Anime director Shinichi Watanabe , Little Kuriboh, composers Kenji Ito , Hiroki Kikuta and vocalist Mari Yoshida will be guests at this year's SMASH! (Sydney Manga Anime Show).
SMASH! (Sydney Manga Anime Show) has revealed the guests for this year's event (Saturday the 16th of July) in a press release and on its website.
Anime director and voice actor Shinichi Watanabe, famous for directing the anime adaptation of Koshi Rikudo's comedy manga Excel Saga and for making cameo appearances in anime as his alter-ego Nabeshin, will be visiting Australia for the first time as a guest of SMASH!. Since 1995 his credits have included Puni Puni Poemy, Tenchi Muyo! GXP, Nerima Daikon Brothers and The Wallflower.
Kenji Ito and Hiroki Kikuta will be guests at the convention and at Eminence Symphony Orchestra's Memories of Fantasia concert. The two composers became famous through their iconic soundtracks for Squaresoft video games in the 16-bit era. Kenji Ito's work includes Romancing Saga, Final Fantasy Gaiden and Chocobo Racing and currently works as a freelance composer. Hiroki Kikuta composed the soundtracks for Secret of Mana and Seikan Densetsu 3 amongst other titles and has worked in other fields including writing and game design.
Eminence will also present Mari Yoshida, a vocalist who will make her debut at Memories of Fantasia and will have a part in the performance of live music set to the original animation The Last Goodbye premiering at the concert.
LittleKuriboh, the creator of the Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series parody series and this year's special guest for the Adelaide anime and video game convention AVCon, will also be attending SMASH as a guest.
SMASH! will take place at the Sydney Convention Centre on July 16th. Tickets for the convention and the Memories of Fantasia concert are available for purchase online.