San Diego Comic-Con International and Udon Entertainment confirmed that they will host manga creator Kia Asamiya (Speope!, Silent Möbius, Steam Detectives) as one of the special guests for this year’s event on July 24-27, while director Shinji Higuchi (Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman) will appear at the convention’s “Godzilla at 70: Seven Decades of the King of the Monsters” panel on July 25.
Asamiya created the Silent Möbius, Steam Detectives, Compiler, and Junk: Record of the Last Hero manga, among others. He provided character designs for the Martian Successor Nadesico anime (which he later adapted into the Nadesico manga), adapted the Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace film into a manga, and wrote and drew the Batman: The Child of Dreams comic. Many of his manga have been adapted into anime.
The “Kia Asamiya: 40 Years of Imagination and Visions” panel will be on Thursday, July 24 at 3:30 p.m. PDT at Room 24ABC, and Asamiya will also appear with Udon artists Edwin Huang, Jeffrey Cruz, and Long Vo at “The Artistry of Anime and Game Art” panel on the same day at 5:00 p.m. PDT at Room 5AB.
Higuchi was an early member of anime studio Gainax, and worked on storyboards and scripts on some of its most notable projects, including Gunbuster, Otaku no Video, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Aside from co-directing Shin Godzilla with fellow Gainax founding member Hideaki Anno, he also directed the live-action films of Hajime Isayama‘s Attack on Titan manga, and once again collaborated with Anno in Shin Ultraman, where he directed while Anno wrote the script. He was the chief director on the Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan original anime series, written by Mari Okada (Maquia, maboroshi, Fureru.). He most recently directed Bullet Train Explosion, a remake of the 1975 Japanese action thriller Shinkansen Daibakuha (The Bullet Train/Super Express 109).
Higuchi will join guests from Super7, Mondo, Bandai, DC Comics, IDW Comics, and Marvel Comics at the “Godzilla at 70: Seven Decades of the King of the Monsters” panel on Friday, July 25 at 4:15 p.m. PDT at Room 6DE. He will also be holding a signing at the Super7 booth on the same day at 11:00 a.m. PDT.
Sources: Email correspondence, San Diego Comic-Con website (link 2), The Wrap