As we all know, the Kyoto Animation arson attack happened back in the summer of 2019. The culprit, Shinji Aoba, was caught on the same day, he also admitted that his goal was to kill as many people as he could. The reason for his rage was a “stolen” scene from one of Kyoto Animation works which, according to the culprit, was his idea. In his opinion, the studio stole it. Moreover, he claimed that the studio used it without crediting or compensating him for it.
Aoba isn’t a scriptwriter, however, he took part in the Kyoto Animation’s periodic novel-writing competition. It’s a competition that’s open to amateur writers that award publishing and anime adaptation deals. Kyoto Animation confirmed that they did receive a submission from Aoba, but it didn’t pass the first round of judge’s evaluation. What’s more, Kyoto Animation’s statement is that the word wasn’t similar to any of Kyoto Animation works.
After investigation, it came to light that the scene was used in Kyoto Animation Tsurune’s Episode 5. The scene shows teammates, Minato and Nanao, shopping for the club. Minato suggests buying things that are close to the expiring date since they are cheaper for which Nanao praises him. Then the characters proceed to talk about another member of the club.
As you can see, the whole scene isn’t groundbreaking and sounds pretty generic. The scene is a simple one and anyone could’ve come up with it. Most likely it’s just a coincidence that the scene from the culprit’s work was similar to the one of Tsurune’s.
We are glad Kyoto Animation is returning and the Violet Evergarden movie was their first work since the arson attack. We look forward to all their future works as well!
Source: Kyoto Shimbun
Picutres taken from official Crunchyroll stream.