The Anime “Year of Tears”

It was a year ago Saturday that Crayon Shin-chan creator Yoshito Usui died after falling 100 meters down a sheer cliff, oddly enough in J-List’s home of Gunma and not Saitama, the Japanese prefecture he helped make famous all over the world. Although the masukomi (what the media is called in Japanese, from “mass communications”) was happy to imply he slipped and fell to his death, it’s likely he chose to take his own life, perhaps feeling trapped and depressed by his own success. Usui-sensei’s death seemed to usher in a “Year of Tears” for anime fans all over the world, with many great names leaving us forever: Kazuhiko Kato, the composer of the epic Macross song “Do You Remember Love?”; visionary Voltron producer Peter Keefe; voice of Speed Racer Peter Hernandez; unparalleled animation director Satoshi Kon; someone very dear to our own J-List; and of course the “Gene Roddenberry” of anime himself, Carl Macek. Let’s hope and pray that this period of sadness is over soon, and we can have happier times — we need this to end, immediately.

Saturday is the meinichi or anniversary of Usui-sensei’s death (T_T).