# 55: Real Life Yandere: Obsessed Fan Went Viral For Murder Attempt

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 22 Oct 2023, 40 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO9318262978.mp3

Today’s case is on Yuka Takaoka - a young woman from Tokyo who had fallen obsessively in love with Phoenix Luna, a popular employee of a Japanese host bar. Just months after they met, she would go viral on social media for brutally stabbing him in his sleep. Trigger Warning: stalking, obsessive behaviours, child abuse, neglect, mention of suicide, suicidal ideation Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] When Phoenix Luna was 20 years old, he was every girl's dream.
[0:04] They were lining up to date him, and some of them even started to
[0:07] go crazy with obsession. 1 morning he awoke to a knife
[0:12] plunged into his stomach by a stalker fan who wanted to be
[0:15] with him forever, even if that meant both of them had to die.
[0:19] As Phoenix was left fighting for his life, his attacker was going
[0:23] viral on social media, gaining her own adoring fan base of
[0:27] people believing that she was just too beautiful to be a
[0:31] murderer. Today, we're talking about the
[0:33] insane case of Yuka Takayoka and Phoenix Luna.
[0:39] I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
[0:41] absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[0:45] video. Everything that I'm about to say
[0:46] is publicly available information that myself and my
[0:49] team have found online and compiled into this one video.
[0:53] This video will cover especially sensitive topics including but
[0:57] not limited to stalking and obsessive behaviours, child
[1:01] abuse and neglect, mention of suicide and suicidal ideation.
[1:05] While we make every effort to Fact Check our sources and make
[1:09] sure that all of the information in this video is correct, no
[1:12] action should be taken in reliance upon the information in
[1:15] this video. And I want to take this
[1:16] opportunity to quickly remind you that these are real people's
[1:20] lives, so please keep your comments kind and respectful.
[1:24] All opinions stated in this video are mine and mine alone.
[1:27] And with that being said, let's get into the yes.
[1:30] So today's case takes place in Tokyo, Japan in May 2019.
[1:35] Tokyo is known for its vibrant nightlife and where this case
[1:39] took place was actually one of the liveliest parts of it, a
[1:43] place named Shinjuku. 20 year old Phoenix Luna worked as a
[1:47] host in one of the host clubs in Tokyo and he was very popular
[1:51] among both customers and his Co workers.
[1:54] He had a very promising career ahead of him, but such success
[1:58] was very new to Phoenix. Phoenix, because he hadn't had
[2:01] the easiest life. Things didn't come easily to
[2:04] him. He'd had to work very, very hard
[2:06] for every opportunity that he'd ever had.
[2:08] He was born just north of Tokyo in a place called Tochigi, where
[2:12] he lived with his parents and his seven siblings.
[2:15] Seven siblings for the first few years of his life, but when
[2:18] Phoenix was still very young, his parents separated and it was
[2:22] a very nasty separation. I don't know the details, but
[2:25] for whatever reason, they decided to put all seven of
[2:28] their children into care. From that point on, Phoenix
[2:32] never saw his parents again. He was around six years old when
[2:35] he was put into care and I believe a lot of the siblings
[2:38] were split up. So it wasn't just like he never
[2:40] saw his parents again, he never saw some of his brothers and
[2:43] sisters ever again. And if that wasn't bad enough,
[2:46] the institution that he was put into was also hell on earth.
[2:51] I mean, it was OK to give him his basic needs met.
[2:54] You know, he had a roof over his head.
[2:56] He had food on the table. He had a bed to sleep in, but
[2:59] that was about it. They don't have parental figures
[3:02] in these homes. They don't have love or care or
[3:05] attention. They're not really raised.
[3:08] They're just surviving. And I imagine from the age of 6,
[3:11] that is hard to not have any kind of parental figure.
[3:15] No guidance in life really just a bunch of other lost kids.
[3:20] It's all trying to make it together.
[3:22] Phoenix had very little privacy in the house that he was in.
[3:25] And I mean a lot of these institutions in Japan are very
[3:29] populated. There are a lot of children that
[3:32] need to be put into these care homes so they're often sharing
[3:35] bedrooms with each other. There's like 5 kids to a room.
[3:38] It's, you know, it's really not a nice experience.
[3:42] Not only were these children left without emotional support,
[3:45] without parental figures, but in a lot of cases the, the
[3:49] caregivers that they did have in these houses could be abusive or
[3:53] neglectful towards these children.
[3:55] Children could stay in these institutions until they finished
[3:58] high school and then they would have to move out and, you know,
[4:01] survive on their own. But kids could leave as young as
[4:04] 15 years old if they completed junior high.
[4:07] And after that point, if they really did want to leave these
[4:10] homes, then they could go out and try and make it alone.
[4:13] And Phoenix Luna was one of those kids.
[4:15] He wanted out of this home as soon as he possibly could.
[4:18] So when he completed junior high, 15 years old, he was out
[4:22] of there. He'd been in that institution
[4:24] for 10 years. And when he left, he actually
[4:27] had a job lined up in construction.
[4:29] But he really struggled both to provide for himself with this
[4:34] job and also to just integrate into a normal life, integrate
[4:38] into society at large. He worked this construction job
[4:41] for a couple of years, but eventually had to leave for
[4:44] personal reasons. I don't know what those reasons
[4:46] were, but this left him with no job, no money, nowhere to live.
