#nycc Tiger & Bunny anime designer making appearance at New York Comic Con 2012

New York Comic Con announced today that Masakazu Katsura will attend this year’s NYCC as a Spotlight Guest. Katsura is currently the character designer of the hit anime series Tiger & Bunny, as well as the creator of acclaimed manga series including Video Girl Ai and Wingman. New York Comic Con will take place October 11 – 14, 2012 at NYC’s Javits Center. Katsura joins a broad range of already announced guests including Yoshitaka Amano, Brian K. Vaughan, Mike Mignola, Joshua Gates and Anne Rice. Katsura’s appearance at New York Comic Con is courtesy of Sunrise Inc., the animation studio behind Tiger & Bunny as well as anime classics including Mobile Suit Gundam, Code Geass and Cowboy Bebop.

Artist Masakazu Katsura is in charge of character creation and hero designs for the anime series Tiger & Bunny. Beyond his work as a character designer, Katsura is a well-recognized manga creator who won an honorable mention in the 19th Tezuka Awards for his debut manga Tsubasa in 1980. In 1983, he began serializing Wingman in Weekly Shonen Jump. Wingman became a major hit and was also turned into an animated series. Afterwards, he created the hits Video Girl Ai, DNA, I’s, Shadow Lady, M and others in Weekly Shonen Jump. He is presently serializing his science fiction action manga Zetman in Weekly Young Jump.

Tiger & Bunny, produced by Sunrise Inc. in Japan and released by VIZ Media in the U.S., is set in Stern Bild, a metropolitan city where superheroes called Next help to maintain peace. Sporting sponsor logos on their suits, these heroes work to solve cases and save people’s lives in order to earn Hero Points, while also helping to improve the public image of their corporate sponsors. One such hero is Kotetsu T. Kaburagi, a veteran superhero named the “Wild Tiger” who relies on his years of experience and instincts to fight crime. Now, Kotetsu suddenly finds himself forced to team up with rookie hero Barnaby Brooks Jr., soon nicknamed “Bunny”.

Mr. Katsura will appear at NYCC on a Tiger & Bunny panel on Saturday at 6:30 PM with Kazuhiko Tamura, the producer of Tiger & Bunny. Katsura will then also appear on VIZ Media’s Shonen Jump Alpha panel at 7:45 PM on Saturday.

Established in 1972, Sunrise is an animation production studio who produces smash hit anime series like Mobile Suit Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne, Code Geass and Tiger & Bunny. The company is located in Suginami, Tokyo, Japan.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, VIZ Media distributes, markets and licenses the best anime and manga titles direct from Japan. Owned by three of Japan’s largest manga and animation companies, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions, VIZ Media has the most extensive library of anime and manga for English speaking audiences in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland and South Africa. With its popular digital manga anthology Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha and blockbuster properties like Naruto, Bleach and InuYasha, VIZ Media offers cutting-edge action, romance and family friendly properties for anime, manga, science fiction and fantasy fans of all ages. VIZ Media properties are available as graphic novels, DVDs, animated television series, feature films, downloadable and streaming video and a variety of consumer products.

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