Hello.

This time, the keyword is game voice actors, and I wanted to write a little about the voices in games that left a particularly strong impression on me.

Even with on-screen actors, there are plenty of moments where you only realize later that two roles were played by the same person and it catches you off guard, but with voice actors that happens even more often, since they are acting through voice alone and not through a visible face, so with that in mind I gathered a few MapleStory characters that have stayed in my personal memory most strongly.

Voice Actor Bae Jeong-mi

In Bae Jeong-mi's case, I later found out that she voiced Miss Goldenweek from One Piece, and what made this one the reverse of my other examples was that I only learned that after noticing she was Dorothy's voice in MapleStory and looking her up afterward. Miss Goldenweek is not exactly a major character in One Piece, but I liked her and her partner Mr.3 quite a bit, so that made it even nicer.

The only Dorothy voice line that plays at 20:12 is the part performed by Bae Jeong-mi.

That said, Alicia naturally has a much larger presence in the story as a character, and since not many people have actually cleared Floor 50 of The Seed themselves, I imagine most people know her voice more through Alicia.

Back when The Seed received its improvements, I remember being a little hopeful that maybe she would also perform using Dorothy's voice in the update information center, but as expected, that was not the case. Hopefully there comes a day when we get to hear it again.

Voice Actor Yang Jeong-hwa

In Yang Jeong-hwa's case, I was most familiar with her as Keroro from Sgt. Frog, so I was surprised to learn that in MapleStory she voiced Hilla and Verus Hilla, who carry a completely different kind of atmosphere.

Hilla really is the sort of character whose image feels impossible to find anywhere in Keroro, and when I heard the voice, Keroro never came to mind at all.

As for Francis, another character voiced by Yang Jeong-hwa, there is still a bit of that Keroro feeling left in the performance, so he comes across as fairly cute.

Voice Actor Hong Beom-gi

In Hong Beom-gi's case, I had always known him most familiarly as the voice of Dongdong from Atashin'chi, so it was surprising to see that in MapleStory he is listed as having taken on a huge number of roles, with the Black Mage and Luminous at the forefront.

The same is true of the other characters as well, but in the Black Mage's case especially, the image is so far removed from Dongdong that the two do not connect easily in my head at all, which made it genuinely fascinating.

Then there is Luminous, who is deeply connected to the Black Mage,

and even Damian, who has fairly high name recognition within the game, was apparently voiced by him as well. The fact that he voiced both Luminous and the Black Mage feels pretty meaningful when you look at the story.

On top of that, he also voiced Eregos, and in a way that character can almost be seen as a kind of petite Black Mage, so the image carries over.

He also apparently voiced Heinz, all five of Dunkel's subordinates, and Gelimer as well. Seeing them all lined up like this, Dongdong almost starts to look like the one character whose image stands apart from all the others.

Voice Actor Lim Ui-ju

Lastly, in Kai's case, probably the most recent voice among the ones here, I included him simply because I already liked the character and felt that the voice only amplified that appeal. Quite a few people seem to think the character himself turned out very well, quite apart from purely system-related points like the strong rewards relative to the difficulty, so I hope he gets used more later on in things like a playable character in a special world, and that we get to hear more of that voice in related content too.

Thank you for reading.