[4:52] He became homeless. He would stay over at friends
[4:54] houses or in like cheap hostels or sometimes he would even just
[4:58] go into like 24 hour cafes and, and just have naps and just try
[5:02] to survive without a bed. And he was caught in a catch 22.
[5:06] Because when you don't have a job and you don't have a house,
[5:10] finding a job becomes so much harder because you don't have an
[5:13] address. So then these potential jobs,
[5:15] these places that you're applying can't contact you very
[5:18] easily. It's a very difficult cycle to
[5:21] end up in, but Phoenix actually managed to find a way out of it
[5:25] when he applied for a job at a place called club fusion.
[5:28] This was a host club. And I'll tell you what a host
[5:31] club is in a second, but part of the nature of a host club is
[5:34] that they give dorms, dorm rooms to their staff.
[5:38] So it's a place to live and a place to work.
[5:40] That would sort his money issue, his housing issue.
[5:44] He'd also have some community. He would have Co workers that he
[5:47] literally lived with as well. And luckily for Phoenix, he we
[5:51] had one specific trait that made him perfect for this job at Club
[5:55] Fusion. He was pretty.
[5:57] Host clubs are known for their attractive and charismatic
[6:01] service staff. I mean, that's the whole, that's
[6:04] the whole point of a host club. I'll explain what 1 is because
[6:07] we don't have anything like them over here in the UKI don't know
[6:10] about other countries, but this was quite new to me.
[6:12] I mean, I've heard of it happening, but we don't just be
[6:15] having these in London, as far as I'm aware anyway, to my
[6:19] knowledge, we don't have these. So host or Hostess clubs are
[6:22] nightclubs and bars primarily in Japan.
[6:25] They're very popular over there and the customers go usually
[6:29] after work. It's usually an evening thing
[6:30] since they're bars and clubs, but they do tend to be open like
[6:33] all day and people will go to have a drink, socialize with
[6:37] their friends and to converse, be entertained by these
[6:42] attractive young workers. It was actually Hostess clubs
[6:46] that start at first they were aimed at men staffed by young,
[6:50] beautiful women. Their main job is to look pretty
[6:54] and to have good, probably flirty conversation with the
[6:58] clients, fill their drinks, give them cigars, you know, like
[7:03] whatever. Just like cater to the men and
[7:05] be pretty while you're doing it. Hostesses work on Commission, so
[7:08] they would encourage the men to buy more drinks.
[7:11] It encourages them to be flirtier with the men so that
[7:14] they like them and then they'll come back to see them.
[7:16] They can book to see specific hostesses.
[7:20] They would end up building a bit of a friendship relationship
[7:24] with certain members of staff. And in a lot of clubs, there
[7:27] would be like a ranking system of all the hostesses or the
[7:30] hosts. So like the most popular hosts
[7:34] would be earning the most money. They're in demand the most
[7:37] they're, you know, harder to book.
[7:39] And for a while, these clubs were just targeted at men.
[7:42] It was just women working them. But then they realized, actually
[7:45] there's a market in the for women.
[7:48] Women would probably want something like this too.
[7:50] After a long day at work, all the girl bosses need to go and
[7:53] let off some steam and flirt with cute guys.
[7:56] Hey, so that's when host clubs were invented, just like the one
[8:00] that Phoenix worked at. They were all young, beautiful
[8:03] men that catered to women. When Phoenix Luna first started
[8:07] hosting at Club Fusion, he was an immediate hit because he was
[8:11] pretty. He was.
[8:12] He was so popular, in fact, that within the first couple of
[8:15] months of him working there, he was already in the top five
[8:18] hosts of his club. He lived in the dorm that was
[8:20] provided, he was making friends with his Co workers and stuff.
[8:24] And for the first time in pretty much his whole entire life since
[8:28] the child, Phoenix had a sense of community, of a family, of
[8:33] safety. The older hosts had like taken
[8:35] him under their wing. They were showing him the ropes,
[8:38] teaching him the tricks of the trade, and he just felt very
[8:41] safe and secure. He had a job that he was good
[8:44] at. They weren't going to fire him
[8:45] because he was in the top five horse.
[8:47] He had a place to sleep every night, guaranteed.
[8:50] He had money coming in every month.
[8:52] Everything was looking really good for Phoenix.
[8:54] He had a few regulars that would come to the club specifically to
[8:58] see him because they liked him so much, and one of these was a
[9:02] young Hostess from a nearby Hostess club.
[9:05] Her name was Yuka Takayoka. Phoenix and Yuka first met in
[9:09] October 2018 at Club Fusion. Yuka came in after her shift at
[9:14] her work and she saw Phoenix and she immediately just fell for
[9:18] him. She was actually a manager at
[9:20] her Hostess club. So she she was good at her job.
[9:23] She'd been in it for a while. She was a little bit older than
[9:26] Phoenix. She was 21.
[9:28] He was 20. But when Phoenix met her, he
[9:30] remembered thinking that she seemed just like a good girl,
[9:34] like a good, sweet, kind woman. Yuka had had a bit of a troubled
[9:38] life herself. I don't know too many details,
[9:41] but what we do know is she ended up dropping out of university
[9:44] and that was when she became a Hostess and she really enjoyed
[9:48] it. She started to progress.
