The North American anime distributor Funimation began streaming two clips from its English dub of Tales of Vesperia ~The First Strike~ on Tuesday. The videos include about 17 minutes of footage from Production I.G's theatrical adaptation of NAMCO's Tales of Vesperia role-playing game.
Gotta hand it to Funi for managing to get Troy Baker and Sam Riegel to reprise their roles as Yuri and Flynn. But even if it was just a pipe dream, I was so so so hoping that they'd get Michelle Ruff and Danielle Judovits for their respective characters Rita and Estelle, the former being my absolute favorite voice-to-character matchup from the game. Still, Luci Christian and Cherami Leigh are both excellent substitutes. I'm now extremely torn at the prospect of finally giving this show a go for fear of being hung up on the recast. Even if it's a solid lineup, I can get so overly preoccupied by these sort of changeups.
I'm probably a fool for getting my hopes up, but MAYBE if this movie sells well, Bamco will consider releasing the PS3 version of Vesperia to US. I know it's available on the Japanese PSN, but I don't read Japanese, and the story and new characters are really the only reason I'd get it, since I already platinumed the 360 version.