^{Questions were provided by Atlus and answers during the panel were reworked into this article by the author.}

How did you get into voice acting and what is your process of taking on the voice of a persona and the person of your character? 

Xanthe Huynh: I started out doing theater in middle school and high school. When I was in college I competed in a voice acting competition at Anime Expo and made it as a finalist and have been working ever since. Getting into the voice of Haru, I try to keep a very gentle and sweet tone kind of soft and dainty. As for Milady, I imagine her as a dramatic lady based on the core of her design with her big dress and her fan, and her guns. 

Cherami Leigh: I started acting when I was five. My mother wanted to dissuade me from becoming an actor since it was a very difficult and competitive business. She would take me to a lot of open calls and acting classes where the kids were a lot older than me. I loved it even more and I said to myself “I want to do this forever”. I was assigned to an agent when I was six and started doing film, tv, and commercials and my agent introduced me to doing voice-over commercials and animation. I got involved in animation and video games when I was seventeen after graduating high school and I have been working ever since. I try to find ways to improvise with the character and connect with them and see what we have in common. It's very easy with Makoto and I feel like we have a lot in common. Getting to work on this game and voice Makoto feels like coming back home which is lovely. 

Matthew Mercer: I grew up watching anime and video games and I thought that would be kind of a fun thing to do as a career. I decided to take a crack at it and found out it can be very difficult and competitive. As the years went on I really wanted to try and see if I could make it. I spent a lot of time struggling due to the cost of living and I had to put in the time to enhance my skills and be very patient. As far as the process of getting into my character Yusuke, I get into a calm and poetic space. 

Leeanna Albanese: My first professional voice acting job was in high school with this wonderful animator Chris Harry. I went to theater school and was unaware that voice acting existed at the time. I ended up doing an internship in 2018 at Legendary Digital Networks. There were many talented voice actors in our shows and I saw how kind the community was and how creative and talented they were. And I said to myself those are the people who I want to work with. I ended up switching gears and going into voice-over work. 

As for how I get into the character Erina I feel like she is my internal entourage or Joan of Arc. Very French. She voices a little lower than mine. So I feel like her spirit lives within me and just kind of comes out. I know I said this already. It really is a huge honor to be sitting on stage with you guys.

What is your favorite trait of your character and would you be friends with your character in real life? 

XH: I really respect Haru for being able to have a lot of courage to stand up for herself and for others against oppressors. I think she would be an amazing friend to have personally even though there is a side to her that's kind of scary. She’s the defender's friend. 

CL: There are so many things I love about Makoto. I love her desire to always do the right thing, but I also appreciate her journey that we have kind of seen throughout all the games where she finds out that the right thing isn’t always black and white. She has to see the situation not from what other people say but she really feels in trusting her own intuition. That’s what I really appreciate and love about her. Also, It’s very cool to see her transform into her powerful Persona Queen. Would I be friends with her? Obviously! I need her to teach me how to do the braid because I have to do a headband. I think it would also be fun to study with her. We can study things for fun. We would get along really well. 

MM: I think for Yusuke I grew up wanting to become an artist with most of my time in school going into a career to be an artist. However, I didn’t quite have the simul to make it whether that was true or myself not believing. I would love to have garnered any of his fine art talents. Working with Oils, Pastels. I wish I could have brought some of that with me and made it my own. As to whether we would have been friends in real life? Most definitely. Being slightly shy poetic outsiders. That’s exactly my high school experience and I think we would fit very well together. 

LA: I think my favorite thing about Erina is that she is a little silly. She’s a commander and she’s also a rebel. I think all good leaders need to have a sense of humor. She’s so cool and I hope we become friends. If I were to join the rebel corps, I hope she would bring me in and accept me. I would certainly not want to be on her bad side. 

What is your favorite line in the game and was there a challenging moment while recording? 

XH: One of my main challenges with voicing Haru is that I had to keep her within a certain pitch kind of soft and pleasant without getting too squeaky which is difficult when she gets really excited. I have to be careful not to pierce everyone's ears. One of my favorite lines that she says in the dungeon mementos is “Why is it that I get a shiver of excitement whenever the shadows pead for their lives?”. 

CL: One of my favorite things about working on this franchise is it feels very surreal when I get to walk in the booth and it does feel like I'm hanging out with the fans and the TV and the recording process feels like a family. The cast feels like a family. So anytime coming back, it's just like, this is not hard at all. We're just here with our friends. We're going to hang out and have fun. Now, some of my favorite lines, there are way too many. As for my favorite line, there were just way too many. I feel embarrassed with how many cool lines Makoto gets to say. One of them I love is don’t get all cocky because I normally behave myself. I am done playing nice! And also fist of justice!

MM: I will say the entirety of Yusuke’s awakening. It goes from the moment he falls in Madarame and the realization of what his mother went through and how he and the other artists have been abused. It's just crumbled, it's heart-wrenching crumble into the visual scratching of his nails. It's so much more visual to it. And then him coming into his confidence as going along with the other person and lifting them up and seeing the intensity of that. It's such a wonderful scene to really kind of watch him come into his own.

As far as the challenging recording moments. I will say pleasantly, Yusuke, Yusuke's pretty even cute. There isn't too much intensity or challenges to him because he's just a guy. As far as, I will say, as an acting challenge, it was interesting, and many of you who played the first game would know. The sequence with him and Ann, and I was trying to do her portrait, her nude portrait. This is a sequence where, the more you get to know Yusuke in hindsight, has better context, but when you don't know Yusuke that well, it comes across as extremely pervy. And so, it was like trying to write that line of like, this isn't, this isn't in a really negative way, and it can become a constant way. Trying to write that line to where you're like, I still like this guy, but this is really pervy. It's like, he's just the hardest to love's art. It's fine, give it a few hours.

LA: Well, I'm like a huge person with high fans, so anytime I got to say like a character's name or fan's and things, I was like, oh my god. I literally ran around the room like the booth, I could not contain it. And I was for, and I know it's kind of like cheating, it's not a specific line, but sorry. Yeah, and I was for something that was difficult. There was this one gigantic screen, and I had to do it just kept going on and on and on, and I could not get it in one breath. And it just kept happening to scream over and over and over again. We got it, but it took some time, and I will be practicing screaming from this point forward. Sorry to many of us, but we gotta be practicing.

A big thanks to Xanthe Huynh, Cherami Leigh, Matt Mercer, and Leeanna Albanese for attending Anime Expo to chat with the fans!

You can find more about Persona 5 Tactica on the official page: https://persona.atlus.com/p5t/

Check out the Atlus official twitter page: https://twitter.com/Atlus_West

Xanthe Huynh's official twitter page: https://twitter.com/ItsXanthor

Cherami Leigh's official twitter page: https://twitter.com/CheramiLeigh

Matthew Mercer's official twitter page: https://twitter.com/matthewmercer

Leeanna Albanese's official twitter page: https://twitter.com/leeannaalbanese

Check out the newest character spotlight trailer below.