Comic Con Africa 2023 is right around the corner and to build up anticipation and excitement for the annual event, we’re kicking off our guest spotlight features that give you more insight into each of the attending local and international celebrity guests. While there’s plenty more to come, this first part takes a look someone who made our childhoods awesome: actress Veronica Taylor, the voice of Ash Ketchum from Pokemon.
Veronica Taylor (born Kathleen Charlotte McInerney) was born on 4 December 1965 is an American voice actress. Since she was in her first play at the age of five, Taylor always knew she wanted to act professionally. She went on to study acting at The Catholic University of America and Brandeis University. To keep up with her voice acting work early in her career, Taylor took up teaching Pigeon Forge High School for a year.
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Veronica Taylor was feature in numerous plays and at one time, toured with National Players, the longest-running classical touring company in America. She got her voice acting career started doing smaller English dub voice acting roles for various anime in the 1990s including Patlabor and Sailor Moon. Berserk fans may also recognise her as the voice of young Griffith from the English dub of the classic 1997 anime.
However, her big breakout role came when she was hired to play the English voice of protagonist Ash Ketchum in the Pokemon anime, immediately gaining recognition in the mainstream world. She also appeared in well-known Pokemon movies during that time including Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back, Pokemon The Movie 2000 and Pokemon 3 The Movie: Spell of the Unown, among many others. Her career playing Ash spanned from 1998 to 2006. She would also play the character May in the Pokemon anime.
Since then, Taylor has blazed quite an impressive trail in the anime world by lending her voice acting talents to multiple different anime movies, television shows and video games. Some of her most prominent roles include playing Akari Mizunashi in Aria: The Animation and Aria The Natural, Gentoku Ryuubi in Ikkitousen, Aiko Iwase in Bakuman and Ribrianne in Dragon Ball Super. She also voiced Nico Robin in the 4Kids English dub of One Piece.
In the gaming world, she voiced characters such as Leo Kliesen in Tekken 6 and Tekken 7, Cynthia Graham in L.A. Noire, the narrator of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, the female character voice of Code Vein and additional voice work in Nier Replicant.
Veronica Taylor will be attending Comic Con Africa 2023 from 22-25 September this year. Make sure you secure your tickets on Howler.
