The arson attack in a revered Kyoto animation studio killed 36 people and injured dozens more.

A Japanese man has been sentenced to death for an arson attack at a Kyoto animation studio in 2019 which killed 36 people and injured dozens more.

The incident, one of Japan’s deadliest in recent decades, killed mostly young artists and shocked the anime world.

Shinji Aoba, 45, pleaded guilty to the attack but his lawyers had sought a lighter sentence on grounds of “mental incompetence”.

Judges rejected this however, ruling that Aoba knew what he was doing.

“I have determined that the defendant was not mentally insane or weak at the time of the crime,” Chief Judge Masuda said on Thursday at Kyoto District Court.

  • @FeathercrownEnglish
    0•5 months ago

    In terms of countries it absolutely is

    • @Viking_HippieEnglish
      1•5 months ago

      Is it really, though?

      Most modern countries don’t consider dissent terrorism, most modern countries don’t have mass shootings every week if not every day and in most countries, the color of your skin doesn’t determine whether you’re likely to survive a traffic stop.

      • @FeathercrownEnglish
        4•5 months ago

        “Modern” doesn’t mean “something I like”, it means it was created recently. So yes, it really is modern.

        • @Viking_HippieEnglish
          -3•5 months ago

          No, it means that it functions in modern ways. The US constitution is the oldest one in the world still in use and US politics and culture are both heavily influenced by bronze age myths aka Abrahamic religion.

          “Modern” doesn’t mean “something I like”

          That’s probably the most ridiculous strawman I’ve seen in 2024, well done!

          • @FeathercrownEnglish
            1•5 months ago

            We have a long way to go in 2024 haha… and sorry, but you didn’t refute it being modern, you simply listed things about it that you didn’t like, and called those not being modern. That wasn’t a strawman, I was literally just responding to what you said. If your beliefs are different then you should have chosen your words more carefully. This response is a great step up because it actually asserts something about the age of the constitution and its beliefs.

            And that assertion is actually correct-- the US is over 200 years old when the rest of the existing democracies are mostly around 50. That’s still a short timescale when we’re talking about nations, but when referring to democracies in particular… yeah, it could use some updating.