Anime Expo 15 Cosplay 2006

The 6,000 seat auditorium was packed for the Opening Ceremonies. Joyce Lim, AX Chairwoman,  introduced the Guests of Honor.

In order of appearance, we had
Laura Bailey - Voice Actor/Director/Singer
Crispin Freeman - Voice Actor/Director/Writer
Vic Mignogna - Voice Actor/Singer/Graphic Artist/Composer/Pianist/Director
Mick Takeuchi - Mangaka of Her Majesty's Dog
Koge-Donbo - Mangaka of Di Gi Charat
Atsuko Nakajima - Animation director
Yutaka Izubuchi - Illustrator/Anime designer/Director
yozuca* - Singer
Hiroshi Nagahama - Director
Tomoki Kyoda - Director/Mecha and creature designer
Toru Furuya - Voice Actor/Narrator.
Noboru Ishiguro - Director (particularly Macross)
Seiji Mizushima - Director (particularly Fullmetal Alchemist)

Apparently, a new tradition had been started at the Opening Ceremonies last year, and Laura Bailey was good enough to continue it. This consisted of each guest spinning around once before taking their seat. It was great entertainment as our Japanese guests good-humouredly followed suit, sometimes quite demure and shyly as in the case of the singer yozuca*, or flamboyantly in the manner of Yutaka Izubuchi.

At the end of the ceremonies, we were given a demonstration of how a Japanese studio would record the voices for an anime production produced by the students at the Nippon Engineering College. This was done live while the silent anime itself played on the auditorium screens. You can hear a sample of the audio here.