Like many fans, I wasn’t really aware of specific animation houses or companies when I first got into Japanese animation as a kid. Anime, as far as I was concerned, came from Japan: end of story. But over time, it became apparent that some of my favourite series and movies were all done by the same studio – a powerhouse named Kyoto Animation.

I got into KyoAni, as the studio is nicknamed, in the mid-00s when they were releasing mega-hits like The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, K-On! and Lucky Star. Even aside from their inescapably popular zany proto-memes and self-referential jokes, there was something about these shows that separated them from their contemporaries at the time; a sort of magic that could even make an episode with no apparent story, set mostly in one classroom on a rainy winter day, seem compelling and heartwarming.

A collection of high-quality animated scenes (‘sakuga’) from various Kyoto Animation series

Kyoto Animation focuses primarily on slice-of-life settings, largely adaptations of stories about high schoolers, with the occasional bent towards madcap comedy (Nichijou), heart-pounding melodrama (Sound! Euphonium) or the fantastical (Haruhi, Violet Evergarden). Through all of it, there’s a tendency towards the understated, an understanding of the nuances of body language and expression and silence that produces a sense of warmth, deliberateness and belonging that can be found in the most mundane (Hyouka, K-On!!), bizarre (Kobayashi Maid-dragon) or serious (A Silent Voice) of works.

This style is the result of a unique studio culture which has relied heavily on well-salaried, in-house animators, as opposed to industry-standard, paid-by-the-frame freelancers. Best detailed by dedicated industry watchers such as SakugaBlog, the studio has invested heavily in trainee development, with mentorship and its own animation school, job security, maternity leave and policies geared towards reducing Japan’s ubiquitous culture of overwork and nurturing a new generation of animators and directors.

The studio has also had a reputation in particular for focusing on female talent, hiring women in great proportions than industry standard and promoting award-winning in-house directors such as Naoko Yamada (A Silent Voice) or alumni like Nintendo’s Tomoe Aratani – though that’s not to discount their equally-skilled male colleagues like Yasuhiro Takemoto (Hyouka, The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi) or Tatsuya Ishihara (Sound! Euphonium, Chuunibyou).

Trying to cope with this Kyoto Animation news. Here's a thread of some of my favorite animation cuts and moments they've ever done.



Sound Euphonium pic.twitter.com/yrcsx20CC3 — Carol Grant (@carolaverygrant) July 18, 2019

KyoAni already had a long history of quality work before the early 2000s, with a good reputation as an outsourcing studio and a string of solid early series. But the explosive popularity of their adaptations of Haruhi, Lucky Star and K-On, works which practically redefined anime of that era, catapulted them to mass recognition both by fans looking for high-quality shows and publishers looking for profitable mass-market animations of their own properties.

The studio took this success and funneled it back in to their overriding philosophy of fostering new and upcoming talent. They became their own publishers, launching contests for original stories to animate (Free!, Beyond the Boundary) or actively seeking out external publishers and stories instead of the other way around. They also began taking a larger cut of the resulting merchandising profits, feeding it back into things like regular salaries or childcare initiatives – into policies that meant creators at all levels could simply focus on their art, and into creating an environment where talent and vision could flourish.

The recent, devastating attack on Kyoto Animation studio strikes at the heart of one of the most storied and celebrated creators in anime; the people and artists, the mentors and the students, to whom the studio was dedicated. It’s a blow to the anime industry, and to Japanese culture at large, and a tragedy on a scale yet to be fully understood.

Fans around the world continue to share screencaps, animation cuts, and stories of how KyoAni’s shows have affected them, celebrating the works that they created and the dreams they have wrought. For my part, when I saw the news of the devastating fire, I curled up with an episode of my personal favourite (Sound! Euphonium) and watched, and remembered, and hoped.