[9:49] She was one of the best hostesses in her club, and as
[9:52] the weeks went by, Yuka kept dropping into Club Fusion
[9:57] specifically to see Phoenix. She'd met him and she thought he
[10:00] was the most beautiful host in that club.
[10:10] By April 2019, so like a good half a year since they met, they
[10:14] ended up seeing each other most days.
[10:16] Most days Yuka would either drop in or they started seeing each
[10:20] other outside of the club. But we'll get back to that in a
[10:22] minute. Phoenix didn't mind.
[10:23] Phoenix actually quite liked Yuka.
[10:25] Like I said, she seemed like a nice sweet girl to him and he
[10:30] was getting paid for it. Like it's literally his job.
[10:32] So he there was there was no complaints from him.
[10:35] Hosts always need to be polite and kind and cordial with their
[10:40] clients. But for Phoenix, Yuka made that
[10:43] easy. They got on quite well.
[10:45] They had a lot in common. They both liked anime, they both
[10:47] liked cosplay. So even though he was working,
[10:50] she was paying for his time. A lot of the time, it didn't
[10:53] feel like that to them. And remember the kind of life
[10:56] that Phoenix had had. He wasn't used to people being
[11:00] kind and gentle and and warm and caring about him, you know.
[11:05] So I think this is one of the things that really drew him in
[11:08] about Yuka. This was the first like, very
[11:11] intimate relationship that he'd ever had.
[11:14] Relationship. It wasn't a relationship, but,
[11:16] you know, like a relationship. Hosts and hostesses are usually
[11:19] warned by their clubs to not make relationships spill out of
[11:24] the club. You know, keep contact, purely
[11:27] professional. Don't be seeing clients outside
[11:30] of the club because then it also makes it tricky because then how
[11:33] can you tell them to pay for your time if you're going to be
[11:35] seeing them for free? But Despite that role, Yuka and
[11:39] Phoenix just completely ignored it.
[11:40] They started seeing each other outside of the club.
[11:43] Now we don't know if this was completely for free.
[11:46] I think Yuka could have probably been paying Phoenix for time
[11:49] outside of the club, and I guess then the money wouldn't have had
[11:52] to have gone through his club. You would have just got it all
[11:54] straight. Cash in pocket, cash in hand.
[11:57] It's cash in hand, isn't it? I just made that up.
[11:59] Cash in pocket. Yeah.
[12:00] It's not entirely clear why they ended up breaking that rule or
[12:03] that guideline. Umm, some people think money
[12:06] could have been a factor. Me being one of them.
[12:09] I'm one of those people that thinks that.
[12:11] But regardless of whether it was paid or not, the two of them had
[12:13] a nice time together. They would go to cat cafes, they
[12:16] would watch movies together, watch anime together.
[12:19] And then after eight months of seeing each other, being friends
[12:23] with each other, you could put an exclusive reservation on
[12:27] Phoenix Luna at Club Fusion. So that meant he wasn't allowed
[12:31] to host for any other women other than Yuka.
[12:35] Now, I don't know the exact rules of this.
[12:36] I don't know if that meant that if she wasn't in the club, he
[12:39] wasn't working. I don't think that's what it
[12:41] meant. I think it was basically
[12:42] whenever she was in the club, he had to be dedicated to her.
[12:45] But if she wasn't there, he could work with other clients,
[12:50] you know. But regardless, she'd like
[12:51] reserved all of his time slots, every single one of his time
[12:55] slots, which we've worked out. She could have spent around 8000
[13:00] lbs on that £8000 to reserve this man.
[13:04] Just what? Because you fancy him so much?
[13:07] She was essentially trying to block him from seeing slash
[13:12] flirting with other women. I think because she was really
[13:16] starting to catch feelings. She felt like they were
[13:19] boyfriend and girlfriend. I mean they kind of acted like
[13:22] it. They saw each other as much as a
[13:24] boyfriend and girlfriend would, but I think Yuka forgot that she
[13:28] was paying for its time and it started to make her very jealous
[13:32] that he would be flirting with other women at work.
[13:36] Like it's literally his job to make other women feel special.
[13:40] But anyway, at this point, remember the club ranking
[13:43] system? And Phoenix was always in the
[13:45] top five. But now that Yuka had bought out
[13:48] all of his spots, Phoenix shot up to #1 He was #1 This was his
[13:53] first month on the top spot, which is actually kind of crazy
[13:56] considering he was a pretty new host.
[13:59] He hadn't even been working there a full year at this point.
[14:01] And the top spot in those clubs are usually reserved for like,
[14:05] the legends, the ones that have been working there for years and
[14:08] years. They're practically, like,
[14:10] famous among their clients. And here comes this guy who's
[14:13] been working here for less than a year.
[14:15] This one girl spends 8000 lbs on all of his slots and he shoots
[14:20] up to #1 Phoenix was very grateful to Yuka for doing this
[14:24] because because it meant a lot for his career.
[14:26] He was now more in demand. Other people would see his name
[14:29] on the board and be like who's Phoenix Luna?
