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60-Year-Old Hikikomori Gets 30 Years for Killing Parents Over Anime

The Fukuoka District Court sentenced a 60-year-old Fukuoka man to 30 years in prison after killing his parents for disturbing his “anime time” as he hid their bodies in a refrigerator, an incident that will likely only further tarnish the reputation of anime otaku.

According to the indictment, Junji Matsumoto, the unemployed defendant from Nishi Ward, Fukuoka, killed his father, Hirokazu Matsumoto (88 years old), and his mother, Makie Matsumoto (87 years old), and then abandoned their bodies in a commercial refrigerator. He was charged with murder and abandonment of a corpse and was arrested June 2021.

The prosecutors requested life imprisonment, stating that murdering two people was on a completely different scale from the average issues stemming from nursing care fatigue and that there was no room for leniency. However, the defense argued that a fixed-term sentence of about 23 years was appropriate, as the defendant’s severe disability had an impact on the crime.

Matsumoto had been a hikikomori for 35 years, spending most of his time watching anime and reading manga without ever owning a mobile phone, and claims to have never touched the Internet.

On June 20th, 2021, the defendant’s father asked for assistance in the restroom, which resulted in explosive rage from his son, as he was in the middle of his “anime viewing” time, which was never to be disturbed. That night he strangled his father using the cable of an electric kettle.

While the defendant struggled to maintain a normal relationship with his father throughout most of his life, he always shared a good relationship with his mother but decided to kill her in the same way, to “keep her quiet,” before hiding their bodies in a commercial refrigerator in an attempt to cover up the murder.

A news report on the case:

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