Killer blaze strikes at pillar of anime industry

Katsuyoshi Yatabe, an anime director and professor at Osaka University of Arts, said that in the Japanese anime industry, where a great deal of labor is required for just one title, works are normally produced by a group of different companies working separately on elements of the creative process.

However, at Kyoto Animation, almost the entire process is completed in a "collective way"-from the detailed coloring of animated frames to the composition of backgrounds and the creation of footage, the professor said.

"To proceed with various parts of a project simultaneously, the number of people required for that purpose in the building would usually be high," Yatabe added.

Despite its geographical and "philosophical" distance from Tokyo, Kyoto Animation has been influential in the anime industry as a whole. The studio's highly original works have earned it fans at home and abroad, and peers in the industry have praised its titles as having an "idiosyncratic Kyoani quality".

Its early hits such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star and K-On!-all adaptations of novels and manga-were helmed by its in-house directors such as Naoko Yamada, who joined Kyoto Animation from university and made her directorial debut at age 24.

Early this decade, the studio launched the KyoAni Awards, for which aspiring writers submit their novels, with the winning titles adapted into anime, according to Japan Times. Several of the studio's recent productions, including Free! and Violet Evergarden, are products of this system.

As of last week, the studio was working on follow-ups to these two productions, along with a new series based on the latest KyoAni Award-winning novel.

"But all the materials for these works have been destroyed in the fire", Hideaki Hatta said.

"The victims were all excellent colleagues, and the attack is a serious blow to our company and the industry. I don't know how long it will take for us to recover," he added.