[14:31] I should see Phoenix Luna. That also meant that his rates
[14:34] bumped up as well. He's more in demand, he can
[14:36] charge more. But it was around this point in
[14:39] time, when Yuka and Phoenix were closer than ever, that things
[14:44] started to change. There was now a major power
[14:49] imbalance between the two of them.
[14:51] I mean, it had been gradually creeping up, I guess from the
[14:54] point where they started seeing each other outside of the club.
[14:57] That power imbalance was very prevalent.
[15:00] Yuko was essentially paying him to be her boyfriend, but he
[15:05] wasn't her boyfriend, but he was being paid to act like her
[15:08] boyfriend and to care about her and the things that she had to
[15:12] say. Like it's a very tricky dynamic.
[15:15] She was essentially paying all of his bills, paying like just
[15:20] paying to keep him alive and to be her boyfriend.
[15:24] And they spent so much time together, like I said, nearly
[15:27] every single day they saw each other, both inside of work,
[15:30] outside of work. They were never apart, well
[15:33] apart from when they both had separate shifts at their own
[15:36] clubs and Yuka would get very jealous and anxious over what
[15:41] Phoenix might be doing when she can't see it despite Yuka
[15:44] working the exact same job as him.
[15:47] Let me remind you, they are both a host and a Hostess.
[15:51] They both flirt with people for a job.
[15:53] Yet she would get insanely jealous of the thought of him
[15:57] doing that, of the thought of him working his job.
[16:01] She was so worried that, well, worried about him doing his job
[16:05] in general, but also I think there was an element of her
[16:08] being worried that one of these other women might strike up a
[16:11] deal with him similar to what she had where she was
[16:15] essentially paying him to be her boyfriend.
[16:17] So Yuka starts checking Phoenix's phone every time they
[16:21] see each other. She's scrolling through his
[16:22] texts and his photos to see if he's in contact with other
[16:25] women. And I just want you to keep in
[16:27] mind for the rest of this video, I'm going to stop saying it now,
[16:29] but they were not in a relationship.
[16:31] They never were. He never like gave her that
[16:34] feeling, she was paying for his time every time they saw each
[16:38] other I think. But I think she started to
[16:40] forget that they were never together.
[16:42] But it got to a point where Yuka actually asked Phoenix to leave
[16:46] his job. She just couldn't handle it
[16:49] anymore knowing that he was paid to flirt with other women.
[16:53] It made her so jealous. But Phoenix didn't leave, he
[16:57] kept his job and things just did as they were.
[17:01] Nothing changed for him at any point during this.
[17:04] He liked Yuka, he liked the the situation that they had, the
[17:09] deal that they had, he had no problems with that.
[17:12] But things were changing very rapidly on Yukas end.
[17:15] Day by day, she was becoming more and more unhealthily
[17:19] obsessed with Phoenix. When they were together, like
[17:24] physically together in the same room, Yuka was happy.
[17:26] She was calm, she was peaceful. She could see where he was, she
[17:30] could see who he was talking to. When she was in control, she was
[17:33] fine. But when they were apart and
[17:36] when she didn't have control over him, or when she couldn't
[17:38] monitor him, she started to spiral.
[17:41] She would get so mad, she would get so upset, so anxious, so
[17:46] jealous. But Phoenix never really saw
[17:50] that side of her. That was always when she
[17:52] couldn't monitor him. So that was when she was in her
[17:54] club alone or in her house alone.
[17:57] He never saw that she was getting like that.
[18:00] She kept it hidden so well that she was like two different
[18:02] people. Whenever she would see Phoenix
[18:04] in person, she was that same good girl that he'd always
[18:08] thought she was. Then on May 23rd, 2019.
[18:12] So they've known each other about nine months at this point.
[18:15] Yuka invites Phoenix over to her apartment.
[18:18] She says that her place is a bit of a mess and she could do with
[18:21] some help tidying it, and I presume she was going to pay for
[18:24] his time. So Phoenix said okay, cool.
[18:27] He finished up at the club around midday that day.
[18:29] He was on a morning shift, so he said that he would be round to
[18:33] her house pretty much after his shift to help her.
[18:36] But work ended up running over a little bit and he didn't get to
[18:39] Yuka's apartment until about 3:00 PM, which she was already a
[18:43] bit miffed by, but whatever. When he got there, he was
[18:47] exhausted. A hosting A hostessing can be a
[18:50] tiring job. I mean, you've got to be really
[18:53] switched on. You've got to be aware of how
[18:54] you look, how you're coming across like it's a lot of like
[18:57] up and down going to get drinks and stuff.
[18:59] He was exhausted. So he said to Yuka.
[19:01] He was like, I will help you clean, but I'm going to like try
[19:05] and have a bit of a rest first. So he went and ran a bath and he
[19:09] got in hoping that he could just freshen up and and just have a
[19:12] bit of a chill and then he'd feel better.
[19:14] He actually fell asleep in the bath.
[19:16] So he had this little nap and then he woke up and he realized
[19:19] that Yuka hadn't bothered him. She hadn't, you know, come to
[19:22] wake him up or anything. So he just presumed she didn't
[19:25] mind that he was resting. So he was like, OK, probably
[19:28] best to not fall asleep in the bath.
[19:30] So he gets out of the bath, puts on some boxes, and then goes and
[19:33] gets into her bed to have like a proper nap.
