The following content discusses sensitive and potentially inflammatory topics, including murder and the death penalty.
Four years after the tragic arson attack at Kyoto Animation that killed 36 people and injured 32, prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty for the defendants.
The man at the center of the case, Aoba Shinji, was charged with murder and arson after burning down the Kyoto Animation studio, claiming the studio had plagiarized his work. This was the deadliest attack in Japan since the end of World War II. The prosecutors’ announcement posted on NHK World-Japan said they requested the death penalty for Aoba because he clearly planned and carried out the attack with the intent to kill (as evidenced by the use of gasoline as well as some unused knives afterwards). was found on him). Aoba’s defense asserted that he was suffering from a serious mental disorder at the time of the crime and therefore could not be held liable.
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Aoba set fire to Kyoto Animation Studio 1 on August 18, 2019, in an apparent act of revenge, claiming that the studio had refused to submit his novels but had subsequently plagiarized his work. He supports this by emphasizing the similarities between the discount meat scene in an episode of Tsurune and what he wrote in the rejected novel. The fire broke out within hours after Aoba doused the building and several Kyoto Animation employees with gasoline before setting it on fire.
At the time of the attack, there were 70 people present in the studio, of whom 36 were killed and 32 were injured. Aoba himself caught fire and nearly died from his injuries, delaying his capture for nearly a year while he recovered. Aoba was indicted in December 2020, and the trial began in September 2023. Aoba admitted to committing the crime, but his defense entered a not guilty plea due to Aoba’s alleged innocence. mentally stable at the time of the attack. He was previously arrested for robbing a convenience store in 2012.
Kyoto Animation, affectionately known as KyoAni, is one of the world’s most famous animation studios, known for notable works such as Violet Evergarden, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, K-On!, Clannad and A Silent Voice, among many other works. Co-founded by husband-and-wife duo Hideaki and Yoko Hatta in 1985, the studio became famous for hiring female-identified animators — a notable outlier in an industry still dominated by male dominated. More than two-thirds of the victims are women. 27 of the survivors chose to return to work at the studio after recovering, and both domestically and internationally, more than $33 million was raised to help the studio and the victims. recuperate. Currently, the former site of Kyoto Animation Studio 1 remains undeveloped to respect the victims and local residents.
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When prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty, they focused especially on the crime’s lingering devastation on the families and survivors of the attack, as well as the extent of the crime. the severity of the horrific massacre and the number of deaths. The death penalty in Japan is legal, but in modern practice it is only applied for serious murder and is rarely carried out. The most recent execution by death penalty in Japan was in 2022, when the perpetrator of the Akihabara massacre was convicted after the deaths of seven victims.
Aoba’s fate is currently hotly debated, with some believing that he will be spared the death penalty due to mental illness and others arguing that such a crime is too heinous to go unpunished, especially especially when Japan previously applied the death penalty. Aoba’s sentence will be announced on January 25.
Source: NHK World-Japan