This one is going to be a little different than what I normally do. I’ve been thinking about my autograph collection for Fire Emblem: Heroes and what I noticed is that there are a lot of actors in the game, I mean a whole lot of actors. There are a lot of people that made this game possible not just the ones that were brought back to re-voice characters from previous games but also voice characters exclusive to Heroes and returning characters that never had a voice actor to begin with. What is very interesting about this scenario is that these characters all have an audience that absolutely loves them as the Fire Emblem games have consistently done a great job giving the characters an extensive amount of backstory, characterization, and personality to make each one of them memorable to somebody.

The reason why this helps to appreciate voiceover diversity is the fact that when an actor brings a previously voiceless character to life, which accounts for most of the Fire Emblem characters, the actors now become part of the reason why we love the characters so much because Heroes has consistently brought incredible talent every time. Furthermore to account for the fact that each character has a distinct sound Heroes contains a huge cast of individual voice actors with many of them voicing about one to three of the hundreds of unique characters.

In Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade fans got to fall in love with a huge cast of characters but until Heroes came along Lyn was the only one that ever had a voice to her from Super Smash Brothers and later Fire Emblem: Warriors. However, one of the reasons fans loved Lyn so much was due to how she interacted with other characters, particularly Lyndis’ Legion a small group of characters that bonded at the beginning of the game. Only recently did we finally hear what two of those characters got to sound like, Kent and Sain who were voiced by Beau Bridgland and Edward Mendoza. I played this game well over 10 years ago and to hear these characters have a voice is like meeting them for the first time all over again. These are two amazing actors that my fandoms have never given me much of a chance to appreciate their work before. In fact, Beau is someone I knew by a chance encounter at a previous convention and it was only thanks to Heroes that I became aware of Edward. I find his passion and love for the Fire Emblem series heartwarming and he is definitely someone I would have enjoyed having a chance to share a mutual love for the series with long before now. The series consists of a lot of lovable characters and does a great job at finding equally lovable actors to portray them.

While we did see characters with a voice prior to Fire Emblem: Awakening not every character was voiced as we saw with Fire Emblem: Path to Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. With two games and a lot of conversations and situations, these characters really got a chance to make a huge impression even if they only appeared in one of the two games. Ashnard from Path to Radiance was a huge imposing force during the entire game but with the help of Brook Chalmers, we got to hear an equally imposing voice to go with the character. Brook is known for his work in Genshin Impact and Demon Slayer but I don’t have the internet to get into Genshin and the dub for Demon Slayer came out right around the time he also appeared as a Fire Emblem character. Brook really does the deep booming voice so well and online I really got to know him and find how awesome he was as a person.

Talking about Brook in particular makes me also think of my own personal experiences getting to know actors in Heroes. In general, Heroes is a great way for fans to be introduced to an incredibly wide variety of voiceover talent and my personal experiences with that have been unbelievable. There are a number of actors that I became aware of primarily or exclusively because of their work in Heroes, but as I got to know them further by connecting with them on social media I actually got to the point where I could call a handful of them friends. Brook is one of those people who has been such an incredibly joyful and positive person to talk with. I also got to know and befriend other actors like Ted Sroka, Sarah Blandy, Vernan Dew and Jamieson Boez and like Brook I got to meet many of them for the first time within the last couple of months and honestly, those encounters were some of the most memorable moments of the 50+ convention trips that I’ve done to date.

Then you have characters that are new to the world of Fire Emblem in the game, characters that honestly don’t fit the mold of any previous Fire Emblem title but fit in nicely in a game as diverse as Heroes. You have newcomers such as Frejya in Book 4 and Reginn in Book 5 that bring on fairy and tech themes to the franchise and thus new voices to fit characters from a different background so you have actors such as Stephanie Southerland and Megan Shipman joining Fire Emblem to wonderfully play these unique characters.

It’s easy to appreciate the hard work that each actor does to bring these characters to life, many of which have been beloved by fans for over a decade. To then add a voice to those beloved characters adds a new element to them and makes the talent of their respective actor something more for fans to love about the series. To add so many actors who have never appeared in a Fire Emblem title to date gives us an incredible diversity of talent in the entire franchise and a non-stop celebration of what unit or actor will join the game next, but for me personally, it wound up being quite a bit more than that. I didn’t just get introduced to actors that I admired for their voiceover work but also several new friends that I grew to admire as individuals and that was something that has never happened before in my previous experiences with the Fire Emblem fandom. For that I am incredibly thankful for Heroes.