[19:36] But not too long after drifting off, Phoenix suddenly awoke to a
[19:40] sharp pain in his abdomen. As he opened his eyes, he like
[19:44] tried to look around, but he was in a bit of a daze.
[19:46] He struggled to make out his surroundings.
[19:48] All he saw was Yuka sitting over him.
[19:52] The bed sheets were all stained in a dark red, and there was a
[19:56] knife sticking out of his stomach.
[19:58] While he'd been sleeping, Yuka had been going through his phone
[20:02] again. And she'd found some photos of
[20:05] him entertaining other clients at the club, and it sent her
[20:09] over the edge. She became so consumed with her
[20:12] possessiveness, with her jealousy, that she wanted to
[20:15] hurt him. And there was also an element of
[20:18] she didn't want him to live if she couldn't have him all to
[20:23] herself. The only way that she could
[20:25] ensure that the two of them would be together forever,
[20:29] without anyone else interfering, was for both of them to die.
[20:33] That was the only way she could get what she wanted.
[20:35] So, while Phoenix lay in bed asleep, completely vulnerable,
[20:39] Yuka went to her kitchen, found the sharpest knife that she
[20:42] could, and crept into the bedroom.
[20:45] She positioned herself on the bed, kind of sitting above him,
[20:48] and then she plunged the knife deep just once into his stomach.
[20:53] This singular stab wound instantly caused devastating
[20:57] life threatening damage to his organs.
[21:00] Straight after the impact, Phoenix wakes up and he's in
[21:03] this days he's trying to make sense of his surroundings and
[21:07] when he does, when he realises that she is trying to kill him,
[21:11] he goes into self preservation mode in a desperate attempt to
[21:15] stop the attack, to stop her from stabbing him a second time.
[21:18] He's starts to tell Yuka that he loves her and he wants to be
[21:22] with her. He thought that was what she
[21:23] wanted to hear. He knew that she was a little
[21:25] bit jealous that she didn't like him working.
[21:27] Of course, she'd asked him to leave his job before.
[21:29] He knew that she loved him, and this was probably why she was
[21:33] hurting him. He hoped that just telling her
[21:35] what he thought she wanted to hear would stop her, would calm
[21:38] her down. Phoenix knew that he wouldn't
[21:41] survive another stab wound like this.
[21:44] So when Yuka paused to take in his words when he was saying
[21:47] that he loved her, Phoenix took that opportunity to shove her
[21:50] off him. He threw her to the floor and
[21:52] stood up off of the bed with the knife still in his abdomen.
[21:56] And at this point, gravity pulls it down, it falls out of him.
[22:00] I'm imagining it did damage on the way out as well.
[22:03] And so now he was bleeding heavily.
[22:06] Whenever you remove a knife from a stab wound, that's when most
[22:10] of the blood loss happens. So you know, just a side note,
[22:13] if Touchwood you ever find yourself stabbed, don't remove
[22:17] the knife. But despite all this pain and
[22:20] fear and and blood loss, Phoenix managed to run away from Yuka,
[22:25] run out of the apartment. He got all the way to the
[22:27] elevator and was pressing the button.
[22:30] And at this point, Yuka comes out of her apartment.
[22:32] She starts racing down the hallway towards him and luckily
[22:35] the doors of the elevator shut just in time.
[22:38] She didn't make it in there. He was losing massive amounts of
[22:41] blood, the lift was just covered in blood.
[22:43] The whole control panel where he pressed the button, everything
[22:47] was just covered in blood. He managed to get down to the
[22:49] lobby, and he hoped that there would be someone down there that
[22:52] would see him and get help for him.
[22:54] But as he stumbled out of the elevator, Phoenix lost
[22:59] consciousness. He dropped to the floor in the
[23:01] entrance of the building. He's still bleeding so much it's
[23:05] covering the tiled floor. And right at that moment, Yuka
[23:09] catches back up to him. But what she did when she
[23:13] finally got to him again was quite surprising.
[23:16] She didn't try to hurt him again, she just sat down on the
[23:19] floor next to him. She simply got out a cigarette,
[23:22] lit it, and just started smoking it next to her dying victim.
[23:27] She just sat and watched as the man she loved was bleeding out
[23:32] on the floor. She knew that he was dying.
[23:35] She didn't try to get him any kind of help.
[23:36] This is what she wanted. She wanted him to die and she
[23:39] wanted to watch it. She even got out her phone at
[23:42] one point and just called one of her friends.
[23:44] She was just having a chat with her friend on the phone, smoking
[23:46] a cigarette next to Phoenix, who was bleeding out.
[23:50] Thankfully, not even 10 minutes after the attack, a passerby
[23:53] sees Phoenix, sees Yuka sitting next to him, just covered in his
[23:58] blood, and they call for the emergency services.
[24:00] During the time that he was laid bleeding, before paramedics got
[24:04] there, no one had stepped in to try to help Phoenix, which is
[24:08] very sad. But when you think about the
[24:10] scene, it's quite understandable why nobody would want to get
[24:14] involved in that. From their perspective, there
[24:16] was a severely injured dying man and laying on the ground, and it
[24:21] looked as though his killer was just sitting next to him,
[24:24] guarding the body. As I said, Yuka was completely
[24:27] covered in blood and she was eerily calm.
