He sought REVENGE on a studio with Murder... | The Case of Shinji Aoba

it was an attack so strangely motivated yet so vicious that it confused and shocked a nation to its very core my name's adrian and welcome back to coffee house crime today we're looking at the kyoto animation studio massacre of 2019 a scar that runs so deep into japan's profile that is considered one of the deadliest attacks since world war ii if you're new to the channel i post both solved and unsolved cases here on a weekly basis all while serving you as much coffee as you can handle so if you haven't yet please consider subscribing to coffee house crime so pull up a chair grab a coffee and sit back this is the case of the kyoto animation studio massacre [Music] japan the national crime rate here is distinctively low when in comparison to other countries particularly when looking at assault or homicide according to a survey in 2016 japan boasts the lowest murder rate in the world with a score of only 0.3 people per 100 000 saying that when a murder is present in japan it's almost always reported as distinctively fierce we're in kyoto for today's case the old capital of japan and although tokyo has now claimed its spots the capital to the country kyoto is still considered to be japan's city of culture it is home to thousands of buddhist temples shinto shrines palaces and gardens a place that could keep any tourist mesmerized for months stepping back from its traditional values and attractions though kyoto has also advanced into the modern world it's not just a city defined by its history with vibrant skylines modern architecture and supreme infrastructure kyoto has a bit of everything something that many companies and corporations would look for when settling in office and one of those companies was kyoto animation originally founded in 1981 by hideyaki hatta and his wife yoko kyoto animation has thrived from humble beginnings as a small production services company into one of japan's most successful studios over the years kyoto animation became recognized for its high production values and its sensitivity to the wonders and quandaries of ordinary life unlike most studios they also paid their employees in salary rather than freelance contract they'd also train their employees in-house thus encouraging them to focus on quality rather than quota kyoto animation grew as a company over the decades eventually moving from its head office in uji city to fushimiku and kyoto their new site affectionately named studio one they would go on to create popular anime titles such as clanad k-on and a silent voice by the year of 2019 kyoto animation was thriving they were well known not just for their products but for their business practice too but as with all types of fame all that positive attention will come with a slice of negativity too i mean sure some would simply just find kyoto animations work boring some would even find a way to dislike their business model but what i'm talking about is a very small minority the type that would find personal hatred out of nothing and one of those individuals would go by the name of shinji alba in 2019 shinji alba was a 40 year old man who lived in saitama he was born on the 16th of may 1978. he grew up in midoriku a ward in saotama city when he was a child though his parents would divorce and this would leave him with his father brother and sister shinji lived a troubled life into adulthood his classmates would describe him as absent and often narrate after he graduated he became a part-time clerk at a convenience store after that though at the age of 34 shinji would run into trouble with the law it was june 2012 and he robbed a convenience store with a knife he would gain 20 000 yen or 200 from it but he would eventually get caught police sentenced shinji to three and a half years in prison at his trial he would tell prosecutors that he was sick of living in a society he was eventually released in 2016 where he moved back into an apartment in saitama city back in kyoto kyoto animation was growing from strength to strength through the years and since 2009 kyoto animation had been hosting an annual competition called the kyoto animation awards they would host this competition to connect with their audience and offer exposure to talented writers where contestants could submit their stories to coat animation for review the selected winning stories to this competition would be published under the company's imprint and if they're lucky would later have a chance to be adapted into an anime the award itself is prestigious and with one million yen or ten thousand dollars up for grabs it's fiercely competitive too and this is where kyoto animation and shinji alba first crossed paths because between the years of 2017 and 2018 shinji would submit a story to kyota animation twice anime is very commonly watched in japan so much that it's predicted that about 35 percent of its population watches it more than once a week and for shinji he was very heavily in that category being a state-home kind of guy he would heavily absorb himself into anime and gaming pretty much every day of the year his submissions to kyoto animation would not go very far though unfortunately they were formally eliminated by judges in the first round the numerous rejections disappointed shinji they angered him in fact but the grudge against coat animation would only start here and shinji's troubled mind would only grow worse too since his release from prison shinji was growing further isolated from friends and family in fact he almost had none in 1999 his father committed suicide and since then he'd cuddle contact with his brother and sister too it was clear that by 2018 shinji seemed resentful to the world antisocial with no family or friends to love he became bitter and with the only interactions with people around him being