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Los Angeles, CA – June 17, 2010 – Anime Expo® is pleased to announce today that American voice actor, Seth MacFarlane, will be an official Guest of Honor at its July convention. Anime Expo, North America’s largest anime and manga convention, is scheduled for July 1 – 4, 2010, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Seth MacFarlane comes to Anime Expo to celebrate his involvement with the popular anime, Family Guy.
Famous voice actor Seth MacFarlane is most known for his role as Peter Griffin in Family Guy. He has also lent his talents to the anime titles American Dad as Stan, The Melancholy of Cleveland Brown as Stan the Bear and Gilmore Girls as Bob Merriam. In addition, Mr. MacFarlane was featured as the voice of Troy Bolton in the wildly popular Japanese version of High School Musical 1 and 2.
Seth MacFarlane joins Anime Expo’s 2010 guest line-up along with musical duo RSP; singer BENI; voice actresses Yui Horie and Eri Kitamura; Internet sensation Danny Choo; musical artists Megumi Nakajima and May’n; manga artist Rei Hiroe; musical artist MELL; supergroup AKB48; voice actor Katsuyuki Konishi; Eden of the East trio Kenji Kamiyama, Satoru Nakamura and Tomohiko Ishii; voice actor Kyle Hebert; animation director Toshihiro Kawamoto; seiyuu Yuu Asakawa; J-rock band Sophia; and anime director Shinichi “Nabeshin” Watanabe.
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About Anime Expo®
Anime Expo is located in Los Angeles and is the nation’s largest anime and manga convention. The Expo serves to foster trade, commerce and the interests of the general public and animation industry. This event serves as a key meeting place for the general public to express their interest and explore various aspects of both anime and manga, as well as for members of the industry to conduct business. AX 2010 will be held July 1 – July 4, 2010, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Southern California. More information can be found at www.anime-expo.org.
About the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation
The Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to popularize and educate the American public about anime and manga, as well as provide a forum to facilitate communication between professionals and fans. This organization is more popularly known by its entertainment property, Anime Expo®. More information can be found at www.spja.org.
I have been watching anime since I was about 12 years old. From the first time I started watching Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. I can still remember my friend staying over at my house so we could wake up early enough to watch these shows.
I believe they aired at 6am on Saturday, which is really early for a 12-year-old (especially if they don’t have to get up for school), but we used to force ourselves to get up bright and early because we were enthralled by this new style of cartoons we had discovered. The story lines, the fight sequences and just the overall moral of the show. The main character always seemed to have an internal struggle From doing what was right even if it didn’t fit in to the norm of society.
I enjoyed this style, it gave the characters more depth. It made the show feel more real than anything I had ever seen. Up to that point, the only cartoon’s I had seen were Tom and Jerry, The Simpson’s, and a string of other Cartoons on The Disney channel or Nickelodeon. Now I’m not trying to say there is anything wrong with those cartoons’ I mean look at The Simpson’s. It’s one of the longest running cartoons in American history. They must be doing something right, but these cartoons don’t take much thought process to watch. There is no real plot to follow, while some of the humor might have an adult content. That’s about as far as the depth goes, there is no internal struggle and the characters never grow. I mean, the Simpson’s have been on for over 20 years, and Bart Simpson is still in the same grade.(Here I thought I did bad in school)
I haven’t watched this show for years, but if I switched it on today Bart would be the same two-dimensional character I grew up watching. Still a trouble maker harassing his teachers and fellow students. How he hasn’t ended up in juvenile hall is beyond me. but if you missed too many episodes of an anime show, you wouldn’t know what’s going on. The character from the beginning of the show would have changed. He would have had to deal with things that made his character grow as a person. One thing I like is they have to deal with death of friends and loved ones. That’s one thing you’ll never see in Sponge Bob, you’ll never see Patrick lose his life. They just won’t deal with anything that dark and real. While in anime the main character will lose his best friend or his parents, It causes real conflict in him. To this day I still watch anime, I still get that feeling of excitement when I turn on my favorite anime show each week and watch as they try to overcome whichever obstacle that stands in front of them.