| Cristina Vee | |
| Birth Name: | Cristina Danielle Valenzuela |
| Birth Date: | July 11, 1987 |
| Birth Place: | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Alma Mater: | California State University, Long Beach |
| Occupation: | Voice actress |
| Years Active: | 2005–present |
Cristina Danielle Valenzuela[1] (born July 11, 1987), known professionally as Cristina Vee, is an American voice actress. She provides voices for English dubs of anime, animation, and video games.
Vee's roles in anime include Louise in The Familiar of Zero, Nanoha Takamachi in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, Mio Akiyama in K-On!, Noel Vermillion/Mu-12, Nu-13, Saya, and Lambda-11 in the BlazBlue series, Nagisa Saitō in Squid Girl, Homura Akemi in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Compa and Croire in Hyperdimension Neptunia, Rei Hino / Sailor Mars in the Viz Media dub of Sailor Moon, the Honoka sisters in Knights of Sidonia, Hawk from The Seven Deadly Sins, Darkness in KonoSuba, Thoma in The Promised Neverland, Meiko Mochizuki in Digimon Adventure tri., Killua Zoldyck in Hunter × Hunter, Yuko Tani in , , and , Vivy in , Robyn Hill in RWBY, Sakura Matou in , Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, and Fate/Zero.
Vee has also voiced video game roles, such as the titular character and her arch-nemesis Risky Boots in the Shantae series, Velvet Crowe in Tales of Berseria, Riven in League of Legends, Bennett and Xingqiu in Genshin Impact, 5-Volt in the WarioWare series, and Cerebella in Skullgirls. She is the voice of the Rito warrior Tulin in the English version of . She also plays a minor role as the voice of Vibrio in the game Vitamin Connection. In animation, she voices Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Ladybug in the English dub of . She was the co-host of AnimeTV with Johnny Yong Bosch[2] and portrayed Haruhi Suzumiya in the live-action The Adventures of the ASOS Brigade. She also voices Verosika Mayday in the adult animated web series Helluva Boss and Fwench Fwy in Chikn Nuggit.[3]
Vee was born on July 11, 1987. She is of Tepehuan, Spanish, and Lebanese descent.[4] [5] [6] She grew up in Norwalk, CA, near Los Angeles and attended public schools there.[7] One of her early interests was music, and Cristina participated in the Norwalk All City band while in middle school and high school. But because of her passion for acting and animation specifically, her classmates called her "Sailor Moon girl," and Vee would go on to co-found the first anime club at John Glenn High School.
Cristina studied theatre arts and graduated from California State University at Long Beach in 2007 where she took classes with Professor Hugh O'Gorman, who supported her career goals.[8] [9] Vee has disclosed that she struggled for a period while in college: “Even though I loved studying theater and performing in shows, college was a really hard time for me. Because of depression and panic attacks, there were a couple of years where it was extremely hard for me to go to classes.”
When Vee was younger, she wanted to become an animator, but after watching Sailor Moon, she was inspired to become a voice actor. She had attended Anime Expo multiple times as a fan and participated in their AX Idol voice-over contest. In 2004, she joined a voice-over panel where she helped work some of the equipment and then got a card from Wendee Lee to audition for several shows with Bang Zoom! Entertainment,[10] including Samurai Champloo. Her first major role was Kanaria in Rozen Maiden.[11] In 2008, she voiced the title character in , Louise in The Familiar of Zero, and Nanoha in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. She portrayed the live-action Haruhi Suzumiya in the promotional videos for the second The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series, and performed as her at various events.
In 2011, she voiced the shy bassist Mio Akiyama in the school music comedy K-On! and Nagisa Saitō in the comedy Squid Girl. That year, she starred in the anime feature film as Alisa Bosconovitch, attending American anime conventions with the Japanese writer Dai Satō to promote the film. In 2012, she voiced Homura Akemi in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. In 2013, she voiced Princess Yo in and Red Hood in the Ikki Tousen series. In 2014, she voiced Morgiana in and the Honoka sisters in Knights of Sidonia.[12] [13] She was chosen to voice Sailor Mars in Viz's re-dub of Sailor Moon and the new Sailor Moon Crystal series.[14] Vee described her voicing of Rei as different in Crystal because her character is more serious and regal compared to her character in the original series.