his neighbours they were becoming violent too in late 2018 after his stories had already been rejected by kyoto animation shinji was an unstable man but there would be one new detail to his life which would set him down his darkest path he was in his home one evening watching more anime and the anime it was made by kyoto animation in his deluded and isolated mindset though he made a connection the connection was that actually what he had just been watching it seemed way too familiar in fact it was his story the story he submitted in the contest last year kyoto animation they'd stolen from him this outraged xinji and kyota animation they were going to hear about it around the same time in october staff would wake up one morning to over 200 death threats for email all sent to various employees across the business the sender using anonymized software to withhold their identity the police were contacted but since these emails were fired out using tor it was impossible to find out who the sender was maybe we can take a guess though instead police patrols were temporarily deployed around the building and while the death threats stopped vengeance would soon be made in a much more sinister way the following year sunday the 14th of july 2019 nine months had passed but xinji's life it was still the same it was the weekend and matsumoto a 27 year old quality control engineer was enjoying his weekend on the couch matsumoto or matsu and shinji were neighbours and unfortunately for the two of them another neighbor upstairs was assembling furniture shinji though he thought it was matsu the two often complained at each other over noise usually though shinju was the loud one shinji started to bang on the shared wall between his and matsu's apartments matsu being the courtiers guy walked up to shinji's front door to tell him that the noise it wasn't him shinji opened his front door and he grabbed matsu by the color of his shirt before shouting at him you're too loud shut up i'm going to kill you i have nothing to lose shinji would eventually let go of matsu and matsu who was too scared to stay at home walked down to the police station to report the assault by the time police would get to shinji's house though to confront him he was gone and where he'd gone too was anyone's guess by the next day shinji had taken the shinkansen bullet train to tokyo and checked in at a local downtown hotel and the next morning on july the 16th shinji traveled to kyoto cctv cameras captured him at various points along the way one at an internet cafe south of kyoto station that night he stayed in another nearby hotel on wednesday the 17th of july still wearing the same jeans and red t-shirt that he'd worn for the last three days shinji walked into a hardware store and bought himself a metal trolley he then wheeled the trolley six miles north before stopping at an nes gas station to purchase 10 gallons of gasoline shinji then travelled with his trolley full of gasoline along ooji river towards kyoto animation's studio he would stop at the night for a hotel and the plans he had in store for tomorrow would be nothing short of evil on thursday the 18th of july 2019 shinji arrived at kyoto animation studio with the cart full of gasoline the time was 10 31 am and some 70 employees were inside working away that is when shinji pushed through the building's front doors he toppled over one of the buckets of the gasoline he then flicked a lighter and screamed you will die within 10 seconds of ignition the buckets of gasoline had exploded setting the building's first floor entirely a light and within another 10 seconds the second floor was fully ablaze too windows on the third floor were destroyed within one minutes of the blast black smoke following out from every open hole that it could find shinji alba was still alive but considering he set the canister alight and that exploded less than 10 seconds later he was on fire he ran out of the building before collapsing in a street nearby passersby unaware of who the monster was quickly treated shinji for his injuries he would very quickly regain consciousness as soon as he did he clambered to his feet and tried to run away however two people from kyoto's animation recognized him they chased after him and then barraged him to the ground that is when police intervened and they caught up with him when they found out who he was and they asked him why he did it shinji shouted they plagiarized my work i demanded to speak to the company president firefighters were quick to the scene but the fate of half of the people inside had already been determined the fire would continue to burn without mercy for five long hours rescue workers would eventually find the bodies of 33 employees later that evening three on the first floor 11 on the second floor and 19 on the spiral staircase to the roof of which the door had failed to open from inside the staircase acting as a giant funnel to fuel the fire dozens more that were in the building at the time of the attack would be treated for their injuries but unfortunately over the following weeks three more would die to their wounds bringing the total death toll to japan was in total shock after the attack as news of the fire became more obviously evil the nation the world and the anime community all looked on in anger and despair shinji alba would become the assailant to one of the nation's largest acts of mass murder since the end of world war ii as firefighters tended to shinji on the streets police would discover that he actually had a plan b they found six unused knives on his persona probably to be used if his arsonist plan failed to work and despite the several witnesses putting shinji as the main suspect the six unused knives found on his persona and soon cctv footage showing him at various locations with the cart full of gasoline kyoto police were not able