[24:31] It was quite obvious that she was the one that had done this
[24:34] to him, and she didn't feel bad about it.
[24:36] If anything, she looked proud of what she'd done.
[24:39] Everyone that saw this scene just kept their distance,
[24:43] thinking that Yuka might still be armed and dangerous.
[24:54] When police did arrive, it took them a second to understand what
[24:58] they were seeing. I mean, two people covered in
[25:01] blood. It's understandable to think
[25:02] that they could both be victims. But Yuka's demeanour was just
[25:06] way too chilled. It was sinister.
[25:08] It was eerie. I mean, she was smoking a
[25:10] cigarette. She was way too calm, too calm
[25:13] to have been a victim of an attack like this.
[25:16] She wasn't communicating with police.
[25:18] I mean, if she was a victim and then police arrived, you would,
[25:21] you would be like frantically trying to tell the story, would
[25:23] you not? So police figured out the
[25:25] situation pretty quickly, and they decided that the best
[25:28] course of action would be to slowly and gently approach Yuka.
[25:34] They didn't want to spook her. They didn't want to trigger
[25:36] another attack. They, they didn't know what kind
[25:38] of state of mind she was in at this point in time, so they had
[25:42] to be very careful. Paramedics couldn't actually get
[25:45] near the victim near Phoenix until the suspect, Yuka, had
[25:50] been secured by police. So they were worried actually
[25:53] about how long it might take to detain Yuka.
[25:56] She might not be cooperative at all.
[25:58] But luckily for them, she went quite easily.
[26:01] She told them that she wasn't armed.
[26:03] She didn't resist arrest. She didn't resist anything.
[26:07] She was just put in the back of a police car and taken down onto
[26:09] the station for questioning. And there she told them
[26:12] everything. She didn't try to hide anything.
[26:14] She admitted that, yes, she did try to kill Phoenix Luna, but
[26:18] she said it was actually intended to be a murder suicide.
[26:22] She was going to kill him and then wait for him to die.
[26:26] That's why she was just sitting by his body smoking a cigarette,
[26:29] calling her friend because she was waiting for him to be dead.
[26:33] And then she said she was going to kill herself.
[26:35] But back to the scene. Once Yuka had been taken away,
[26:39] paramedics rushed over to see to Phoenix.
[26:41] And they realized just how potentially fatal his injuries
[26:46] were. He was bleeding heavily.
[26:48] Yuka had stabbed right through his liver.
[26:50] And because the knife wasn't in there anymore, and because
[26:53] there'd probably been some sort of tearing as it fell out, he
[26:56] was bleeding at an insane rate. He was struggling to breathe.
[27:01] He'd already lost a lot of blood.
[27:02] He was very weak. He couldn't hold himself up.
[27:05] But he had a pulse. He was alive.
[27:08] So they rushed him to hospital as quickly as they could, hoping
[27:11] that they could save him. When he first arrived, doctors
[27:15] gave him just a 20% chance of survival.
[27:18] He was so critically injured that it was it was a miracle
[27:22] that he'd even survived long enough to get to the hospital.
[27:25] He was rushed into surgery where they tried to repair the massive
[27:28] wound in his abdomen in his liver.
[27:31] He was given multiple blood transfusions as they were doing
[27:34] this. Luckily they managed to salvage
[27:36] his liver, or they thought they had.
[27:38] I mean, it was going to be a waiting game to see how his body
[27:41] reacted and recovered from this point, but the surgery seemed to
[27:45] be a success. And then for the next 5 days,
[27:48] Phoenix Luna was in a coma in intensive care.
[27:52] But as each day passed, he grew stronger.
[27:55] He was successfully recovering. Then on his fifth day in
[27:59] hospital, Phoenix a work from his coma and he was finally able
[28:04] to talk to police and to tell them his version.
[28:07] Because, I mean, they'd already spoken with Yuka, and they'd
[28:09] already gotten a very strange tale from her.
[28:12] They asked her why she did this, and she said that she had tried
[28:16] to kill him because she loved him too much.
[28:19] She told the police that she herself had been suicidal for a
[28:23] while, but when she thought about taking her own life, she
[28:28] also wanted to take Phoenix with her.
[28:30] She never wanted to be without him.
[28:32] She didn't want to leave him here on this earth without her
[28:35] because then he would just see you, the women, I guess she
[28:39] wanted to die and she wanted to take him with her.
[28:42] We have a translated quote here. She told the police.
[28:45] I thought I would kill him because I thought that was how I
[28:48] could be with him. I thought that expressions such
[28:50] as I like you and I would like to be with you would become a
[28:53] reality if we both die. She claimed that it was out of
[28:57] love or like maybe out of a fear of dying without him, but really
[29:02] it was out of jealousy and possession and delusion and
[29:06] abuse. Investigating had found a note
[29:09] in her phone where she'd like written a bit of a diary entry,
[29:12] and she'd actually talked about killing Phoenix.
[29:14] It said I want to be a tragic heroine.
[29:17] How is it possible for him to look at a woman other than me?
[29:20] I know killing him is for the best.
