For those who don't know, there was an attack by an unhinged individual in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, which many of us otaku know as a sort of electronics / anime / manga / cosplay mecca (among other things). This attack left seven dead and numerous others wounded.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my sympathy for my fellow otaku over in Japan who are deeply affected by this tragedy.

Like a terrorist attack?

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Article on it here.

And also here.

The debate on the first one's page is quite interesting, actually.

poof "SHOUJOMAN IS HERE!"
Just Lynz, drop the -ajw

apparently there was another stabbing exactly seven years ago in a school by an old janitor also

how do people do this stuff? sick

Yes, it's both tragic and unbelievable. Thankfully the guy who did it was immediately arrested.

I still believe Japan is one of the safest places I have ever had the honor of visiting.

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Its sad, its all confucious fault, that fat sexist wanabe philosopher. Japanese custom preach to don't show your fellings or needs openly, and people around them put a lot of pressure , so they end building much stress, that may lead to these outbreaks, or hikikomoris or suicides, or whaling.

God is in the chaos.

This guy is a deluded. We all have bad days, don't need to take out on innocents.

The thing is, the day before his attack, he announced it on the net (if I'm not mistaken) but it wasn't taken seriously. It's understandable but...sometimes maybe being a little paranoid could save lives :\
Last I read, there were 6 dead, and one was a really really old man...76 years old was it? tragic.. 😢

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Everyday I'm tumblin'

it seems the individual chose the place because it's something he probably felt some sort of connection to; but it is indeed tragic. He obviously snapped if he just wanted to kill no matter what. I wonder what his emotional state was...he sounds like a depressed guy from the first article posted, but wow, there was no need to go on a killing rampage. It's so sad that more and more people come to this...they go berserk and decide that everyones' lives are not worth anything at all or that they are gods in a way... >:-( 😔

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um everything u guys say are kinda extreme. this type of thing happens everywhere in one form or another, some incidents are even worse but go unreported. my heart goes out to the victims and their family but its too common to be biased on dis situation despite the fact dat he attacked the otaku motherland.

"Hip-hop was set out in the dark. They used to do it out in the park"

Quote from dacbiet

um everything u guys say are kinda extreme. this type of thing happens everywhere in one form or another, some incidents are even worse but go unreported. my heart goes out to the victims and their family but its too common to be biased on dis situation despite the fact dat he attacked the otaku motherland.

I don't think that reacting with shock and/or sadness to the fact that people were massacred because one person was mentally unbalanced is extreme. In fact, I really wouldn't want to see a world where such reactions weren't extreme because such events were so commonplace. However, massacres like this just don't happen on a regular basis, not everywhere. I'm not talking about countries engulfed in war here, I'm talking about first-world countries where unwell civilians randomly go on killing sprees. And reacting this way over hearing that other human beings were murdered isn't being biased, it's being a human with normal emotions.

poof "SHOUJOMAN IS HERE!"
Just Lynz, drop the -ajw

um everything u guys say are kinda extreme. this type of thing happens everywhere in one form or another, some incidents are even worse but go unreported. my heart goes out to the victims and their family but its too common to be biased on dis situation despite the fact dat he attacked the otaku motherland.

I think reacting this way is good. I would hope that no matter where a massacre occured that people would react this way.

Anyway, I saw it on the live news. I was a little suprised that NHK put dead bodies on tv and kept showing the pools of blood. I thought that was a little uncalled for. Someone even took a video of it with there camera man. I couldn't believe that people had time to video it but not help other people.

Also I dont think it was mentioned on those articles (but I only breezed through them). He didn't stab all of the victims that were injured or killed. People were crossing the street and when they either saw the truck or the knife they took off running and ran into oncoming traffic. Which is incredibly sad. Getting away from one fate and running into another.

i live in a first world country, i dont think body count or what happened prior to the murder rele affect the overall reaction. a dead person is a dead person. ten o clock news and the block corners u hear dese stories all da time about violence goin on in first world cities. i pray every night for these issues in my own community. why must we only react to the ones that make headlines? the ones that the media puporsely exlpoit for ratings.

now what i dont get is how reaction should be different between first world country and warring developing countries. dats just discriminating. its no different there than it is here, people are still people, theres no point in reacting to one issue over another. sure we expect things to happen in a warring nation so whenever we hear about dead ppl in Kuwait on CNN we're not Fazed by it. but cities are crowded places with millions of people in it. not expecting something to happen is like living in a bubble. the government are our only protection but they are poeple too and they are far from perfect. just look at Sean Bell, how much coverage he got, and the little reaction the world had over it. Aagain my heart goes out to these people, im just not shocked by it.

"Hip-hop was set out in the dark. They used to do it out in the park"

if you're not shocked by someone walking with a knife and stabbing people around, i don't know what's more to shock...(well the austrian guy that had his familly in basement probably)

Quote from lynzajw

I don't think that reacting with shock and/or sadness to the fact that people were massacred because one person was mentally unbalanced is extreme. In fact, I really wouldn't want to see a world where such reactions weren't extreme because such events were so commonplace. However, massacres like this just don't happen on a regular basis, not everywhere. I'm not talking about countries engulfed in war here, I'm talking about first-world countries where unwell civilians randomly go on killing sprees. And reacting this way over hearing that other human beings were murdered isn't being biased, it's being a human with normal emotions.

i agree,
and even if this did happen more often, you shouldn't be not shocked just because it's on tv more often

If the sea were made of Whiskey and I was a duck
I'd swim to the bottom and never come up

Yet life goes on.