Industry Guests

Aniplex of America, Inc. (Santa Monica, California) is a subsidiary of Aniplex, Inc. (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan), a division of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), Inc., and a leading provider of anime content and music production and distribution. The company's ever-growing lineup of shows includes: Sword Art Online, FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: BROTHERHOOD, Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works], Fate/Zero, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, March comes in like a lion, Blue Exorcist, KILL la KILL, Gurren Lagann, Monogatari series, anohana -The Flower We Saw That Day-, Cells at Work!, The Promised Neverland, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba. In 2017, the company made its first foray into mobile gaming with the launch of the English version of the popular mobile game, Fate/Grand Order, and recently announced their plans to release mobile game Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story’s English version in the U.S. and Canada.

CyberConnect2 is a Japanese game development company, founded in 1996 in Fukuoka, Japan. In 2010, CC2 opened its second studio in Tokyo, and subsequently it established its first office overseas in Montreal, Canada. For over 20 years, CC2 has been creating internationally acclaimed games with a unique anime style, the most notable titles being the .hack series, the Naruto Ultimate Ninja series, and Asura’s Wrath. With the reputation of a developer that produces high-quality video games, CC2 continues to strive to provide a greater entertainment experience to the fans around the world. As announced earlier this year, CC2 is currently involved in the production of the highly anticipated Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. Simultaneously, the company is challenging the industry as a publisher, with its self-published projects now under development, first of which is Fuga, to be released in 2020.

ELEVEN ARTS is an anime distribution company based in Los Angeles that brings critically acclaimed anime films to North American audiences such as Japanese Academy Award winner A Silent Voice, Liz and the Blue Bird, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, and Penguin Highway.

We’ve also distributed esteemed writer and director Mari Okada’s other works, The Anthem of the Heart and Anohana The Movie: The Flower We Saw That Day, as well as popular franchise films like The Last: Naruto the Movie, Boruto: Naruto the Movie, Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale, and more.

IA is a virtual artist who has a voice with the VOCALOID 3 library (IA -ARIA ON THE PLANETES and IA ROCKS) and with the CeVIO library (IA English). Her voice source is Lia, who is known as the Diva of Crystal Voice and who won a Grammy award for her assistance with the vocals on the album “Calling All Dawns.” Since IA was born as a virtual artist in 2012, she has been collaborating with various artists such as TeddyLoid and Jin on projects such as the Kagerou Project.

Her first live concert in North America was in July 2015, at the Los Angeles Anime Expo, in front of a sold-out crowd of two thousand. Considering that this was her first live, it was a spectacular success! In September of the same year, her first solo live, IA - 1st Live Concert in Japan-PARTY A GO-GO, was held at the Akasaka Blitz in Tokyo. This concert was also a resounding success and as a result, she ended up holding a successful world tour in cities such as New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mexico City, San Jose, Costa Rica, Melbourne, Montreal, Santiago, Chile, and Madrid. In addition, her film concerts were featured in more than one hundred cities around the world, drawing an audience of over thirty thousand.

In March 2018, on her latest album, IA/04, she sang her songs in English for the very first time. In June 2018, at the Digital Art Festival held in Enghien-les-Bains, France, IA's latest performance, which was a pre-production performance of the MUSICAL & LIVE SHOW - ARIA, was held. She received high critical acclaim for it at each level of the French media outlets, including national TV. In September 2018, she served as an ambassador (a virtual ambassador) to the 30th IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics) in Japan, which hosted participants from 85 countries.

In addition to performing as a singer, IA is also making herself known in the world of “AI.” In March 2018, she served as a virtual attendant at one of the busiest train stations in Tokyo, helping direct thousands of passengers per day to their proper rail destinations. She even had a live conference in Tokyo, going so far as to interact with the audience simultaneously between real space and virtual reality space. Her range of activities is becoming more and more broad every year as she continuously strives to reach her full potential, which is going to extend much further than her role as a virtual singer.

In 2019, IA started her ARIA World Tour, which began with her anniversary performance in Japan on January 26th and 27th. Her live performance in North America is going to be in the month of October.

ONE OFFICIAL SITE

IA & ONE OFFICIAL Virtual Broadcast

J-Novel Club is a digital publishing company started by translators and fans like you! Our mission is to translate and release the coolest, funnest, and newest light novels from Japan to the world. We saw that the fans really want to check out the latest light novels, but very few of them were being officially released in English. So, founder Sam Pinansky decided to gather together the best group of Japanese to English translators and editors, and headed over to the Japanese publishers to license content. To his surprise, some of them actually said yes!

By focusing on digital releases, and providing a membership service to let people read the books as soon as they are translated, our goal is to build a community of light novel readers and to grow the market, so that more and more releases can be officially licensed and translated. We won't just publish the big hit light novels that get anime adaptations, but also newer titles or books from small publishers and web novels... as long as it's a blast to read, we'll bring it to you! So pull out your tablet or ereader, sit down in a comfy chair, and join the club!