.

They never got the chance to tell their loved ones how much they mattered one last time, to share a final laugh, or a moment of closing comradery. Life is fragile, unpredictable, and sometimes unbearably cruel, and when our time comes, whenever that may be, we must all be ready to face St Peter without any regrets.

You all got that done? Good, then onwards we go!

Next up in the trial came the hearing of witness testimonies. There’s a lot of these to go through, so I’ve picked out just one particularly pertinent example for you, which would be that of the Firefighter Commander on the ground on the 18th of July. Again, I am censoring his name, because while his name is public, I didn’t come across anything where he explicitly stated he was happy to have his name tied to the case, quote:

“At the time, I was working at the Yamashina Fire Station in Kyoto City and was dispatched as the commander of the response team to the Kyoto Animation fire. At 10:38 AM, the Yamashina command team was instructed to prepare for emergency response, and we arrived at 10:48 AM. By then, many firefighters were already rushing around the scene. Our vehicle couldn’t reach the location due to the residential streets, so we parked nearby and ran to the site.

A command post was set up on the eastern side of the scene, and firefighting efforts were already underway.

In the visible area, I identified 7-8 individuals sitting or lying down. Their hair, clothes, and skin were severely burned, and nearby residents were trying to encourage them. From this, it was immediately apparent that the damage was extensive. Despite it being a daytime fire, the three-story building had flames and black smoke pouring out of the windows, and it was clear from the overwhelming spread of the fire that this was no ordinary blaze.

Among the injured were evacuees who continued to gather at the scene. There were people with severe burns, others bleeding heavily, and some in shock, unable to open their eyes or respond to voices. The site was chaotic, filled with shouting and confusion. The Fushimi command team leading the operation had early on determined that 30 individuals were trapped and unable to escape.

As time passed, it became clear that survival and rescue were unlikely. While it was the time to begin discovering bodies, instructions were given to halt the removal of remains as they could not be placed in the first-aid area. Firefighters crawled on the floor during their search, fully aware of the large number of casualties. I, too, confirmed the presence of numerous bodies.

In my 35 years as a firefighter, I have never encountered such a horrific scene with so many victims. I doubt there has been an incident with such a high number of casualties anywhere else in Japan.”

There’s lots more I could give you, but as the wordcount is starting to get a tad out of hand already with this script, let us just use this one as an exemplar; it was testimony, after testimony, that fully laid out just how utterly horrific the fire had been.

For similar reasons of word count, coupled with the fact that it was an open and shut case, and thus isn’t the most interesting thing to overly dwell on, I also shall not tell you too much about the evidence that was presented: they had CCTV footage of both the build up and execution of the attack, witness testimony from survivors and witnesses, DNA evidence from the jerry cans, as well as the stashed knives, and a whole heap of circumstantial evidence such as the receipts from the petrol station, hardware shop, and even the public transport that brought Zakō to the scene of his crime—so there was no doubt, at all, that he was the man who had done it. With a body of evidence like this, a misidentification was simply impossible, and that’s the real takeaway.

And with that said, now we arrive at the crux of this chapter… the sentencing. Obviously, he was found guilty, but what sentence did he get, that’s the question; because don’t forget folks, Japan, being the based and enlightened land that it is… has the death penalty…

So, to satisfy that curiosity, here are Judge Masuda’s sentencing remarks, straight from the horse’s mouth, quote:

“This was an unprecedentedly brutal mass murder. The defendant, harbouring a misplaced grudge against Kyoto Animation, committed arson at (Studio 1) using gasoline. ….

The attack resulted in 36 precious lives lost, while others narrowly escaped death, suffering severe burns and other critical injuries. This marks an unprecedented number of victims for both murder and attempted murder cases in the history of Japan’s criminal trials.

The 36 employees, engaged in their regular animation production work, were suddenly doused in gasoline and set ablaze. They perished due to carbon monoxide poisoning, suffocation, and sepsis, among other causes, as their bodies were consumed by fire. Struggling desperately to escape the thick black smoke and flames, some fled toward upper floors or windows, but the rapidly spreading heat, fire, and smoke engulfed them. The terror and despair they endured, trapped in a situation akin to hell, defy description.

The anguish of the deceased victims is unimaginable.

As for the survivors, despite being engulfed in flames, they managed to escape by jumping out of windows or climbing down from the third floor, barely clinging to life. Many suffered severe, long-lasting injuries, including extensive burns, contractures, fractures to the skull and other body parts, traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhages, cerebral contusions, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some victims underwent as many as 49 surgeries, with some losing fingers due to amputation.

In addition to the psychological trauma of experiencing the attack, many survivors suffer profound pain from losing colleagues with whom they had worked just moments before. This has caused intense guilt among some survivors, who feel they couldn’t save others. Some have been forced to take extended leave from work and have yet to return. The suffering of these attempted murder victims should be fully considered as part of the consequences of this crime.

It goes without saying that none of the victims bear any fault whatsoever.

Those who perished were individuals from across Japan, drawn to Kyoto Animation out of admiration for the studio and a desire to create works that move people’s hearts. These individuals included animators, who played a central role in production, and managers who supported the animators. Among the victims were ‘genius creators’ who represented Japan’s animation industry and young employees filled with hope, having just joined the studio they admired. Together, they worked as one to create the highest-quality animation.

