FanCons.ca Press Releases


February 28, 2011

News for Tora-Con 2011:

Tora-Con 2011 announces second round of guests

ROCHESTER, NY - February 26, 2011 - The RIT Anime Club is excited to announce our second round of guests: Chris Rager, Richard Epcar and Ellyn Stern!

Chris Rager has been a voice actor for Funimation studios and an improv comedian for several years. His more notable performances are as Mr. Satan and King Yemma on Dragonball Z, as well as Arlong, the leader of the fish people, on the popular One Piece. Other anime you may have heard Chris in include Blue Gender, Case Closed, Black Cat, Desert Punk, Lupin III, Full Metal Alchemist, Yu Yu Hakusho, Samuri 7 and Sgt. Frog. Chris may also be heard in such video games as Spike out: Battle Street, Stuntman Ignition, Bloodrayne, Roadkill, and many others. In addition, Chris has been in national and regional T.V. commercial ads for companies like Taco Bell, Southwest Airlines and Visa. You may have also seen Chris performing live on stage in Dallas with Section 8 Comedy Troupe for the last 11 years where they perform improv, sketch and musical comedy. Chris always looks forward to his next role, hoping he can bring a high level of talent and professionalism to his characters.

Richard Epcar has voiced over 300 characters and is well known to animation, game and anime fans. He got his start with the original RoboTech. Since then, he can been heard as Batou from Ghost in the Shell, Inspector Lunge from Monster and various roles in Bleach, Naruto, Lucky Star, Digimon and many others. He is also the voice of Ansem/Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts and can be heard in various other games such as Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Street Fighters, Star Craft 2 and many more. As an actor, he can be seen in an international Coke commercial and a new webisode series, 'Operation-Nightshade'. He has recurred on 'Days of Our Lives' and 'General Hospital'. On film he co-starred in 'Memoirs of an Invisible Man' and 'Three Putts'. On television he's done several shows, including 'Columbo', 'Diagnosis Murder', 'Guns of Paradise', 'Beverly Hills 90210', 'Matlock', 'Who's the Boss?' and 'Cheers'. As an International Supervisor for Universal Pictures and DreamWorks, Richard's work has taken him all over the world supervising the foreign dubs and mixes of feature films such as: 'Gladiator', 'Madagascar', 'Galaxy Quest', 'Chicken Run', 'El Dorado' and the 20th Anniversary release of 'E.T.'.

Ellyn Stern is best known to modern fans as Masaki Kurosaki in Bleach. Her anime work spans over a decade, and includes such roles as Sayaka in Metal Fighter Miku, Miyuki Goto in Noein, Rosalind in Armitage III, and Haraway in Ghost in the Shell II- Innocence. Her video game credits include Veronica Vera in Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Dorothy in Galerians, and Jiro and Marumaro's Mothers in Blue Dragon, for which she was responsible for casting the English language dub. Also behind the scenes, Ellyn wrote the ADR script for Reign: The Conqueror and directed the video game Jade Cocoon. When she's not supplying a voice or working on the technical aspects of a dub, Ellyn spends a lot of time in front of the camera. Her notable early credits include appearances in Charlie's Angels, Warhead, and Marcus Welby, M.D. Recent appearances include roles in the short films Electronica 2, The Other Way, Both Thumbs, and You've Come a Long Way, Baby.

As a reminder, Tora-Con Pre-registration ends March 18th. All pre-registration forms must be post-marked before this date to be considered. Everything dealing with pre-registration can be found at our website!

ABOUT TORA-CON: Tora-Con was created by the Rochester Institute of Technology Anime Club to provide anime and manga related entertainment to the Rochester area and beyond. The convention is planned and prepared by a dedicated Anime Club E-Board made up of RIT students.

About RIT Anime Club: Founded in the early 1990s, the RIT Anime Club is one of the largest anime clubs in the country with over 150 active members. The purpose of the RIT Anime Club is to enrich the academic environment by stimulating the growth and appreciation of Anime as an art form as well as the awareness and understanding of Japanese Culture. The RIT Anime Club is a not-for-profit organization.

Tora-Con 2011
URL: http://toracon.rit.edu/
Date: April 16-17, 2011
Rate: pre-registration $20