Part 59: Voice Actor Talk 4 - Haiji / Hiroko / Shirokuma / Kurokuma
It's been a couple of chapters, so let's do some voice actor talk.
Haiji Towa is voiced by Matt Mercer. He's a dude who has had an interesting career. At one point he was mostly known for being 'that guy who sounds like Troy Baker' but he has completely overcome that and is now one of the most prolific and well known voice actors out there. His list of significant roles is extremely extensive, but let's try and list a few. McCree from Overwatch, Jotaro Kujo from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan, Chrom from Fire Emblem, Yusuke Kitagawa from Persona 5, and many many more. He's also well known for his show Critical Role, a popular web series in which voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons. He's a really great voice actor and hearing him is always a good thing.
Hiroko Hagakure is voiced by Jessica Straus, somebody who I don't recognise. But a quick look at their resume shows that she's been in the business for a while, voicing the Amazon class in Diablo 2 back in 2000 (and reprising the role in Heroes of the Storm). Since then she's been in various video games and anime, such as being Saki Konishi and Hanako Ohtani in Persona 4, Juri in Street Fighter or Tianzi in Code Geass. Listening to her various roles it sounds like she's got pretty good range, but mainly voices strong women with deep voices. She does a good job as Hiroko. She doesn't get a lot of dialogue compared to say, Komaru, but she's definitely able to capture the 'super relaxed MILF' vibe in all her dialogue in a natural way.
Next let's move onto the bears. Shirokuma and Kurokuma are linked voice actor wise. They're part of the Toko/Genocide Jill/Junko connection and add to it. In this case, Shirokuma is voiced by Amanda Celine Miller who as I mentioned in a previous edition voices Toko and Junko, while Kurokuma is voiced by Erin Fitzgerald who voices Genocide Jill and some of Junko's personalities. I like that they keep adding to this, it's a nice bit of meta casting. Anyway, Shirokuma is supposedly a boy, but sure doesn't sound like it, which made his gender very confusing to me when I played this game. Despite that, you can feel the kindness in Shirokuma's lines and that's what's important. Kurokuma is objectively voice acted well, but I can't stand him. To be fair, that's entirely the point. Even the kids don't like him. But I bet Erin had an absolute blast playing him, and both characters are further proof of not only the vocal range of their actors but also their acting ability itself.