The defendant specifically chose methods to maximize casualties, referencing past incidents, and opted for arson with gasoline, fully aware of the risks. Targeting (Studio 1), where a large number of people worked, he prepared six knives, researched the location online, and procured gasoline containers, and gas lighters from a hardware store.

To ensure the attack’s success, he minimized interactions with others and chose the time of 10:30am, when employees were seated and absorbed in their work.

Despite lingering in the alley for several minutes and seeing the employees diligently working, he had multiple opportunities to reconsider. Yet he never wavered, maintaining his firm intent to kill as many people as possible up until the moment he committed the attack.

The defendant, harbouring a sense of misfortune over his unsuccessful life, resolved to become a novelist. However, despite his utmost efforts to complete what he believed was his finest script, it was rejected by the Kyoto Animation Awards, shattering his dream of becoming a professional novelist. Due to his self-centered and aggressive tendencies, the defendant shifted the blame for his inability to succeed and his misfortunes in life onto Kyoto Animation, resenting their success while he had lost everything. This misplaced grudge is at the core of his criminal motive.

The deep sorrow and anguish of the victims and their families are overwhelming, and their desire for punishment is intense. These factors, directly related to the crime, must be carefully considered.

The families of the deceased lost loved ones; children, spouses, parents, siblings - who had done nothing wrong, their lives taken unjustly simply for being at (Studio 1) that day. Suddenly faced with this unimaginable act of violence, they were left to confront the transformed remains of their loved ones. That morning, they had sent them off as usual, expecting to meet them again tomorrow, to speak again on the phone, or to visit them in Kyoto. All these ordinary moments of life and a shared future were stolen.

Many were denied the chance to say goodbye or express their gratitude.

The families’ heartbreak has been described in their words:

‘The hearts of our entire family died with them.’

‘Our hearts are shattered, and the loss has left us numb.’

‘It is utterly senseless.’

‘We lost not only a child, but also their future spouse and children.’

‘Their dreams, hopes, lives—everything was taken.’

‘Some wounds may heal over time, but others only grow infinitely larger.’

‘Why did young children, who still depended on their parents, have to endure such suffering?’

‘Since the incident, it’s like being trapped in an unending nightmare.’

‘If God were to grant just one wish, it would be to see my daughter again and hold her.’

The sorrow, anger, and devastation expressed by the families are impossible to fully convey, but their pain is evident beyond words. …

During the trial, the defendant expressed remorse by saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ However, this brief statement was shallow and lacked genuine reflection. Even in the final stages of the trial, the defendant continued to shift responsibility onto the victims, aggravating the feelings of the bereaved families. He showed no signs of providing consolation to the victims’ families, nor is there any expectation of such actions in the future. There are no circumstances that could be considered favourable for the defendant.

Considering these factors, including those potentially favourable to the defendant, his criminal responsibility remains exceedingly grave. Even under the principle of proportionality in sentencing, this case, an unparalleled mass arson-murder with an extraordinarily high victim count, requires the harshest punishment. Additionally, from the perspective of general deterrence, the case’s significant social impact cannot be ignored.

Therefore, the appropriate sentence is to impose the death penalty on the defendant.”

I quite agree on the appropriateness of that sentence too, Judge Masuda. For three years I’ve been writing for this show, slowly becoming more and more convinced of the necessity of the death penalty, as I deal with ever more perverse and wicked criminals, only to find myself bitterly disappointed as we find out that, yet again, because both the UK and Hong Kong abolished the death penalty in 1964 and 1966 respectively, the loathsome piece of human excrement in question is going to get to live out the rest of their days watching telly, and enjoying three square meals a day at the taxpayers’ expense. But today, no, finally one of these stories is going to end in the way I would like.

And so, on the 25th of January 2024, Zakō, physically deflated from the consequences of his own actions delivering him a right hook both firm and righteous straight into the jaw, was dragged out of the courthouse by two Prison Officers, ready for his long overdue meeting with fate.

Chapter 5: On the Death Penalty in Japan

As of the time of writing, the Grim Reaper sharpens his scythe for Zakō still, and he remains one of the 107 people on Japanese Death Row.

And I don’t know about you all, but before I started researching this script, I knew the sum total of bugger all about Japanese Death Row, and so I naturally found myself with a few questions I wanted answering; things like how do the prisoners on it actually live, and what are their conditions like? As well as others such as how do they do… ‘the deed,’ as it were?

I certainly didn’t want to make any assumptions in those regards, not least due to the fact that the two places I have lived, the UK and Hong Kong, both abolished it in the 1960s, and so I have no personal frame of reference for it at all.

So, with all of that in mind, I set to doing some homework, both about Japanese Death Row generally, and Zakō’s place within it more specifically—and here’s what I found.

It turns out that once a death sentence is finalized in Japan, the condemned does not go to a ‘prison,’ per say, but rather, they go to a ‘Detention Centre,’ or ‘Kōchisho’ which is a Japanese legal-ese distinction that basically just means ‘prison, but for those awaiting the finalisation of proceedings,’ be those proceedings awaiting trial, sentencing, appeals, or indeed, execution.

For a ‘normal’ prisoner, i.e. one that has fully gone through the court system and is now just sitting out a custodial sentence, they would go to a ‘Keimusho’ – which is just your boggo prison.

Or at least I think that’s how it works, the whole ‘execution being a finalisation of proceedings’ thing akin to sentencing or appeals just screams at me as something I’ve misunderstood, so apologies to our Japanese viewers if I’ve got that wrong; your culture is an illustrious one make no mistake, but my God can its finer points be confusing to a neophyte.

