Hunter X Hunter Panel at Anime Riverside 2023

Over the weekend of May 27th and 28th, the second Anime Riverside took place at the Riverside Convention Center. Among the lineup of guests were the English voice actors from the 2011 Hunter X Hunter. Cristina Vee, Keith Silverstein, Tara Sands, Chris Tergliafera, Kyle Hebert, and Michael Sorich participated in a Hunter X Hunter panel.

Hunter X Hunter Panel

Moderator Jimmy Arias asked each of the Hunter X Hunter voice actors how they got cast in the respective roles. Chris Tergliafera, the voice of Silva Zoldyck, talked about how he got the audition for the show and had not heard of it at that point.

Kyle Hebert, the voice of Morel who was part of the Chimera Ant Extermination Team, talked about how he was cold cast for the role. Getting a cold cast means that Kyle did not audition for the role, but rather the director offered him the part. He also said:

“I do a lot of side characters, so I thought my character was going to be one and done in one episode. But he, actually, Morel had some more stuff to do.”

Tara Sands is the voice of Biscuit. When she was asked about getting the role, she said that she originally auditioned for the boys.

“They wrote to me and said, ‘Hey, you’ve been cast as Biscuit.’ And I thought oh, that’s really what I want to do! […] The job you audition for is not — think of it as an audition for everything because you never know what they’re going to hear in it.”

Cristina Vee auditioned for all of the boys at the same time. She said, “I really loved Killua. It was the heart scene, where he rips the heart out of the guy’s chest, and I was like, ‘I like this boy. He’s really cool.'”

Keith Silverstein read for both Hisoka and Leorio during his audition process. Keith said:

“I think they made the right choice, though. Matt [Mercer] was awesome. And I had no idea what I was getting into with this character…I had heard of Hunter X Hunter, I didn’t know much about it. Hisoka is such an interesting character, that as I would show up in the studio and I had the script in front of me, time after time there were lines that would make me, like, giggle, or just really laugh. Like, ‘I gotta do what? Okay!’ But it was a lot of fun exploring this character.”

Michael Sorich is the voice of Tonpa. His experience was similar to Kyle Hebert in that the director of the English dub had an idea for who Michael could voice.

Hunter X Hunter is streaming on Crunchyroll and Netflix. The manga has returned as well after a ten year hiatus.