So it's been a big week to say the least. With the closing of the Tokyo Game Show last week, Square Enix wooed the hearts of millions with the announcement of new games like Re:Chain of Memories (PS2), Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix (PS2), Final Fantasy VI (GBA), Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (NDS), It's A Wonderful World (NDS), and the blu-ray incarnation of Advent Children.

In other news, though, FF III has fallen to 2nd place on Japanese sales charts, selling 56,596 from the 18th to the 24th of September, rounding out the total number of units sold thus far to 712,129, numbers that come close to paralleling the March release of FF XII in Japan.

And now--with 31 days until the release of Final Fantasy XII in North American territories--the primary voice ensemble of Final Fantasy XII has been announced, making my head spin; and causing me to curse the families of my sources (more to come on that in my autobiography). As stated before, Bobby Edner will voice Vaan, Kari Wahlgren speaks for Ashe, and Gideon Emery redefines smooth talking with Balthier.

This is the part where things get interesting, if not downright confusing. In an earlier post, I reported that Tara Strong would be voicing Penelo, as confirmed by the “6 confirmed” voice actors at that time (hence, the cursing of the families of my sources over at Wikipedia and IMDB). It appears that with the latest update of the North American Final Fantasy XII website, Catherine Taber (who had earlier been credited with voicing Penelo on IMDB, but has since been replaced with Tara Strong) will be the official voice of Penelo.

UPDATE: After speaking with an authoritive source, it appears that the webmaster of Tara Strong's official site read incorrect information regarding Tara's involvement in the FF12 project, and thusly publicized it, causing the spread of the information through the normal channels. SE did damage control, and Tara's site issued a retraction, but sourcing on IMDB and Wikipedia have yet to be altered to relfect current developments.

Vincent Valentine himself, Steven Jay Blum joins the cast as Ba'Gamnan and April Stewart voices an unannounced character as well, but I lost my bet with myself when I said she’d wind up voicing Fran. Instead, the role goes to relative newcomer Nicole Frantl. Good luck, Nicole.