One thing I do know for certain however, is that regardless of the finer points of what a Kōchisho is or isn’t, there are seven of them in Japan that come loaded with Death Row facilities, specifically in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, and Sapporo.

I’m also pleased to report that from what I’ve read, the experience on Japanese Death Row isn’t exactly free PlayStations and access to endless opportunities that tax paying Japanese citizens have to save up and pay for too, with such inmates instead being confined to small, sparse cells, usually about five square meters in size, where they live in near-total isolation. Interaction with other inmates is forbidden, and their communication is limited to guards, lawyers, and approved family visits, with even those interactions are rare and carefully monitored.

Life on Japanese death row is also governed by strict routines and a near-monastic level of control. The day is structured around fixed schedules for meals, hygiene, and a brief period of outdoor exercise in a small, enclosed courtyard. Inmates may occupy themselves with permitted activities, such as reading, writing, or practicing simple hobbies like origami or calligraphy, but every action requires permission.

Silence is also the rule for most of the day, and even minor infractions can result in punishment and the loss of what few privileges they have. Personal belongings are limited to the bare essentials—basic toiletries, writing materials, and a few approved personal items. It is an existence stripped to its starkest elements, with little to distract from the inevitability of what lies ahead.

Some would point to such conditions and condemn the Japanese system; but not me, I’ve long since said on this channel that I am well in favour of the Death Penalty for extreme violent crime if it is backed by a body of evidence so vast and all-encompassing that their being guilty becomes a matter of objective fact. At that point, if you ask me, not only should their pre-execution incarceration be horrible, but it should be so horrible that the condemned come to envy the dead; Zakō killed 36 people, so fuck him, human rights should be reserved for humans, not demons – at least as I see it.

That aside, we haven’t even got to the best bit of Japanese Death Row yet folks, well, best if you are in favour of it like me anyway, and that’d be the actual execution itself. Outwardly, it’s quite the normal affair, or as normal as an execution can be anyway; they’re led into a room, their neck is shoved into a noose, the floor falls away, they go all dingly dangly for a time, and Lady Justice looks in and smiles, knowing that the tragic soul before her has finally earned their absolution.

Where it gets really good however, at least for the more hardcore Death Penalty enjoyers such as myself, is that when all the appeals run dry, and the date of execution is settled upon, the condemned is not told until the morning of the execution; and as a result, they sit there, wallowing, often for years at a time, wondering if tomorrow will be their final day. English language articles that discuss this are quick to then point out that this causes profound mental health issues due to the prolonged isolation and constant fear of the unknown, and you know what I say to that? Fucking good; don’t want to spend every day sitting in a grotty cell contemplating your own morality? Then don’t kill 36 people, cunt.

Similarly, the families of the condemned are not informed until after the execution.

But if your anything like me folks, while Zakō eventually being sent to the rope in this way will bring you no end of joy, you worry for the mental health of the Prison Guards; they are just salt of the earth salary men and women with mortgages and kids they need to get through school, after all, it isn’t right that they should have to look down at their hands and see them stained with blood, just for carrying out a task that while grisly, is viewed as necessary by both I, and 80.8% of the Japanese population by recent polling.

Well, it turns out that the Japanese Correction Bureau of the Ministry of Justice agrees, and to preserve the mental health of their Prison Officers, when the time comes to do the deed, the trapdoor is activated by an electronic button, which is pushed at the exact same time as two identical dummy buttons – with no one involved in the execution being told which one is the ‘live’ one. Thus, no one knows for certain who ‘actually’ killed the condemned, and the Officers involved have enough separation from the event to keep their psyche intact.

As for the matter of when Zakō himself is set to be sent to the rope; there’s really no way for me to be able to make an informed estimate beyond just using pure averages of how long it typically takes – there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes during this time such as appeals, and all manner of other things, that there is simply no other way I can even begin to speculate.

And with the average amount of time spent on Death Row in Japan being six years and eight months, according to lawyer Takeshi Kaneko, currently with the Death Penalty Research Unit at the University of Oxford, let’s lock that in as our working guesstimate, and predict that Zakō will be executed in or around September 2030.

And that, pretty much, is the story as it stands today folks, with 36 innocent people having been brutally slain, and the man who did it, awaiting his death in a dingy little cell.

But like any good anime that catches up with its manga, we are going to keep on going further still folks, because before we finish, there are two more matters I’d like to discuss, the first being…

Chapter 6: A Bit of Armchair Psychology

And now folks, we get to the reason why I went into Zakō’s backstory earlier on in the episode, because while I am absolutely dead set on hiding his name from you, so that, touch wood, it can be forgotten and expunged from the pages of history with all warranted haste, I didn’t want the shows takeaway to just be ‘evil guy does terrible thing, woe and betide the whole accursed situation.’ Instead, I wanted us to (hopefully) be able to understand exactly what it is that makes a man such as him, which strikes me as a far more useful takeaway, and unfortunately, doing so necessitates knowing his back story.

Make no mistake, even as I type this I have my doubts over whether this was the correct call, and no doubt will continue to do so even as I hit control s for the last time, and send the script over to Simon, but having thought on the matter for a few days, I can only trust my gut that this approach is a respectful one: I’ve hidden Zakō’s real name, and have gone to great lengths to respect the privacy of both the victims, and those who were otherwise involved in the story; this is fine… I think.