In 2015, she voiced Noel Vermillion in BlazBlue Alter Memory, Compa in , and Hawk in The Seven Deadly Sins, the last of which was released as a Netflix original series. In 2016, she provided the voice of Killua Zoldyck in the Viz Media English dub of the 2011 anime adaptation of Hunter × Hunter.[15] [16] In 2021, she voiced Vivy in the Bang Zoom! Entertainment English dub of the original anime series .
Vee has been involved in several animation projects. In March 2012, she started a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to produce an animated music video in conjunction with Cybergraphix Animation and Studio APPP.[17] The main character of the video, "Cristina Veecaloid", was designed by Skullgirls creative director Alex Ahad, Her character was later named Milky and was made into an iOS game called Veecaloid Pop released in 2015. In 2012, Vee was involved in voice casting and directing the Skullgirls video game and web series. The game was nominated at the 40th Annie Awards.[18] In 2015, Vee began voicing Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Ladybug in the English dub of the animated series . The show premiered on Nickelodeon in December 2015, and has aired four seasons on Netflix and now Disney+ and Disney Channel. Executive producer Jared Wolfsen said that Vee and the other English dub voice actors brought a lot of energy to their characters, and that Vee herself is just like Ladybug – sweet and kind, and so fun to watch.[19] In 2021 and 2024, Vee voiced Verosika Mayday in the animated web series Helluva Boss, starring in the episodes "Spring Broken", Ozzie's" and "Apology Tour".
In June 2023, it was announced that she would voice Tere and Toñita in the animated series Primos, which premiered in July 2024 on Disney Channel.[20] [21]
Vee has been involved in voice-overs for video games, mostly with English localizations of Japanese titles produced by Atlus USA and NIS America. Some of her major roles are Noel Vermillion in BlazBlue, Velvet Crowe in Tales of Berseria, Riven the Exile in League of Legends, Four in Drakengard 3, Compa in Hyperdimension Neptunia, 13-Amp and 5-Volt in WarioWare Gold, Marnie in Pokémon Masters EX, the title character of the Shantae series and her arch-nemesis Risky Boots, as well as Bennett and Xingqiu in Genshin Impact. She has directed and produced the voices for the video game Indivisible, which was crowdfunded with a total amount of $1.5 million on December 2, 2015.[22] [23]
In addition to performing live as Haruhi Suzumiya, Vee has appeared on screen on various web series, television shows and events. She was a host on Anime TV where she reviewed shows and interviewed people, and appeared on Funimation On Demand and Crunchyroll.[24] [25] She was a live-action host of IGN's IPL4 and IPL5 League of Legends video game tournaments in Las Vegas.[26] [27] She is a frequent guest at many anime conventions throughout the United States and worldwide.[28]
Vee is also a professional singer, and has performed the theme songs for two Shantae video games: "Dance Through the Danger" for 2016's and "Rise and Shine Shantae" for 2019's Shantae and the Seven Sirens.[29] [30] She also performed the theme song "Until I'm Broken" for the 2012 visual novel Loren the Amazon Princess.[31] She performed multiple songs for the mobile gacha game Arknights: "Boiling Blood" in 2019, "ALIVE" in 2021 and "Spark for Dream" in 2022. In 2023, she sang the English dub ending theme for , "KUYASHISAWA TANE".[32]
Vee has uploaded several renditions of anime songs on YouTube. In 2015, she released an EP called Menagerie with DJ Bouche which was part of the Viewster's Omakase subscription service.[33] [34] She and YouTuber Nathan Sharp (NateWantsToBattle) released a cover of Charlie Puth's song "Attention" in August 2017.[35] She also signed with an indie record label called Give Heart Records.[36] She also recorded The Living Tombstone's song "Animal" with 'The 8-Bit Big Band' in an arrangement by Charlie Rosen.
Vee lives in the Los Angeles area.[37] In January 2018, she and musician/voice actor Nathan Sharp announced their engagement,[38] but Sharp later announced in August that the two had separated.[39]
In February 2024, she deactivated her Twitter account due to online harassment after she was falsely accused of being a Zionist.[40]
See main article: Cristina Vee filmography.
Convention writeups from local newspapers include: