Anime Festival Orlando 6 Cosplay 2005

This year's AFO was based on the theme of Television. As such, the AFO guide looked like the TV guide magazine, and the opening ceremonies was presented as a talk show. Here the con attendees line up for this first main event of the con.

This year's opening ceremony was hosted by Chris and Anime Angie.

First up was Jan Scott-Frazier, who had moved to Japan in 1987 to attend animation school. She is an expert in many different aspects of animation production and has worked with many different animation companies.

Next up was Doug Smith, voice actor of Kintaro in Golden Boy as well as many other ADV titles. He is also a freelance graphic artist.

I was glad to see Steve Bennett back again, ready to regale us with stories of his experiences in Japan working on Urusei Yatsura and the animation industry in general.

Next up was Michael Richard Dobson. He is an accomplished voice actor and director for many, many animated and video game series. Chris had brought a mecha figure on stage for Michael to sign. I'm guessing that it is a variant of Starscream from the Transformers universe, one of Michael's many roles.

Below, Chris Sabat, the voice of Armstrong in Fullmetal Alchemist, Picolo and Vegeta in Dragonball Z joins the panel.

The next guest of Planet Tokyo was Sandy Fox, voice actress for many anime series including Mao-chan, Magic Knight Rayearth (She also sang the English version of the opening and closing credits) and Chobits.

Below, Lex Lang, voice actor for many, many series and singer, joins the panel.

Steve Yun, Tom Bateman and Tony Oliver (the voice of Rick Hunter) came out to discuss Harmony Gold's production of the latest Robotech movie, The Shadow Chronicles.

And finally, we have Bob Bergen, voice actor for many, many, many characters, much in the manner of Mel Blanc from the classic Warner Brothers cartoons.