So, with myself now largely convinced that this chapter isn’t going to lead to the desecration of 36 graves – let’s get to the matter at hand.

To understand why Zakō carried out his heinous attack, we must first consider the findings of his psychiatric evaluation, as undertaken by the prosecutors prior to his trial. It concluded that Zakō was suffering from two severe delusional disorders at the time of the incident, specifically Paranoid Personality Disorder, PPD, and Delusional Disorder, DD.

As for what they actually are, PPD is characterized by a pervasive distrust and suspicion of others, which leads to individuals with it routinely misjudging others’ motives as malevolent near universally. People with PPD are also hypersensitive to perceived slights or criticism, which can make relationships and social interactions challenging. DD, on the other hand, involves the presence of persistent, non-bizarre delusions, i.e. false beliefs, perceptions, and interpretations that are plausible but unfounded, such as believing one is being persecuted or conspired against. Unlike other psychotic disorders, individuals with DD typically do not experience broader impairments in reality testing or bizarre behaviour outside of their delusions.

In the court’s opinion, these mental illnesses profoundly shaped his perception of reality, with them eventually snowballing sufficiently that his entire perception of reality was warped and bastardised, which led to him developing the belief that Kyoto Animation had both ripped off his work and was going out of its way to target him, thus giving him his motive.

Do note however, because this is very important, that as far as the court were concerned, all this explanation represented was a recognition of cause and effect, i.e. x happening, which created y, and then led to z choice being made – it was not an explanation of mitigated culpability or diminished responsibility, and nor would any such explanation ever be given, because in the opinion of the psychologist who undertook Zakō’s analysis, while sure, his conditions certainly impaired his judgment to a degree, his ability to control his actions, understand their implications, as well as process morality more broadly, was still very much intact. Sure, his conditions had led to him legitimately believing that Kyoto Animation had stolen his work, but the resulting choice to pour petrol in one of their studios, and then ignite it, that was allllllllllllll him, as the court psychologist saw it.

From all the schadenfreude I was soaking up earlier on in the episode when we were discussing Zakō’s injuries and impending execution, I’m sure you’ve all deduced that I happen to agree with the Court Psychologist. I would like to say however, that I did actually go into this story with an open mind, and that while I was well aware what Zakō had done, I was perfectly willing, dare I see even ready and prepared, to discover that he suffered with something like say Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, or Schizophrenia, at which point, particularly if it was a variety that came with elements of psychosis too, I would have been happy to accept diminished responsibility, genuinely wish him well on his recovery, and thoroughly condemn the Japanese Judiciaries choice to execute him.

To explain what I mean further, take DID as an example, with it being characterised by the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states within a single individual, which they legitimately fully switch between, I would have had no problem at all arguing for Zakō being of diminished responsibility, had his body committed the wicked deed while one of his ‘altars,’ the correct psychology-ese for those different identities, been at the reigns at the time.

As for Schizophrenia, it is characterized by episodes of losing touch with reality, often involving hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking. The hallucinations, typically auditory, manifest as hearing voices that may comment, command, or converse, while delusions are fixed, false beliefs, such as paranoia or grandiosity, and the disorganized thought patterns lead to incoherent speech, difficulty maintaining focus, emotional flatness, reduced motivation, and social withdrawal persist between episodes. So again, as with DID, by my mind Schizophrenia could have been grounds for diminished responsibility, depending upon the specifics of how it manifested.

But of course, Zakō, ultimately, had neither Schizophrenia, nor DID. He had PPD and DD, and all they did to his mind was make him think that Kyoto Animation was ripping off his work and flipping them the middle finger while doing so. He then chose, of his own volition, to react to that incorrect reality in a way that was disproportionate in a way that I even struggle to put into words.

Knowing that, there is no other conclusion I can render other than his simply being an evil piece of shit; malevolent by his very nature and incapable of existence in civilised society. Even if he didn’t have the PPD and DD, the mental programming for violent disproportionality was still there as I see it, and sooner or later, someone or something would have really wronged him in a way like he believed that Kyoto Animation had, and then he’d have done something equally heinous in response anyway.

So, to get things back on track after that longer than planned tangent, if Zakō’s choice to attack Studio 1 cannot be explained by his mental health, and we’re working on the assumption that he was just an evil little turd of a man, what made him that way?

It’s a big question, init? One so big in fact, that even with the whole being a z-list internet celebrity thing blowing my ego up to proportions hitherto unknown among mortal Men, I would never be so bold as to assume that I could possibly answer such a question.

With that in mind, I put news aggregators, totally legal book download sites, and the inter-library loans lady at my local library to work gathering texts from far and wide, to see what the clever sorts of the psychology world had to say.

As for what I found, we shall start by looking at a chap named James Knoll; a forensic psychiatrist, authority on the psychology of mass violence, and man whose brain has more wrinkles than I’ve had hot dinners. He speaks of mass murders such as Zakō, not that he referenced him specifically, this is me applying his writings to our case today, as so called ‘Psuedocommandos,’ a term that I shall let him explain himself, with the following extract from his 2010 paper The “Pseudocommando” Mass Murderer: Part I, The Psychology of Revenge and Obliteration, quote:

“The term Pseudocommando was used by Dietz in 1986 to describe a type of mass murderer who plans his actions ‘after long deliberation.’ … The Pseudocommando often kills indiscriminately in public during the daytime, but may also kill family members and a ‘pseudo-community’ he believes has mistreated him. He comes prepared with a powerful arsenal of weapons and has no escape planned. … Such persons are ‘collectors of injustice’ who nurture their wounded narcissism and retreat into a fantasy life of violence and revenge.”

