Lani Minella

Lani Minella is a perfect example of the difficulties of English dubbing. Let me explain: in Sonic Adventure 2, with her full role as Rouge just beginning, her portrayal of Rouge was, based on the positive reviews of her fans, overrated. Rouge's voice would sometimes be either choppy, like she was trying too hard to match her voice work with the mouth movements of the character, or downright fussy and irritating.

However, when Sonic Heroes came around, and a San Francisco team took the programming reigns, her work was almost flawless: gone was the fussiness and choppyness of SA2, which coincides with being able to just act and not have to match up voice with pre-made cutscenes, (character movements is based on the VA's work in this case, not vice-versa, like with dubbing). So, yay America. (Ha!)



Quite simply, as long as she wasn't hampered by the boundaries set in the Japanese-made cutscenes, Lani pulled off a convincing and commendable Rouge that I think many of us were sad to see leave.

Lani Minela was definately the best voice actor for Rouge. She actually made her sound like a 17 year-old woman. You can tell she is very talented, but was soon replaced by Kathleen Delaney. Kathleen did a good job on Rouge's voice, but it wasn't perfect. But it's also not the worst. Lani did a really good job voicing as Ruge, much better than Kathleen Delaney, who voiced Rouge on Sonic X. Lani Minela was always the perfect voice for Rouge, and will continue to be her official voice actor.