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Guest Panelist Announcement: Samurai Dan
The husband and wife team of Daniel and Jillian Coglan are full-time martial art instructors, running a traditional samurai training center in Iowa, and have a combined 35 years of experience.
Beyond their martial skills, the dynamic duo collaborated to write, direct, host, and star in a 12 episode TV series entitled, “The Way of The Samurai.”
Daniel is also an author, with several martial art articles published, and is currently working on his second full-length novel.
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Panelist Guest Announcement: Paradox Panels
Paradox Panels is a group of weirdos from North Carolina who host panels up and down the East Coast. Paradox has been presenting quality panels on anime, K-pop, adult content, and more since 2018.
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Panelist Guest Announcement: Marie Pouler
Marie is a career academic and college professor who loves cosplay, fan culture, and educating people on new and exciting ideas and little known facts about humanity. Marie loves running panels and teaching con-goers something about the shows and fan works that they love and consume. Marie really believes in academic programming and that everyone can learn something, especially if it is about a more obscure discipline like Queer Theory that is so invisibly entrenched in our culture.
Marie received her Doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire December 2018, and her Master’s Degree from the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2015. Marie’s specializations are in Gender and Queer Theory as well as Fan Culture, and Children’s Literature with a minor concentration in Racial Studies and Religious Studies (from a theoretical and historical perspective). Marie currently works as an English professor at ECPI University in Charlotte.
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Panelist Guest Announcement: Borderline Panels
Borderline Panels is an NC-based panelist who volunteers at anime conventions across the region. Borderline has hosted panels, game shows and other events at cons since 2014, and is very excited to attend Ichibancon this year!
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Guest Announcement: Tyson Rinehart
Tyson Rinehart’s breakout role was as lovable hacker Daru in Steins;Gate. He is also known for his work as Bartolomeo in One Piece, Wrestler- extraordinaire Genzo Shibata in Kemono Michi: Rise Up, Matsuda in High School DxD, and the Devil Ape himself, Enji Koma in Tokyo Ghoul.
Recent roles include Ranga in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Potrof in Black Clover, Kou Minamoto in Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun, Tristan the Bad in Appare-Ranman!, Doan in Plunderer, Shinya Ozeki in Hinomaru Sumo, Geek in AFTERLOST, Cassarale in Dragon Ball Super, Luke in Ai no Kusabi, and Papa Shirogane in Kaguya-sama: Love is War.
His work in video games includes Cabrakan and Dark Lord Sun Wukong from SMITE, Hogarth in Orcs Must Die! Unchained, and Casino Bandit/etc. in Borderlands 3.
Tyson has worked extensively as an ADR scriptwriter, providing English language dialogue for shows like High School DxD New, Prison School, Rilakkuma & Kaoru, Back Street Girls: Gokudols, VINLAND SAGA, and Kuroko’s
Basketball.Tyson also has several directing credits to his name, counting such titles as One Piece, Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, Strike Witches: Road to Berlin, and MARS RED.
When he’s not working on some aspect of dubbing, or parenting a toddler, Tyson wastes a lot of his time on video games and his B-movie inspired punk band, Bullet Machine (available on most streaming music services).
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Guest Announcement: Jeff Plunk
Jeff Plunk was bitten by the acting bug at the young age of 16 and is still thriving in his craft almost 30 years later. Along with his long on-camera acting career working in commercial, film and television, Jeff is a full time voice actor working out of his home studio in Dallas Texas. You can hear him voice your favorite anime characters airing on Adult Swim, Funimation and CrunchyRoll such as Duke Dogstorm from One Piece, Basil from Dragonball Super, Konro from Fire Force and many more.
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Guest Announcement: Landon McDonald
Landon McDonald is a professional voice actor best known for playing the villainous dream demonEnmu in the record-breaking blockbuster DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA: MUGEN TRAIN, themaniacal mangaka Rohan Kishibe in the acclaimed JOJO’S BIZARRE ADVENTURE spin-off series THUSSPOKE KISHIBE ROHAN, the snack-happy super sleuth Ranpo Edogawa in BUNGO STRAY DOGS andthe brooding, blood-bending sorcerer Noritoshi Kamo in JUJUTSU KAISEN.