And I don’t know about you folks, but I think we could be onto an answer with this Psuedocommando idea. Long deliberation, check, Zakō literally spent days just staring at Studio 1, if you recall. Killing members of a ‘psuedo-community’ he believes mistreated him, check again, because I’ll be damned if that isn’t just the perfect description for how Zakō felt about Kyoto Animation. No escape planned, big check, as Zakō had intended to die in the attack. Retreating into a fantasy life – scribble that check so hard you go through the paper, as Zakō wasn’t exactly connected to reality before the attack was he, and the powerful arsenal bit, given that Japan isn’t exactly Texas or Switzerland, I’d say he checked that box as well as he was able.

But while that extract from Knoll was great for establishing the characteristics that define a Psuedocommando, it was rather lacking on the WHY front, with the line about being “collectors of injustice” giving us only the most surface level of an idea.

With that in mind then, let’s take a look at some other papers, and see exactly what it is that makes someone walk the path of the Psuedocommando.

Initially, we might be tempted to go back to the earliest usage of the term, which in this case, would be in Park Dietz’s 1986 paper Mass, Serial, and Sensational Homicides, the same one that Knoll referred to in our last quote, but doing so wouldn’t actually be that expedient, as, like most early iterations of an idea, be it intellectual or physical, it’s rather crude and unrefined; having little to offer other than the base definition we’ve already seen.

Instead, let’s look at a more modern, and far more tarted up discourse on the matter, specifically Pseudocommando Mass Murderers: A Big Five Personality Profile Using Psycholinguistics, which was jointly authored by Madeline Kop, Paul Read, and Benjamin Walker, and published in 2021, quote:

”… Pseudocommandos were angry, percieved themselves as highly persecuted, and severely lacked self-esteem.

They brood over feelings of rejection and failure, channelling their frustration into an attack on the community they perceive to have ostracized them. They plan to enact a statement and gain back the elusive feeling of control.

Criminogenic factors in Pseudocommandos such as dysfunctional family bonds, lack of social support, and past antisocial behaviour have been researched, and the motivating factor of the attack is often expressed as revenge for social rejection.

Hempel and colleagues found Pseudocommandos to be self-conscious about rejection and consumed with feelings of anger and resentment, consistent with results from O’Toole’s study through the FBI. Prior research suggested Pseudocommandos to fluctuate in affect and often express their negative emotions. They brood on perceived injustices, have envy and despair.”

And while that was a bit of a dry extract, it’s academic writing, what you gonna do, there was some good stuff in there, and now we know that Psuedocommandos like Zakō are made from a vicious cocktail of very specific ingredients: no self-confidence, anger, envy, repeated hearings of the word no, a lack of support structures to reign them in, a want for scapegoats for their situation, prior criminality, and a victim complex. Mix all of that together, and seemingly, in some people, it will either create, or activate the, ‘evil fucker’ programming, creating the kind of monster that could walk into an animation studio and kill 36 people.

And while we’ve come a long way folks from my initial proclamation of “‘ere’s what I reckon: he’s was evil, yeah?” I’m still not quite satisfied.

Sure, we now know the environmental conditions that create a Zakō, but it isn’t that simple, is it? As it isn’t the case that every person who happens to meet those criteria will snap and go on a rampage; and I can say that from personal experience, as I can think of at least three of my Bro’s who found themselves in all but identical situations in their early to mid-20s, and yet totally managed to turn their lives around without harming so much a hair on someone else’s head – so clearly something… ‘more’ must be needed to get someone to cross that Rubicon – but what?

Cursed as I am with a brain smooth as custard, I once again turned to a learned sort in search of my answer, specifically Jillian Peterson, who, as a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Hamline University, and a go-to expert on the very question of what maps someone… ‘snap,’ is just the sort of person we can trust to see us right.

She posits that the process is one of pathways; where individuals are led to commit act of mass violence through a series of causal and exponentially more mentally toxic choices, which she identified by looking at mass shooters in the US.

Among the most significant factors she identified were early life trauma, which get the ball rolling down the path to carrying out a massacre, and noticeable behavioural crises in the period leading up to their actions, which ‘lock it in,’ as it were. These elements, while not deterministic, demonstrably correlate, and come up time, and time, and time again, whenever the history of a spree killer is being dissected.

As for what the early life trauma can be more specifically, Peterson specifically picks out abuse, both sexual and physical, neglect, or the loss of a parent through suicide or abandonment. Once again folks, you’ve got to admit how uncannily this lines up with what we learned about Zakō’s early life.

According to Peterson, exposure to such trauma at an early age, creates a long-lived psychological burden, disrupting the child’s normal and healthy emotional and cognitive development; some, just as those Bro’s of mine I know personally, will recognise the destructive path they are on, and through arduous emotional labour, overcome their trauma, and emerge stronger for it. But for others, like Zakō, the scars set deep and never heal, becoming a foundation for later negative and maladaptive behaviours, i.e., because they don’t know how to healthily deal with emotions such as resentment, envy, and hopelessness, they never get processed, and so just pile up, snowballing to the point where they totally dominate one’s psyche.

