Megumi Hayashibara

Megumi Hayashibara (林原 めぐみ Hayashibara Megumi, born March 30, 1967) is a Japanese voice actress, singer, radio personality, and lyricist from Tokyo. In the Final Fantasy series, she is the voice of Shantotto of the Dissidia series, and the voice of Andoria Kaya Tranka Fam Forturio in Final Fantasy Type-0.

Background
During her childhood, she enrolled in a Catholic School at one point, and was actively engaged in after school clubs, particularly that of Badminton, Biology, Broadcasting, Drama, and English clubs. She played the role of Alice in an English language production of Alice in Wonderland. Despite qualifying as a nurse, she has never been employed in a nursing position.

On the same day as submitting the application for nursing school, she went to a book store and found an advert offering free anime voice acting auditions at Arts Vision. Several months after submitting a demo tape, she received a confirmation of passing the first stage of the audition, and eventually decided to continue training as a nurse while doing voice acting. Her first days as a voice actor started rather rough; though having engaged in a year of voice acting lessons, her early roles on Maison Ikkoku saw her continuously re-read her lines after hours on set to better her performance. While on auditions for Ranma 1/2, she expected to receive the role of secondary character Akane Tendo, but ended up voicing the female half of main character Ranma Saotome.

As her profile into anime voice acting grew, Megumi grew more and more renowned for providing quality acting for many mainstream anime adapations and shows, showcasing a voice with a wide range of tone that fit either light toned female roles to. By 1995, Megumi would later star as Rei Ayanami of revolutionary mecha series Neon Genesis Evangelion and Lina Inverse of the fantasy adventure series Slayers, both series that would cement her acting prowess and fame within the acting world.

In video games, her first documented role was that of Mail of the Falcom fantasy RPG Action Platformer Popful Mail. Though her acting roles were mainly regulated to anime, she later lent her voice to as the role of host of the Sega Mega CD game collection series Game no Kanzume 1&2, that also featured a menu easter egg of her tone range, and to both the Sega endorsed releases of Evangelion related games, and the acclaimed Game Arts RPG series Lunar.