“For me, I’m trying to work hard for society and people who love anime, but there was this thread on how to kill Hideaki Anno,” the anime creator told NHK. “They kept writing the absolute best ways to kill me, such as, I could be killed this way or that. When I saw this, I stopped caring about everything—like, making anime. I’d had enough. One time, I thought about jumping in front of a car. Another time, I thought about jumping from the company’s roof.” NHK asked what stopped him, and Anno replied, “Because that seemed painful. Dying is fine, really, but I didn’t like the idea of experiencing pain before death.”