[29:22] If I kill him, it will be eternal and there will be no
[29:25] pain after. I don't need anything other than
[29:28] you. Going back to when Yuka was sat
[29:31] next to Phoenix as he was bleeding out on the floor of her
[29:34] apartment building, a passerby had actually managed to snap a
[29:37] photo of that. And I do just want to warn you,
[29:40] it is quite easily available online and it's very, very
[29:43] disturbing. I mean, she's covered in blood.
[29:45] It's gross. And I know that you guys
[29:47] sometimes like to do your own research alongside my video.
[29:50] So I do just want to give you a warning.
[29:51] If you're going to Google this, be careful.
[29:53] But when this passerby took this photo, they immediately posted
[29:58] it online. I mean, we're in, it's 2019.
[30:01] Of course they're going to post it online.
[30:03] And it started going viral the same day, which I mean, people
[30:07] were morbidly curious and fascinated by this photo.
[30:12] And the circumstances behind it are what might have been the
[30:15] circumstances behind it because at this point, they didn't
[30:17] really know. But what no one could have
[30:19] expected was people liking the murderous woman in the photo.
[30:25] People becoming a fan of her. You can very quickly started to
[30:30] grow a fan base all surrounding this one photo of people saying
[30:36] that she was too beautiful to be a murderer.
[30:39] People made fan art of her, like covered in blood.
[30:43] People would say that they want her to attack them and like they
[30:47] could fix her and all this kind of shit.
[30:49] There's actually quite a common trope in like anime and manga
[30:52] called yanderer, which is usually where a character will
[30:56] love another character so intensely and so obsessively
[31:01] that it turns them to violence, sometimes even murder.
[31:04] It's more often than not a young beautiful character that is so
[31:09] head over heels in love for someone that it drives them to
[31:13] do insane shit. I mean, think Love from season 2
[31:17] of you. She is very much a yanderer.
[31:20] It is quite a popular trope in in both anime and manga and even
[31:24] games. I think a lot of the fans of
[31:27] this particular trope are men that like the idea of a woman
[31:32] being obsessed with them to the point where it drives her to do
[31:37] mad shape. But then again I mean you don't
[31:39] have to be a man to be interested in fictional stories
[31:42] and fictional tropes. But I think that is where it's
[31:45] main like fan base comes from is men that like the idea of a
[31:49] woman being so dignitized by them that they go crazy.
[31:53] So as soon as these pictures of Yuka go viral and the story gets
[31:58] added behind it and everyone now knows that this girl covered in
[32:01] blood tried to kill her boyfriend or who she hoped would
[32:06] be her boyfriend because she was crazy for him, people started to
[32:10] call Yuka a real life yandere. And this story was circulating
[32:15] as if it was fictional and people started to treat it as if
[32:19] it was fictional, forgetting that it's true crime.
[32:22] A man nearly lost his life, but people were treating it as if
[32:26] she was a manga character. Boys fancied her and thought
[32:30] that she was cool, a dream girl. Some girls even idolized her and
[32:35] said that she was so pretty and she, you know, did right.
[32:39] I just want to clarify that these are not normal people that
[32:42] think and talk like this. If you see a true crime case and
[32:45] you start to idolize the killer, go to therapy.
[32:49] These are like Internet weirdos that we're talking about.
[32:52] This wasn't like a universal reaction to this case.
[32:55] These are just, you know, basement dwellers.
[32:57] But that being said, it was a big movement like on Tumblr and
[33:01] everything there was fan art. People were like drawing digital
[33:05] art of this girl covered in blood.
[33:08] It's it's crazy. It's as Phoenix laid there in
[33:12] hospital, recovering from a murder attempt.
[33:15] He's so anxious, He's in so much pain.
[33:18] He's still being tube fed. He's unable to eat.
[33:20] He can barely speak. As all of this is going on, his
[33:24] attempted murderer is being glorified on social media.
[33:29] All because she was pretty. All because she was pretty.
[33:33] People forget the heinous shit that she thought and did.
[33:38] They liked her because she was pretty.
[33:40] She was too beautiful to be a murderer.
[33:42] Yuka's own social media pages skyrocketed in followers.
[33:46] Loads of people were going back and finding her cosplay photos
[33:49] on Instagram, her TikTok of her doing like TikTok dances and her
[33:53] cosplay. People were sharing these around
[33:55] saying she was so beautiful, making fun out of these.
[33:59] Even though she had shamelessly admitted to trying to murder
[34:03] Phoenix Luna. People didn't care.
[34:05] She was just beautiful. And so they started, like, they
[34:08] set up a GoFundMe page to cover her legal fees before it got
[34:13] shut down. It actually raised over 3000
[34:16] lbs. Who are these people?
[34:19] So the next few months, Phoenix spent just trying to recover.
[34:23] A lot of that was spent in the hospital.
[34:25] And then eventually when he was at home, he was on bed rest.
[34:28] He was full of anxiety. He had a lot to heal, physical
[34:33] wounds, mental trauma. But finally, after three months
[34:37] of recovery, Phoenix felt well enough to be able to return to
[34:41] the club and to work again. But he was going to have to take
[34:44] things very easily. He didn't have the same
[34:46] abilities that he once had. I mean, because his liver had to
[34:50] be practically reconstructed. He couldn't really drink alcohol
[34:53] anymore, which he was a bit worried about because that's
[34:56] actually quite a a big part of the host slash Hostess jobs.