This, according to Peterson, leaves someone as a powder keg ready to blow, and in the same way that the proverbial packed powder needs a spark to set it off, so too does a person. These “noticeable behavioural crisis’s,” as Peterson refers to them, are simply when trauma can be repressed no longer, and so begin to spill out into someone’s behaviour in an immediate and very pronounced manner.

So telling are these crisis’s, that research undertaken by Peterson shows that 82% of massacre perpetrators in the US were noted as having such an episode in the immediate lead up to their attack. In real terms, Peterson goes on, this is the point of no return for the execution of a massacre, and if it isn’t nipped in the bud immediately by external actors; the attack is coming – simple as.

As for what such a ‘snap’ looks like from the outside looking in, signs can include everything from increased aggression, paranoia, agitation, as well as jumpy, erratic, and skittish behaviour, as well as any combination from the aforementioned list coming together in a horrific union.

Very importantly too, Peterson stresses, these crises typically correlate with specific external stressors that exacerbate the individual’s underlying distress. Say someone is dealing with some demons, and despite all their day by days ups and downs, they’re keeping a lid on it and coping; but then they lose their job, they go home to find their partners things gone and a note on the coffee table, or suffer a public humiliation of any kind… the pressure then builds up hard and fast, and the lid is sent flying off into the distance, from where it may never be able to contain what was within ever again.

And with all of that, I believe we have arrived at a suitably fleshed out and satisfactory answer: Zakō became a Psuedocommando, a very specific type of mass murderer, because he had unresolved trauma in his formative years, that through his own actions in isolating himself, was left to fester and build over the course of many years, until the pot totally boiled over, and he took it all out on 36 innocent people.

There are other potential explanations of course, this is just the one I found most satisfactory in my reading, and because I’m certainly not bold enough to assume a monopoly on the truth; let me now put it to Simon, and indeed all of you in the audience: do you find my explanation satisfactory, or do you have any other ideas that could offer insight?

Chapter 7: The Victims

And now, we arrive at the final, and indeed most important chapter of the whole episode; the one where we cast the loathsome creature who carried out the attack from our minds, and instead focus our attention on the most important detail of all: his victims.

I will not be mentioning all of them however, as much as I would like to. As you have all no doubt ascertained by now, the Japanese take privacy seriously, and so, despite the fact that all of the victims names are known and can be found at this point, I will verging on the side of caution, and only mentioning victims for whom I was able to find explicit confirmation that their family were comfortable with their being named.

Further still, having spoken with this episode’s cultural consultant, more on that later in the appendices, I am aware that Japanese eulogies tend to focus on the core things like name and age, and then go into detail about professional achievements, rather than details of their personal life, again out of a desire to respect privacy. Knowing that, I will be doing mine in a similar way, and only mentioning personal details if they have been specifically released by the family; I just wished to point this out in case my focusing on their careers first and foremost came over as insensitive to any of you all.

So, with that said, lets begin this chapter proper.

First, we have Yuka Kasama. It has been a long-standing policy of Kyoto Animation to pounce on promising graduates from universities all over Japan and throw them in the deep end mentoring under their veteran animators, and Yuka was one such promising graduate, having only joined up with the company in spring of 2019. Naturally, given how fresh she was to the company, she hadn’t had the chance to stamp her name on too much, with her only credit being as a Support Animator on Violet Evergarden: The Movie. Despite this, however, I can firmly say that she had quite the promising future stolen from her, as not only did surviving staff members speak very highly of her and her work, but an old professor of hers from Osaka Seikei University also released her thesis project to the public, and having had a look at it, its legitimately very good stuff for someone who at that point wasn’t even out of university. She was only 22 at the time of her murder.

Tragically, Yuka wasn’t the only new recruit who was lost, as our next victim, Yūki Ōmura, who was also only 22 at the time of his murder, had also only joined Kyoto Animation that year, following his graduation from Tohoku University. He also had a most promising future ahead of him, as evidenced by that fact that he had won himself seven awards at the 2018 Nika-ten Exhibition, a yearly competition held to seek out promising new animation talent. I looked up what he submitted, and ‘Dokkun Dokkun,’ as he called it, is top stuff for someone of his age, being a kind of very well-done animated scroll of the history of life on earth. Like Yuka, his short time spent working for Kyoto Animation meant that he too only managed to get one credit to his name, and that was also for Violet Evergarden: The Movie, on which he also worked as a Support Animator.

Closely connected to both Yuka and Yūki was the third victim, Yoshiji Kigami, for he was one of the master animators who took the new graduates under his wing and provided a set of learned training wheels as they got their tentative starts in professional animation. Frankly, I’m spoilt for choice when picking out highlights from his career, as the man really was a giant, both of Kyoto Animation, and of the whole anime scene more broadly. For the sake of the layfolk in the audience however, I’ll draw attention to some of his earlier works, which you’re more likely to heard of, specifically the Studio Ghibli classic Grave of the Fireflies, which I’m unironically in tears over just for remembering it exists, as it is legitimately one of the most emotive things ever committed to film, and Akira, the 80’s cyberpunk must watch classic – he served as a Key Animator on both of them. Much missed by his former colleagues, Yoshiji was 61 at the time of his murder.

