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Toronto Comic Arts Festival to Host Chi's Sweet Home's Kanata Konami

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival announced on Thursday that Chi's Sweet Home author Kanata Konami will attend the event. The free event will be held at the Toronto Reference Library in Toronto, Canada on May 5-6. This will be Kanata's first North American appearance. Kanata will attend panels, give autographs and participate in a benefit fundraiser to aid the victims of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Vertical licensed Chi's Sweet Home in 2009 and the company released the eighth volume of the manga on February 28.

Chi's Sweet Home centers around a kitten who gets lost after walking out into the real world for the first time. A boy named Yōhei Yamada discovers her, but the Yamada family's apartment building prohibits pets. After failing to find a new home, the Yamadas decide to defy the rules and raise Chi themselves. Most of Chi's coming-of-age stories revolve around the Yamadas or the cats, dogs, and the occasional rabbit that live in the neighborhood.

The manga inspired two television anime series in 2008 and 2009. Crunchyroll streamed the second television anime series Chi's New Address in various countries outside of Japan as it aired.

Last year the Toronto Comic Arts Festival hosted manga creators Usamaru Furuya (Lychee Light Club, Genkaku Picasso) and Natsume Ono (Ristorante Paradiso, House of Five Leaves, Not Simple).

[Via Christopher Butcher]