English voice acting

You know, the English dub job could have been a B-, but I'm afraid I'd have to give it a C+. Most of the secondary voice actors doing the background characters are fine, a few supporting actors come out above average (Leon may be a jerk but you can't deny Brad Moranz voiced him well), but others are a little stiff or lacking in feeling. But let's narrow it down to the four English leads from best to worst -

The Best - amazingly, the best performance of the four English leads comes from Susan Grillo as Nene Romanova, the cute, bubbly red headed computer whiz. Characters like Nene are often impossible to cast since so many actresses tend to go over the top or their voices are simply too high pitched to be tolerable and carry off the extreme humor often associated with these characters, but Susan Grillo is the rare exception here. She plays Nene so naturally that her vocal inflections never become annoying or squeaky. It's a bit of a shame that she apparently didn't continue as an actress judging by her IMDB page (she was also the production coordinator for the series).

The 2nd Best - 2nd place goes to Jemilla Ericson as Sylia Stingray, the tall, dark mysterious and very wealthy leader. Jemilla's soft yet husky voice works well in scenes where all Sylia has to do is deliver exposition or carry on in casual conversation, but falls a bit flat in scenes that require more emotion from Sylia's voice, be it fear, shock/surprise, anger, or just plain raising her voice to shout the battle cry ("Knight Sabers Go!" in the original Japanese version, "Knight Sabers, it's show time!" in the English dub). Fortunately, Sylia is a mostly stoic character so it's not as annoying as it could be.

The 3rd & therefore 'eh' - the performance that is mostly flat and just sorta 'there' goes to Elizabeth Becka as Linna Yamazaki, the money minded, man eating fitness nut. Like Jemilla Ericson above only more so, Elizabeth Becka vocals are passable for scenes where Linna just has to engage in casual talk, but in most - if not all - the scenes that require Linna's vocals to emit actual emotion, be it sadness or anger or amusement, Becka's voice falls flat, giving off the impression that she is not so much 'acting' the dialogue but simply reading/reciting it. At other times, when Becka tries to give Linna more emotion it just sounds forced & unconvincing. On the other hand, Elizabeth Becka's work is damn near Oscar worthy compared to our last contender.

The 4th & Absolute Worst - the dubious honor of absolute worst vocal performance among the four English leads goes to Sinda Nichols as Priss Asagiri, the tough, violence prone, vengeance minded singer/biker without a cause. Granted, it was probably impossible to find a genuinely good voice to go with that ridiculous character design, but it's also hard not to think they could have found someone better. Sinda's voice acting for Priss is so over the top and forced that she makes a character who was already unlikable to begin with even more obnoxious than she had to be. Just listen to her mutilate Priss's dialogue in what are supposed to be sympathetic, emotionally charged scenes and it's easy to figure out why she never had a career.

So, that's my two cents (or four). What's yours?