Another of Kyoto Animations giants lost on that day was Yasuhiro Takemoto, who was 47 at the time of his murder. Having first signed on with the company back in 1996, he spent all but three years of his professional life in their employ, having started out as a Key Animator on now classic shows such as Master of Mosquiton and Tenchi Universe, before eventually climbing the ladder and breaking into directing with 2003’s Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. The sky was the limit for Yasuhiro from there, with him then stacking up directing credits for a myriad of shows such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and a personal favourite, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. Beyond well regarded, both within Kyoto Animation and by the anime community more generally, Kyoto Animation’s current President and Chief Executive Officer, Hatta Hideaki, freely admits that Yasuhiro’s left a hole in the company that has yet to be filled, if indeed it will ever be.

Then there was Jun’ichi Uda, who was 34 at the time of his murder. Having joined Kyoto Animation back in 2009, he had 10 years of service under his belt, and so was nicely settled into his career. As for what he did, he was an In-between Animator, i.e. it was his job to make sure that the transitions between cells and shots were nice and smooth, and having consumed more than my fair share of his titles, with personal highlights being Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, I can personally vouch he was very good at what he did. Unfortunately, other information about him is few and far between, so there’s nothing more for us to do other than to thank him for his diligence, and wish his spirit God speed.

Next, let us consider Futoshi Nishiya, who signed straight on with Kyoto Animation in 2003, having completed a vocational course in animation at a college in Osaka. Simply exceptional at his chosen trade, Futoshi quickly rocketed up the ranks at the studio, finding himself a Key Animator before 2003 was even up, and dabbling in directing not even three years later. But while he would keep toes in both of those pools as fresh calendars came and went from his office wall, he would eventually find his real calling: character design, with him first taking on the task for 2011’s Nichijou, and subsequently going on to sketch out, and subsequently bring to life, some of Kyoto Animations most iconic characters from the 2010s, some of which, on a personal note, are currently in my man cave in shrunken plastic form. So quickly had he climbed the ranks, and accomplished was he in fact, that it’s difficult to believe he was only 37 at the time of his murder.

For Sachie Tsuda, who was 41, we are able to speak not just of her professional achievements, but also of her as a woman, as her father spoke to the media extensively after her murder. He spoke of her loss as a second sucker punch of ever piling tragedy, for he had only recently become widowed when his neighbourhood police officer knocked on his door, cap in hand, to deliver the tragic news about Sachie. He also spoke of the 41 years of life that she did get to enjoy with immense pride, as for Sachie, there was never any career for her but animation, with her father remembering how she would while away her days sketching anime characters in the back of her notebooks, before eventually making her way to a technical school to studio animation, and eventually settling in with Kyoto Animation, who she would work for from the year 2000.

As for what she worked on at Kyoto Animation, Sachie had some good works to her name, serving as a Digital Painter, i.e. the person who adds colour and shading to line sketches, for Nurse Witch Komugi-Chan and Kanon, to name just two, before then climbing the ladder and becoming a Special Effects Artist, i.e. the person who jeujes it all on a computer at the final stage of production, on both Free! Dive to the Future, and its movie capper Free! Take Your Marks. My personal highlight of her work, however, is her extensive contributions to the entire Haruhi Suzamiya franchise, which, as I haven’t told you outright yet, happens to be my second favourite of Kyoto Animation’s IPs. She worked in her former capacity for episodes one, five, and 10 of Series One, and in her latter capacity on the franchise’s final movie, the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. The lay folk in the audience will just have to take my word for this, but trust me, the screengrabs that YouTube viewers can currently see on the screen, they’re very good quality for late noughties animation, and she really was a master of her craft.

And that brings us to the end of the obituaries, and indeed, the end of the episode.

A case like this brings out all manner of emotions, as you have seen reflected in myself no doubt. But rather than waffling on and tying it all up in a neat and tidy little bow, let me instead keep my closing remarks short and sweet, by drawing attention to one particular thing I feel says it all:

The seven victims I felt confident enough to commemorate by name. They didn’t even represent 20% of the attack’s total death toll, so wanton and unprecedented was it in brutality.

May all 36 of them continue to live on for time immemorial through both the cherished memories their lives form a part of, and through their work, which continues to be revered to this day, and will no doubt continue to be long into the future.

Dismembered Appendices

And so, we find ourselves at the part of the video where I explain my research methodology to you all.

As always, I wanted to hold no bars, with me going into this with my usual aim of producing the most detailed and best researched piece available on YouTube for the case in question. Unfortunately, doing so presented a challenge, because I’m not exactly what you would call born and bred Japanese, nor even a long since settled and integrated immigrant. If anything, I’m still very much at the ‘enthusiastic tourist’ stage of my understanding and appreciation of Japanese culture, which naturally made me a bit paranoid about misunderstanding cultural nuances that could be key to understanding the case, or just flatly not being able to access sources – as I do not trust Google Translate to do the job for anything even slightly complex or difficult.

Fortunately, however, I found salvation in the form of Yukino, a lady who, for the past six months, I have been paying to perform a task most unenviable: trying to cram her native language into my oh so smooth brain. I asked her about a couple of points of interest at the end of one of my lessons, which led to me telling her how I pay my mortgage, which then snowballed rather out of control and led to her coming onto my books as a contractor for translation and cultural consulting. She has been nothing short of a God send, and without her aid, you flatly wouldn’t have gotten today’s episode to enjoy, as I’d have long since binned it off for being unable to reach my standard.

