Thirty-Four people were confirmed dead, an official for the Kyoto City Fire Department said.
Fire engulfed the building and white and black smoke billowed from its charred windows. It was Japan's worst mass killing since a suspected arson attack in Tokyo in 2001.
Shiro Misaki, a 47-year old owner of a neighbourhood bar five minutes from studio, said he was driving nearby when he saw the thick smoke.
“Policemen were stopping traffic and it was really hazy with smoke,” he said. “Even after I got back to my restaurant I could smell the smoke.”
The prime minister said the cause was arson.
“Today, many people were killed and wounded in an arson murder case in Kyoto,” Abe said in a post on Twitter. “It is too appalling for words.”
The motive was not yet known. The suspected arsonist was injured and was being treated in hospital, so police could not question him, NHK said.
Kyoto police declined to comment.
Kyoto, some 450 kilometres (280 miles) west of Tokyo, is the ancient capital of Japan and major tourist draw for its ancient temples and cultural sites.A man shouted “die” as he doused an animation studio with fuel and set it ablaze in Japan on Thursday, public broadcaster NHK said, killing at least 33 people in the nation's worst mass murder in nearly two decades.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the attack in the city of Kyoto — the latest grisly killing in a nation widely known for its low crime rates — “too appalling for words” and offered condolences.
Police detained a 41-year-old man who shouted “die” as he poured what appeared to be petrol around the three-storey Kyoto Animation building shortly after 10am (0100 GMT), public broadcaster NHK reported.
'I am heartbroken'
The dead were found on all three floors of the building, including in the studio, and on a staircase leading up to the roof, the fire department said. It was not clear if the roughly 10 people found dead on the staircase had been trying to escape.
Thirty-six people had been taken to hospital by midday, the fire department said earlier, with 10 of them seriously injured.
By Thursday night the fire department said it had completed its search of the building.
Japanese animation, known as “anime”, includes television series and movies. A pillar of Japanese popular culture, it has become a major cultural export, winning fans around the world.
Kyoto Animation produces popular series such as the “Sound! Euphonium”. Its “Free! Road to the World — The Dream” movie is due for release this month.
“I am heartbroken,” Hideaki Hatta, the studio's chief executive told reporters. “It is unbearable that the people who helped carry Japan's animation industry were hurt and lost their lives in this way.”
Outpouring of support
There was an outpouring of support for the studio on Japanese-language social media, with some users posting pictures of animation. Many posted with the hashtag “#PrayForKyoani” — using an abbreviation for Kyoto Animation.
The studio has an outsized role in Japan's animation industry that outstrips the list of works it has produced, said Tokyo-based film commentator Yuichi Maeda.
“It has a huge presence in animation here. To have this many people die at once will be a huge blow to the Japanese animation industry,” he said.
Violent crime is relatively rare in Japan but occasional high-profile incidents have shocked the country.
Less than two months ago, a knife-wielding man slashed at a group of schoolgirls at a bus stop in Kawasaki, just south of Tokyo, killing one girl and the father of another, while injuring more than a dozen children.
In 2016, a man armed with a knife broke into a facility for the disabled in a small town near Tokyo and killed 19 patients.
Police said the fierce blaze appeared to have been started deliberately but there was no immediate information on a possible motive.
The toll continued to climb hours after the fire began, with fire department officials saying bodies were being discovered as they searched the ravaged building.
“Twelve people were found in cardio-respiratory arrest in the ground and first floor,” the official said, using a phrase commonly used in Japan to signify victims have died but their deaths have not yet been officially certified.
The discoveries, on the building’s second floor and a stairwell leading to the roof, raised the toll to at least 24 dead.
Officials said 35 people had also been injured in the fire, 10 of whom were in serious condition, and local media said around 70 people were believed to have been in the building when the fire started.
Footage of the blaze showed thick white smoke pouring from the windows of the three-storey building. Its facade was charred black on much of one side where the flames had shot out of the windows.
The fire department said it began receiving calls around 10:35 am (0135 GMT) about the fire at the studio belonging to Kyoto Animation.
“Callers reported having heard a loud explosion from the first floor of Kyoto Animation and seeing smoke,” a fire department spokesman said.
Police said they were still investigating the cause of the fire but it was a suspected arson attack.
“A man threw a liquid and set fire to it,” a Kyoto prefectural police spokesman told AFP.
Public broadcaster NHK reported that a man had been detained in connection with the blaze and was later taken to hospital for treatment.
It reported that the suspect had poured a gasoline-like substance around the building and said “drop dead” as he set fire to it.
“I heard two loud bangs, they sounded like explosions,” a man told NHK.
“The fire was raging hard. I saw red flames flaring.”
A woman living nearby told Kyodo news agency she had seen at least one injured person outside the building.
“A person with singed hair was lying down and there were bloody footprints,” the 59-year-old told the local news outlet.
There was no immediate statement from the studio, which produced several well-known television anime series, including “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” and “K-ON!”
“We are in the process of learning what happened,” said a woman who answered the phone at the firm’s headquarters in Uji City in the Kyoto region.
“We cannot tell you anything more,” she added.
The blaze prompted an outpouring of support from those in Japan’s anime industry, one of the country’s best known cultural exports.
“No, I don’t know what I should be thinking now,” tweeted Yutaka Yamamoto, an animation director who once worked at Kyoto Animation.
“Why, why, why?”
Japan has a famously low crime rate, with violent crime very rare.
Arson is considered a serious crime and people convicted of deliberately setting fires in a country where many people still live in wooden houses can face the death penalty.
A man convicted of setting a fire that killed 16 people in Osaka in 2008 is
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