Here's a glance at someone not seen by this site in a few
years. Spike Spencer got his prominence in anime fandom by voicing
Shinji Ikari in the English-language version of Neon Genesis
Evangelion. That was more than a decade ago for the original Evangelion
TV series, and since then, we've seen Shinji costumers more often than
Shinji's voice. Spencer remains busy in voice acting, however, and he
spent the last day of the Arizona convention telling old stories to
fans. He still remembers the inaugural Anime Central in 1998, where an
actor demanded a late-night card game without actually having any cards
around - so they had to make their own cards. And Spencer had a
hilarious story that confirms just how nasty some actors can get in the
recording booth.
TokyoPop
helped bring Tsutomu Nihei to Phoenix, and the publisher also used the
convention to promote their American manga artists. Among the artists
and editors on this Sunday panel is Felipe Smith, a past participant in
TokyoPop's rising stars contest. Only a handful of artists win the
contest and get an automatic chance to have their work published by
TokyoPop, but those who don't win still have a chance. Sometimes,
near-winners get work when the company is rushed to finish a title and
needs help, he mentioned. Another person on the panel, Shannon Denton,
said he had to enter the contest three times and keep applying to
comics companies before he had any success. What Denton eventually
learned was that he had to really listen to editors' critiques of his
work and apply that to his art before his submissions really had a
chance, he said.
Steve Bennett has his hands in several new projects, including his web site and an
art project for a game. The Idol
of Xi, the ScrollQuest
game for which Bennett provided the art, offers a prize to anyone who
buys the game's scroll, can follow the game's clues and find a coin
that's That web site has several web comics that are Bennett's first
attempt to create a daily, single-panel newspaper-style comics feature.
Send Bennett an idea and he'll turn it into a web comic, he says. And
Bennett's Koala Klub remains active at that site. Bennett still draws
plenty of commissions for fans; on Sunday, he barely moved from his
table outside the Phoenix dealer's room.
Thanks to Greg Ayres, we and a room of fans got to see
some of the early episodes of the Nerima Daikon Brothers series as
dubbed by ADV Films. The series is as intense and nonsensical as you'd
expect from something created by Shinichi "Nabeshin" Watanabe, who
clearly didn't fry enough brains with Excel Saga. Daikon Brothers may
mean more work for its actors, Japanese and American, than any other
series, because it's a musical that has more dialogue sung than read.
We can't imagine how Ayres and the other dub actors get through a
session for this series, because they have to match character movements
in song; often those songs are in dialect or at the outer reaches of
the actors' singing ranges. Next to Ayres is Kate Higgins, a member of
the Naruto and Eureka Seven dub casts, who was amazed by what she saw
from fans in Phoenix. We don't know who the guy on the right was.
Here's another relative newcomer to anime conventions,
Neil Kaplan, who was wearing himself on his shirt. It was an Optimus
Prime shirt, suitable for an actor who is one of the "other" voices of
the good guy lead character from the Transformers. Peter Cullen remains
Prime's prime voice, but Kaplan got the role in the 2001 renewal of the
franchise, Transformers: Robots in Disguise. (Hard-core fans of the
series will be able to tell the minor distinctions between
Transformers' titles.) Several other Los Angeles-based voice actors
familiar to anime dub fans were part of that cast, one of three or four
different Transformers cartoon casts used over the years. Kaplan also
was Hawkmon in Digimon, and he was a bad guy in the Justice League
Heroes video game that featured Crispin Freeman as Superman. If you
ever become a big-time actor, follow Kaplan's advice: don't take the
money up front, go for a percentage of the gross.
Here's a glance at someone not seen by this site in a few
years. Spike Spencer got his prominence in anime fandom by voicing
Shinji Ikari in the English-language version of Neon Genesis
Evangelion. That was more than a decade ago for the original Evangelion
TV series, and since then, we've seen Shinji costumers more often than
Shinji's voice. Spencer remains busy in voice acting, however, and he
spent the last day of the Arizona convention telling old stories to
fans. He still remembers the inaugural Anime Central in 1998, where an
actor demanded a late-night card game without actually having any cards
around - so they had to make their own cards. And Spencer had a
hilarious story that confirms just how nasty some actors can get in the
recording booth.
TokyoPop
helped bring Tsutomu Nihei to Phoenix, and the publisher also used the
convention to promote their American manga artists. Among the artists
and editors on this Sunday panel is Felipe Smith, a past participant in
TokyoPop's rising stars contest. Only a handful of artists win the
contest and get an automatic chance to have their work published by
TokyoPop, but those who don't win still have a chance. Sometimes,
near-winners get work when the company is rushed to finish a title and
needs help, he mentioned. Another person on the panel, Shannon Denton,
said he had to enter the contest three times and keep applying to
comics companies before he had any success. What Denton eventually
learned was that he had to really listen to editors' critiques of his
work and apply that to his art before his submissions really had a
chance, he said. 
Steve Bennett has his hands in several new projects, including his web site and an
art project for a game. The Idol
of Xi, the ScrollQuest
game for which Bennett provided the art, offers a prize to anyone who
buys the game's scroll, can follow the game's clues and find a coin
that's That web site has several web comics that are Bennett's first
attempt to create a daily, single-panel newspaper-style comics feature.
Send Bennett an idea and he'll turn it into a web comic, he says. And
Bennett's Koala Klub remains active at that site. Bennett still draws
plenty of commissions for fans; on Sunday, he barely moved from his
table outside the Phoenix dealer's room. 
Thanks to Greg Ayres, we and a room of fans got to see
some of the early episodes of the Nerima Daikon Brothers series as
dubbed by ADV Films. The series is as intense and nonsensical as you'd
expect from something created by Shinichi "Nabeshin" Watanabe, who
clearly didn't fry enough brains with Excel Saga. Daikon Brothers may
mean more work for its actors, Japanese and American, than any other
series, because it's a musical that has more dialogue sung than read.
We can't imagine how Ayres and the other dub actors get through a
session for this series, because they have to match character movements
in song; often those songs are in dialect or at the outer reaches of
the actors' singing ranges. Next to Ayres is Kate Higgins, a member of
the Naruto and Eureka Seven dub casts, who was amazed by what she saw
from fans in Phoenix. We don't know who the guy on the right was. 
Here's another relative newcomer to anime conventions,
Neil Kaplan, who was wearing himself on his shirt. It was an Optimus
Prime shirt, suitable for an actor who is one of the "other" voices of
the good guy lead character from the Transformers. Peter Cullen remains
Prime's prime voice, but Kaplan got the role in the 2001 renewal of the
franchise, Transformers: Robots in Disguise. (Hard-core fans of the
series will be able to tell the minor distinctions between
Transformers' titles.) Several other Los Angeles-based voice actors
familiar to anime dub fans were part of that cast, one of three or four
different Transformers cartoon casts used over the years. Kaplan also
was Hawkmon in Digimon, and he was a bad guy in the Justice League
Heroes video game that featured Crispin Freeman as Superman. If you
ever become a big-time actor, follow Kaplan's advice: don't take the
money up front, go for a percentage of the gross. 