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Guest Announcement: Ryan Bartley
Actor Ryan Bartley has been working in theater, film, television, and radio since she was a child. After attending the prestigious theater program at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, located in Dallas, Texas, Ryan graduated early and relocated from Dallas to Los Angeles. There she began working in anime, video games, and animation. Her anime credits include the 2019 Dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion (Rei Ayanami), Re:ZERO (Ram), Beyblade Burst Surge (Hyuga Hizashi), Demon Slayer (Makomo, Hanako, and Young Rengoku), Inuyasha sequel Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon (Takechiyo), Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale (Yuna), Jujutsu Kaisen (Shoko Ieri), Magia Record (Sana Futaba),The Promised Neverland (Gilda), Carole & Tuesday (Angela), Hunter x Hunter (Komugi), Mob Psycho 100 (Tsubomi and Mukai), Erased (Osamu), KonoSuba (Chomusuke), JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders (Anne), Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (Dita), and Satellite Girl and Milk Cow (KITSAT-1). Ryan is the English voice of Peony and Ilyana in Fire Emblem Heroes and Plachta in the Atelier video game franchise. She’s also provided additional voices for some of the top performing recent feature films including The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, UglyDolls, The Boss Baby, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, X-Men: Apocalypse, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Avengers: Infinity War, Bumblebee, and Love, Simon. Ryan is the voice of Jay the blue jay in the Netflix original animated series Treehouse Detectives, the voice of Young Zeta on Nickelodeon’s Shimmer and Shine, the voice of Pupkin Cake and Bunny Bow in the Shopkins franchise, the voice of Pammee the fennec fox in the Netflix original series Yoohoo To The Rescue, the voice of Fluff the rabbit kwami in Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, the voice of Pompompurin in the brand new Sanrio animated series Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures and her on-camera work includes the Lifetime movie Queen Sized, the horror-comedy Halloweed, and the award-winning digital series L.A. Macabre, available now on Amazon Prime. Ryan is a graduate of USC School of Cinematic Arts with a major in Cinema-Television Critical Studies and a minor in Screenwriting.
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2024 Photoshoots
Do you plan on organizing a photo shoot and want to make sure everyone knows about it? This year, we’re making it easier to put your shoots together by offering signups which are now live!
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Guest Announcement: Kazha
Kazha is a rock band founded by a Japanese singer-songwriter Kazuha Oda (Kazha) and a guitarist Hideki Matsushige in 2009.
Kazuha Oda is a classically trained singer who has worked in various genres of music from Classic to Heavy Metal. Her work has appeared on the iTunes Top 100 charts of numerous countries for a significant amount of time. She is an Official Ambassadors of “Music Export Memphis” and currently touring nationally, representing the Birth Place of Rock’n’Roll Memphis, Tennessee.
After the release of their first album in 2010, Kazha made its first U.S.A. debut performing at San Francisco’s Asian Heritage Celebration, sharing the stage with hip-hop group Far East Movement. In September 2010, the band made its first Anime Convention debut at Colorado’s Premier Anime Convention “Nan Desu Kan.” They also appeared at “Vianco Expo” and made their debut in Mexico that same year. Since then, they have been performing at numerous Anime and Comic Conventions and Festivals around the world. Kazha has shared the stage with national artists such as George Lynch, Tracii Guns, LA Guns, Y&T, Tantric, and Trapt until now. Around 2015, the band gradually started to move their base of operations to Memphis, TN. Since then, they have been featured on local broadcasts such as WREG News Channel 3, Channel 24, and WMC Action News 5.
Kazha represents a new future of music: a fusion of cultures and musical view points that create their sound, combining the softness of a falling feather and the heaviness of a hurricane.