to formally arrest the man he had suffered severe burns across his entire body injuring himself so badly that he was unconscious and although police had a warrant for his arrest they were unable to formally do that until medical examination certified that he would be fit to survive in a detention facility shinji was actually given a 1 chance to live and as the days turned into weeks he was still unconscious after the attack and miraculously or unfortunately depending which way you look at it shinji would survive his injuries in september 2019 doctors would certify that he was no longer in a life-threatening condition there was a lack of human skin available for grafting though as organ donation is rare in japan so officials made the right decision to give the victims priority to receive donor skin before shinji and that donor would never arrive as shinji became the first person in japan to get a fully artificial skin graft police would eventually be able to start questioning shinji in september 2019 and it was then that he confirmed again that yes he was the arsonist to the attack he would then go on to say i had a grudge against kyoto animation i thought that if i sprayed gasoline around the building while setting the fire i could kill more people so that's why i did that it was in may 2020 that shinju was declared fit enough for arrest 10 months after the attack by this time though the world had started spiraling into a pandemic the story of xinjiaoba would slowly trundle on but without the international attention it once received he was formally arrested on the 27th of may 2020 and by december 2020 he was formally charged to the 42 year old undeniably guilty of his crimes he would confirm the reason for his rage is that he felt kyota animation had stolen one of his ideas and they'd used it in one of their anime without crediting or compensating him he said the thing curet animation copied for me was the scene in suriname where the main characters by discounted meat according to reports the scene is vastly generic and kyoto animation they deny plagiarizing anything from the man the days following the studio massacre coat animation initially stated that they were not aware of any contest entries by shinji but during a more thorough examination they discovered that he had indeed submitted his own novel this would again highlight though that his novel had been rejected in the first round of judgments and scrapped from the company's awareness a year and a half after the attack a six-month psychological evaluation on shinji's mental health had ended and the conclusion was that yes shinji he knew what he was doing when he lit the fire he was mentally coherent this paves the way for shinji to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and with japan accepting the death penalty in certain circumstances and this being one of the worst mass murders in over 70 years time it's not looking very good for shinji kyoto animation also shared that they expect shinji to be prosecuted to the maximum extent under japanese law and this is where we are today in the case of shinji alba because although he has been charged and he is in prison he has not yet been sentenced his troll is expected to happen later this year at the end of 2021 maybe into 2022 following the tragic loss of life the world reached out to kyoto animation the company set up a donations account to provide financial relief to the surviving victims and to the families of those that were lost the bank account would reach over 3 billion yen or 30 million dollars and all of this would eventually find its way to the intended people a separate gofundme was also raised by fans to help bring kyoto animation and his studio back to life and in december 2019 over 2.3 million us dollars would reach coat animation to rebuild itself productions by the company did obviously become postponed or cancelled but now most of them are assuming and back to work the site in which shinji left his ugly scar in the world has since been demolished tokyo animation's president hideyakihata stated that he was considering replacing the building with the green public park and memorial but this is yet to be decided most of the remaining survivors to the attack stayed on in the company too refusing to resign for most of them they recognized the harsh reality was not reflective to the company and for some the only way they could feel close to the colleagues that they had lost was to carry on in their wake the nation has also started to take precautions in the sale of gasoline restricting how much people can buy at any one time and since 2019 fire safety precautions on buildings have also been improved too and although we don't yet know what will happen to shinji we do know that he did not stop kyoto animation sure the studio remains injured but it aspires to come back stronger from the event and eventually be a place where the victims can be honoured and remembered and that's where we are today so yeah i guess let's see what happens thank you so much for watching another one of my videos today i do really appreciate it i remember hearing about this in the news but i didn't quite realize the full horror behind it shinji alba is an evil man i hope every remaining minute of his life is filled with pain and regrets however long that may be what do you think about shinji alba do you think he is mentally fit or do you think this is the case where someone is too far gone to be considered just evil let me know in the comments below and thank you once again for watching and i'll be looking forward to seeing you real soon in the next one until then though look after each other goodbye you

Channel: Coffeehouse Crime

Views: 3,879,689

Keywords: kyoto animation, kyoto animation fire, violet evergarden

Id: 6pgRtedW414

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021