[35:00] I mean, your clients will order a round of drinks and then get
[35:04] you won if you're the pretty waiter.
[35:06] So he was a bit nervous about going back to work.
[35:08] But Club Fusion, his family that he worked with, really helped to
[35:13] look after him. They really helped to ease him
[35:15] back into things and for him to like, customise his job, I
[35:19] guess, in a way that he could handle.
[35:22] And very soon after returning to the club, Phoenix was once again
[35:26] one of the top rated hosts. I think the virality of this
[35:30] case, the fact that he had survived a murder attempt, made
[35:34] him kind of an attraction, like a sight to see at Club Fusion.
[35:39] You know, the boy who lived, everyone had heard about him in
[35:42] the papers and seen his photos and knew that he worked at Club
[35:46] Fusion. So I guess people were just
[35:47] waiting for him to feel better so that they could go and see
[35:51] him. But that wasn't the only silver
[35:54] lining to come out of this case. It feels weird saying that, but,
[35:57] I mean, I guess if you survived a murder attempt, you would be
[36:00] taking every benefit from it that you could.
[36:02] Another silver lining, I guess, is that Phoenix actually managed
[36:06] to reconnect with some of his siblings that he hadn't seen
[36:09] since he was six years old. Because when he was in that coma
[36:13] for five days, the hospital really didn't know whether he
[36:15] was going to pull through, whether he was going to survive.
[36:18] So they were desperately trying to find his next of kin.
[36:20] But of course, he hadn't been with his family since the age of
[36:23] 6. It was very hard to track anyone
[36:26] down, but they'd managed it. They actually tracked down a few
[36:28] of his siblings. So now he had survived a murder
[36:32] attempt. His career was probably the best
[36:35] it had ever been, and he'd found some of his family.
[36:38] He'd reconnected with his siblings.
[36:40] Oh, and by the way, Phoenix Luna isn't actually his real name.
[36:44] I don't think his real name is like online anywhere.
[36:48] Well, we couldn't find it so. But hosts and hosts assays
[36:51] usually give themselves a bit of a stage name or a nickname.
[36:54] And Phoenix came up with his after the attack.
[36:58] He decided to call himself Phoenix because he saw himself
[37:01] as a phoenix rising from the ashes in mythology.
[37:05] A phoenix rising from the ashes symbolizes new beginnings and
[37:09] rebirth after total destruction and devastation.
[37:13] And Phoenix Luna really is the human embodiment of making
[37:18] something great out of the worst shit that could possibly ever
[37:22] happen to you. So in the run up to the trial,
[37:24] the attempted murder trial, Phoenix and Luna's legal teams
[37:28] had been discussing a financial settlement between the two
[37:32] parties. Yuka was agreeing to pay some
[37:35] level of financial compensation for what she'd done to Phoenix.
[37:39] And I think the main reason they were doing this was so that they
[37:42] could go to the actual trial and go look, Yuka feels remorse.
[37:46] She's paid this amount of money to him because she feels was bad
[37:48] for what she's done, and then maybe she would get a more
[37:51] lenient sentence. They reached an agreement that
[37:53] Yuko would pay him ¥5 million, which is about £28,000 for
[37:59] trying to murder him. I mean, for me personally, there
[38:02] would be no amount of money that you could pay me where I would
[38:05] go. Oh, don't worry, it's OK that
[38:06] you tried to kill me. But luckily for Yuka, Phoenix
[38:09] really didn't hold that much resentment towards her.
[38:13] He, he had moved on in his own life and I think he wanted that
[38:17] for her as well. He wanted Yuka to be
[38:20] rehabilitated rather than just punished.
[38:22] And he himself actually asked the judge in the case to give
[38:26] her a lenient sentence because he didn't hold any ill will
[38:30] towards her anymore. In December 2019, Yuka Takayoka
[38:34] was found guilty of attempted murder.
[38:36] And I'm I guess that's no surprise to anyone considering
[38:39] she admitted it. But Despite that, she still
[38:42] burst into tears when the guilty verdict was read out.
[38:45] Like, what did you expect? A couple of days later, her
[38:48] sentencing was held and she was given 3 1/2 years in prison.
[38:54] But almost killing this man for no reason, for no reason other
[38:58] than she was just greedy, jealous and possessive, that's
[39:01] scary to me. Those are the kind of people
[39:03] that could well do this again, try to kill someone else again
[39:07] in the future. All it takes is for her to, you
[39:10] know, not be rehabilitated and then get into another
[39:13] relationship and get possessive and jealous again.
[39:15] And then someone else might die. But regardless, she was
[39:18] sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.
[39:21] And since that was in December 2019, she could be out any day
[39:25] now. She might even already be out.
[39:26] I don't know. We couldn't find it.
[39:28] And I guess a lot of the time they don't announce when someone
[39:31] has been let free from prison, so who knows?
[39:35] I think 3 1/2 years is insane. But yeah, that is all I have for
[39:39] this case. Thank you so much for listening
[39:44] to Usual Disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[39:47] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[39:49] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[39:52] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[39:56] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
[39:59] podcast app so that you get notifications when we post new
[40:02] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[40:04] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[40:08] Usual disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[40:11] production. See you next time.

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