As for what I sent her to translate, and then used to write the script; the bulk of the story I compiled from a myriad of different Japanese news outlets, which, quite naturally, reported on the case in way greater detail than any English language outlet, and the gaps in that were filled in by extra details that I found in official press released by the Kyoto Police and Fire Department, the Kyoto District Court, and of course, Kyoto Animation themselves.

I did also find one useful book on the matter, specifically Report: Kyoto Animation Arson-Murder Case by the ‘Asahi Shimbun Investigative Team.’ With an author credit like that, and the fact it only came out six weeks before I sent this script over to Simon, I was close to disregarding it, reasoning that it must just be a lazy cash grab like all the other books on the case, but I gave it a go on the off chance, and much to my surprise, what I found was 232 pages of not far off pure primary sources, organised and annotated ready for me to use. Turns out that The Asahi Shimbun is a huge newspaper in Japan, and they always make these things for high profile cases… handy indeed… I’m sure I’ll be delving into their bibliography for future scripts!

Also, since a fair few of you have reached out to me to ask about this, let’s begin by discussing an ever larger elephant that’s been lingering in the room during my last few scripts here on the Casual Criminalist; that being what the hell happened to the Hong Kong videos, as indeed, as I said on the last such script, which covered Tsui Po Ko if I recall correctly, I wasn’t exactly going to be running out of material anytime soon – so what gives?

Well, put it this way, unbeknown to me, since my last visit to Hong Kong, a situation was brewing in the shadows. I won’t say exactly what the situation is, as I wish to see it resolved promptly, amicably, and above all else, subtly, for all parties involved, but whatever it was, it has rendered me completely incapable of producing Hong Kong scripts to a standard of which I am happy, and so they have been mothballed for the foreseeable.

I also know full well that there are people or people’s watching or listening to this with the ability to solve this situation, and again, in the interest of trying to remedy this situation subtly, I shall not say to whom I refer, but they will know exactly who they are. And to them, I would wish to speak to them frankly, and say that, if they are being completely honest with themselves, they would have to admit that this situation, whatever it is, is rather nonsensical, and has no reason to continue.

So, let’s get it fixed people, and we can all move forwards without both of our dirty laundry having to be aired publicly. Oh, and because I don’t exactly wish to give away key details publicly, at least not until I get to the point of having nothing left to lose, should the mystery people to whom I refer wish to know my opinion on, and interpretation of, the matter in more depth, I would refer them to the communication sent to them by Chief Executive Lee’s Office, the Chief Executive being Hong Kong’s Prime Minister and President equivalent for those of you in the audience not in the know, in August 2024.

And to the rest of the audience, many thanks for sitting through this no doubt very bizarre sounding and cryptic appendix. God willing, this will be all we ever have to say on the matter, and we can get back to telling heroic and gallant stories about the Hong Kong Police Force soon enough, and if we can’t, well, put it this way, the dismembered appendices on my next script are going to be wild.

Key Takeaways

• On July 18, 2019, a man ignited 40 litres of petrol at Kyoto Animation’s Studio 1, killing 36 people and wounding 33 others.
• The attacker, referred to as ‘Zakō,’ harbored a delusional grudge against the studio, falsely believing they had plagiarized his rejected novel submissions.
• The fire engulfed the entire three-story building in just 30 seconds, trapping many victims who were unable to reach the roof in time.
• In January 2024, Zakō was sentenced to death after being convicted on 36 counts of murder, with the judge calling it an unprecedentedly brutal mass murder.
• The attack devastated Kyoto Animation, which lost over 20% of its staff, though the studio persevered to complete and release projects in memory of the victims.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Kyoto Animation arson attack take place?

The attack took place on July 18, 2019.

How many people were killed and injured in the Kyoto Animation arson attack?

36 people were killed and 33 were wounded, with only one uninjured survivor among the 70 people working that day.

What weapon did the attacker use to carry out the massacre?

The attacker used 40 litres of petrol (gasoline) that he poured throughout Studio 1’s reception area and ignited with a disposable lighter. He also brought six knives and a lump hammer.

Why was the attacker able to enter Studio 1 on the day of the attack?

The electronic lock that normally secured the main door was deactivated for the arrival of important visitors later that day, allowing the attacker to slip inside.

How quickly did the fire spread throughout Studio 1?

The entire Studio 1 was engulfed in flames within 30 seconds of ignition.

What was the attacker’s stated motive for the arson?

The attacker believed Kyoto Animation had plagiarized his novel submissions, citing fabricated ‘evidence’ such as brief scenes involving characters buying cheap meat and banners blowing in the background that he claimed were stolen from his work.

What sentence did the attacker receive?

The attacker was sentenced to death by Judge Keisuke Masuda on January 25, 2024.

How much money was raised to support Kyoto Animation and the victims?

A GoFundMe by Sentai Filmworks raised over $2 million USD, while Kyoto Animation’s own fund amassed approximately 3.3 billion yen (around $30 million USD), which was transferred entirely to the Kyoto Prefectural Government for victim support.

What mental health conditions was the attacker diagnosed with?

The attacker was diagnosed with Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) and Delusional Disorder (DD), though the court found these did not diminish his criminal responsibility.

How many of the deceased victims’ names were kept confidential during the trial?

19 out of 36 deceased victims’ names were kept confidential during the trial proceedings, along with all 33 injured victims and the one uninjured survivor.

Sources

• Original Casual Criminalist video: The Horrifying Kyoto Animation Massacre
• Hero image source by Adbh266 / openverse, by-sa.

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