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Otakon to Screen Anime Tamago 2016 Shorts, Hosts Takanori Matsuoka

The staff of the Otakon convention revealed on Tuesday that it will host a screening of the four anime shorts from the "Anime Tamago" (formerly "Anime Mirai") project's 2016 program. The screening will be held on August 11 at the Marquis Ballroom from 7:15 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. The convention also revealed on Thursday that it will host producer Takanori Matsuoka (seen right).

The four Anime Tamago shorts are Signal.MD's "Colorful Ninja Iromaki," Studio 4°C's "UTOPA," Tezuka Productions' "Kacchikenee," and Buemon's "Kaze no Matasaburō." The shorts aired on Japanese television and streamed online in March 2016. This year's shorts also screened in Tokyo this past March and April.

As in previous years, the anime shorts trained young animators on-the-job as part of the Japanese government's Agency of Cultural Affairs' "Young Animator Training Project." The Japanese government's Agency of Cultural Affairs launched its "Young Animator Training Project" in 2010 with the aim of fostering the growth of domestic animation studios, and tackling the concern that more of the Japanese animation process is being outsourced overseas.

Matsuoka works as a publicity producer and producer for Pony Canyon. He has worked on anime such as Devil Survivor 2 The Animation and Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers as publicity producer. He has worked on anime including Show By Rock!!, Clean Freak! Aoyama kun, and Sanrio Boys as producer.

Otakon 2017 will take place from August 11-13 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. This will be the 24th convention, and the first year the convention is being held in D.C.; Baltimore has hosted the convention for the past 17 years.

This year's event will also host producers Masao Maruyama, Hideyuki Tomioka, and Tetsuya Kinoshita, animation director Hidenori Matsubara, directors Ei Aoki and Tomoki Kyoda, scriptwriter Katsuyuki Sumizawa, and voice actors Toshio Furukawa, Shino Kakinuma, and Shimba Tsuchiya. Yousei Teikoku, JAM Project, Flow, and singer T.M. Revolution will all perform at Otakon as part of the convention's Anisong World Matsuri music festival event. In addition, the event will hold the world premiere of the first film in the Kōkyōshihen Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution (Psalms of Planets Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution) anime film trilogy.