Erika Harlacher

Erika Lynn Harlacher-Stone (/ˈhɑːrlɑːkər/; born August 29, 1990) is an American voice actress based in the Los Angeles area who has provided voices for English dubbed Japanese anime shows and video games. Some of her major roles in anime include: Yugo in Wakfu Ami Kawashima in Toradora!, Mimori Togo in Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Asseylum Vers Allusia in Aldnoah.Zero, Elizabeth Liones in The Seven Deadly Sins, Kurapika in Hunter × Hunter, Violet in Violet Evergarden, and Yumeko in Kakegurui – Compulsive Gambler. In video games, she provides the voice of Kyoko Kirigiri and Kaede Akamatsu in the Danganronpa video game series, Venti in Genshin Impact, Juna Crawford in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III and IV, Ayesha in Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk, Ann Takamaki in Persona 5, and Raging Bull in Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. Harlacher grew up in Camarillo, California, and started acting in school plays. When she was around 9–10 years old, she was inspired by an interview by Christy Carlson Romano, who voiced the title character from Kim Possible, in which Romano said that with voice acting, you could go to work in your pajamas. Erika's mother responded that it was not a real job, and suggested Erika pursue acting only as a hobby. Her first exposure to anime was through Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon, which she considered more like cartoons, and that she really got into manga and anime in school when Fruits Basket was being published in English. At La Reina High School, she was active in the Speech and Mock Trial team, which was noted statewide and even attended a national event. She also competed on the school's diving team. After graduating high school in 2008, she attended California State Polytechnic University, Pomona where she intended to major in graphic design. During her freshman year, she looked up some online forums regarding voice-over and attended Anime Expo, where she learned about and attended an Adventures in Voice Acting workshop conducted by Tony Oliver. On Oliver's suggestion that she was pretty good at it, she changed her major to theatre, and continued to take voice acting lessons and workshops while studying at school. She also did a production internship at Bang Zoom! Entertainment where she got to sit in on some of the recording sessions. Her first voice acting project was on K-On!, where she voiced Keiko Ida, among some other incidental characters. Her first big voice-over role was for the Battleship video game, based on the 2012 movie of the same name, where she got to voice the main character, Grace Harland, among many veteran voice actors. However, video game reviewers panned the game because none of the movie's actors reprised their roles in the game, and faulted the game's limited acting, which was relegated to mostly radio chatter and mission updates. At one point in college, she had some health issues that led her to take an absence from school and acting, so she pursued production work, which her parents thought would make for a more practical career. She later dropped it as she was encouraged by Oliver to pursue acting and to finish school, eventually landing the lead role as Ayesha in the video game Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk. She described Ayesha as a bit airheaded and ditsy but relatable and resembles her personality at times. Video game reviewer Sean Madson of Diehardgamefan found the dub to be of decent quality, but said Ayesha "sounded a bit too obnoxious with her airheadedness." Matt Sainsbury of Digitally Downloaded thought the dub was reasonable but disliked their American accents as not suiting the Japanese personality of the game. Vince Ingenito of IGN wrote that "both the writing and voice acting fail to lend any weight to her plight. Ayesha seems about as upset over her missing sister as I might be over a glass of spilled milk, making it really hard to care about the outcome of her quest." She also voiced Sadira, a spider-themed woman and new character to the Killer Instinct series.