Special Guests

Arkada (Tristan Gallant) is a Canadian YouTuber known for reviewing Japanese animation with his channel Glass Reflection since early 2009, gaining a following of over 450,000 subscribers. With a variety of red outfits and overenthusiastic expressions, he has displayed his passion for anime since his start, covering a variety of anime series like Ghost in the Shell, Attack on Titan and Shirobako, as well as related topics, such as that of anime legality and industry support.

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Erica Friedman is the Founder of fan organization Yuricon. She has lectured at dozens of conventions and presented at film festivals, notably the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. She has participated in academic lecture series at MIT, Harvard University, Kanagawa University and presented at the 2016 Tokyo Pride event.

Erica has written about Yuri for Japanese literary journal Eureka, Animerica magazine, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Dark Horse, and contributed to Forbes, Slate, Huffington Post, Hooded Utilitarian, Afterellen and The Mary Sue online. She writes news and event reports, interviews Yuri creators and reviews Yuri anime, manga and related media on her blog, Okazu, since 2002.

Etienne Desilets-Trempe , better known as Dez, is the man behind Frivolesque, a weekly webcomic running since 2013.

Country-raised, but having been living in Quebec City for almost fifteen years now, Dez is into comics of all kinds, cinema and video games. He also loves to take part in various geeky events. He’s been drawing since a young age, but only recently started to take himself seriously.

Frivolesque, which has been his ongoing artistic endeavor for the last four years, is updated every Mondays, and depicts the everyday life of five unusual girls, each of them being an upgraded version of old character designs of his. The comic draws half of its inspiration from Japanese “4-Koma” strips (Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, K-On) and their clichés, and the other half from the everyday life of its creator and the awesome people around him.

Lucid is a full time webcomic artist, real life vampire, and the creator behind the BL/yaoi webcomic Avialae. She has been making queer webcomics and doujinshi for almost a decade and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Check out her work online at misslucidcomics.com.

Avialae is a BL/yaoi webcomic about a gross bird boy and his bird-obsessed boyfriend—I mean—neighbor who helps him out during the painful and bloody process of growing wings. Read it for free online at avialaecomic.com. (Rated 18+)

Lucky Juice is a collaborative English-language doujinshi circle created by Lucid and Jack. They specialize in fan-made slash doujinshi with enthusiastic consent. They pride themselves on the quality of their work in both content and printing. Check out the online store at luckyjuicepress.com.

Born in Rimouski, Mel Gosselin defines herself as a geek passionate about anime, cosplay, movies, comics and video games. She is the author of Cétacia, a novel published in 2011 and acclaimed by critics for its originality and its poignant scenes. She went on to create the unusual and intriguing universe of Jacky Salaberry : Collectionneur de virus (Jacky Salaberry: virus collector), inspired by the steampunk universe. Mel is now working on a movie and a webcomic soon to take off. Her imagination will continue to amaze us for many years to come!

MistyChronexia is one of the biggest Anime reviewers on the YouTube platform. With over than one million subscribers, he has made a name for himself doing Top 10 Anime lists, as well as overviews of many titles since 2014. Recently, he also launched his very own animated series called "Chronexia and the Eight Seals". Come and meet him during this convention at Otakuthon! You will find out that he is just like the stereotypical Canadian guy you had in mind: nice, friendly and bald!

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Nunumi (Christine Dallaire-Dupont) is a comic and animation artist based in Montréal. Her first self-published comic, Sky Rover, was chosen as Jury Selection in the Manga Division of the 20th Japan Media Arts Festival.

She also contributed as a storyboard artist, illustrator and animator to several animated feature films and TV series.

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For several years, Valérie Lévesque has been into bento art and making cute food for her little family. After sharing her culinary creations several months on her Facebook page, she launched her blog 'Les Bento de Valérie' on January 2017.

She is now on a mission to let Quebeckers discover this philosophy of making their lunch healthy, creative, ecological and minimalist.

Valerie shares her kawaii meals on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And there are more than 20,000 people in total who follow her in her culinary and geek adventure!

As a great fan of anime and manga for many years, she loves to get her creativity for her blog from shows, or simply procrastinate a series at a time!

After a television series on MAtv Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, several media appearances (like Salut Bonjour!) And several conferences and workshops in some geek conventions, she goes into life and continues to share her passion with dynamism and optimism!

Who said lunches are boring? Certainly not Valerie!

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