Leah Applebaum is an American voice actress and Broadway actress. She is best known as the voice of Nanami Kiryu from Revolutionary Girl Utena [1] [2] [3] and Erika, the Grass type Gym Leader from the internationally acclaimed Pokémon series. [4] [5]
Applebaum first got into voice acting while working for a Broadway sketch comedy called My Thoughts Here in New York when she got a call from a casting director who was casting for the Hugo Award winning Think Like a Dinosaur, a Sci-Fi Channel program. Applebaum got the lead role of Kamala Shastri, which led her to be cast as a reporter in The Signal Man, which was adapted from the original story by Charles Dickens. The attention Applebaum received from her work on the Sci-Fi Channel eventually got her the major role of Nanami Kiryu from Revolutionary Girl Utena and Erika from the highly popular Pokémon series. According to the Dogasu's Backpack interview, Applebaum revealed that her Nanami voice was inspired from Buffy, a main character from the Family Affair TV series. [5]
Anime News Network (ANN) is an anime industry news website that reports on the status of anime, manga, video games, Japanese popular music and other related cultures within North America, Australia, Southeast Asia and Japan. The website offers reviews and other editorial content, forums where readers can discuss current issues and events, and an encyclopedia that contains a large number of anime and manga with information on Japanese and English staff, theme music, plot summaries, and user ratings.