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Around the summer, I usually start to think about my year-end blogging and after last year’s low-effort post, I thought about posting for real again, since there were quite a few good anime this year that I wanted to talk about. That list remains unfinished.

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It’s said that when a big event occurs, you’ll remember where you were when you heard about it with crystal clarity. As chance would have it, being halfway around the world in Eastern Slovakia adds a particular sharpness to my memories of when I woke up and read about the fire at Kyoto Animation.

That day was particularly abnormal. It started off as normal as it could being in Slovakia, by spending the morning in a lecture hall. But we were scheduled to go elsewhere in the afternoon. So I spent the day refreshing twitter on the bus until we were deep in the mountains with no 4G access. I spent some time inside a rare cave.

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In a lot of ways, I’m thankful that my circumstances meant that I couldn’t dwell on the news for as much as I would have if I were back home and at work, alone in my office. Since I was at a conference, I had work to do, colleagues to interact with, and caves to explore. And I wouldn’t have to go home to my apartment and deal with being surrounded with haruchan goods. I wouldn’t say it was fun, but I appreciated the greater need to focus.

Once I got back home, since I was in the middle of a teaching term and organizing a move, I was able to keep myself occupied.

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I was taking a Hibiya Line train recently and I noticed that they were doing a year-end big news reel on the screens. When I glanced, I noticed the guy holding up the 令和 sign. They were on April. I refreshed twitter a few times and glanced up again. They were on July now. It was a picture of Studio 1 on fire.

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Death is a natural occurrence in our world. Unexpected death, whether it’s an accident or through illness, is something that we all learn to accept to some degree. We can deal with the cycle of celebrities or public figures or people we like who pass away suddenly. It is completely different to learn that people we care about are victims of an atrocity.

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My office was in a building that is eccentric and annoying in its design. One of these features is multiple unnecessarily long, straight staircases. Going up two of these is really annoying. A lesser known feature is the fire escape stairwells, where the stairs are more reasonably sized and compact, curving around as stairwells normally do. I made use of these stairwells a lot because they were far more efficient.

I didn’t stop using them after the fire, but opening the door to those staircases would always lead my mind back to the early hours of the incident, when news was slowly coming out.

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I avoid googling KyoAni staff members nowadays. Sometimes, the @highspeedbot will continue its dutiful tweeting and mention the artist of a particular illustration. More often than not, it’s actually an Animation Do staff member. A lot of the times it’s Futoshi Nishiya.

In the weeks after the tragedy, I was flipping through my High Speed books. Going through the Creator’s Message book, I ran across some names I recognized, some who had passed, some still alive, and some I didn’t recognize.

I remember the first time I googled a staff member to pull up their Wikipedia or ANN or atwiki page to see what they worked on, but I don’t remember for what reason. I clicked on their ANN page. It had a date of death. This person was not one of the names that KyoAni had given permission to be released.

I still don’t know the names of everyone who passed away. I am afraid of finding out. Some people out there know who they are. I may find out later that another of my favourite animators has passed away. I have no idea when that will be.

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When I was at an anime bar in Sapporo a few years ago, I got asked what my favourite anime was. I said imas because I didn’t want (or had the language capability) to explain why I liked High Speed or Hyouka specifically.

When I was at a bar in Tokyo last week, I got asked what my favourite anime was. I said imas because I didn’t want to have to think about how to talk about the fire.

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It is maddening to me that High Speed is never given the same respect as the other works, no matter how they’re grouped: films, Takemoto’s work, the Free series. I think it’s extremely important because it’s the only work that shows how Takemoto thinks about and portrays boys. It’s because of High Speed (and Hyouka to some extent) that I view a lot of the things I like through the Takemoto lens.

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Umibe no Étranger was a manga that I did not ever expect would receive an anime adaptation. I was thrilled when I saw the first rumours emerging online a few hours before the actual announcement. The feeling quickly subsided. I had always joked with @pen_dag that we should send Umibe no Étranger and Harukaze no Étranger to Takemoto to get him to pitch it to KyoAni because it was perfect for him.

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After Hoshiai no Sora ended abruptly, the director, Kazuki Akane, made a twitter thread explaining that the production committee had halved the number of allotted episodes just months before airing. To me, it’s another obvious case of the iron rule of never respecting shows about boys. This could never have happened at KyoAni.

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It’s difficult for me to think about the future of KyoAni and say wholeheartedly that I’ll always support them because if I were to be honest, I don’t know if I can. We all have a hole blown open in our hearts and we’re all wishing the best for KyoAni. But it feels impossible for me to ever fall in love with another one of their works at this point without Takemoto.

In recent years, Takemoto’s stuff has felt like a different track from what we now tend to think of as the modern KyoAni: Eupho, Violet Evergarden, Free, Naoko Yamada. This was fine, because Takemoto was always around to do his own thing. Until now, he suddenly isn’t. And now there’s this disconnect between what I’ll refer to as my KyoAni and everyone else’s KyoAni.

KyoAni will move forward and the vision and values and legacy of KyoAni will continue and more great KyoAni works will get made. I’m sure of this. But the specific voice that Takemoto spoke with, the one that moved me the most, won’t be a part of that. I don’t know if many people will notice it, but that conspicuous silence will always be present to me.