Still, the connection between Kyoto Animation and Higashi Uji continues, as there are now members of the band who were inspired to join by watching the Sound! Euphonium anime.
Instead, director Tatsuya Ishihara and his staff made multiple visits to Kyoto Prefectural Higashi Uji Senior High School, near the company’s head office in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, to observe the school’s actual brass band.
“They took long, detailed videos of the musicians’ fingering work,” and the Kyoto Animation staff also tagged along when the band went to play in regional competitions. The anime’s designers even ended up modeling Sound! Euphonium’s in-anime setting, the fictional Kita Uji High School, on Higashi Uji, right down to replicating the real-world school’s band room fliers and trash cans seen in the anime.
The unique relationship between Kyoto Animation and the school made the news of the arson attack all the more painful for Higashi Uji’s brass band, and the student musicians channeled those emotions last weekend at the annual Kyoto All-Prefecture High School Brass Band competition, where they played the musical piece “Koyo no Sazanami.”