hiroshi kamiya and the tower of youth

recently I was chatting with a friend about old-school fansubs, and we laughingly recalled those heady days of youth where you’d have to wait months at a time for an episode, or how subbing groups might even disappear all together without finishing what they started. 

an anecdote of mine rose up from the depths, which I recounted without a second thought: a voice actor in a show I loved had been injured before being able to finish recording his lines and had to be replaced by someone else for the final episode – and how out of devotion, I waited to finish the series until the fansub group was able to tackle the DVD version, with the original actor’s voice.

afterwards, I wondered – this would have been nearly 20 years ago at this point, but – was it even true? read on to find out… 

I won’t bury the lede – the story checks out. the series in question is Honey & Clover, while the voice actor was Hiroshi Kamiya, who portrayed the central protagonist, Takemoto. as the (true) story goes, Kamiya was in a near-death motorcycle accident shortly before recording what I understand to be lines for the last episode of the second (and last) season of the show. however, while trying to research this, I found some odd tidbits of misinformation – in two different sources I saw concerning a certain NHK documentary, the accident is cited as occurring “on the first day of recording for his first ever role as a main character“, and “The day of the accident was the day of recording for the first episode of the anime Kamiya was meant to play the main character of“. this assertion seems to come from the NHK documentary itself, which I can only put down to artistic license – it’s definitely more impactful to say it was on the ‘first day’ of recording rather than the last, but it is – as far as I can tell – inaccurate.

however, aside from the fact that it’s entirely searchable, it’s also easy enough to look at the timeline to see which role the documentary is referring to, and which episode recording he would likely have been excluded from: honey & clover II began airing in June 2006, and the accident is noted to have happened in august of 2006. recording for the first episode would have been impossible if it had already started airing, surely? in any case, the japanese wikipedia references the accident, as well as the replacement and subsequent DVD re-do, in the same manner that I remembered it happening, though I still have no idea how I would have heard about it at the time. perhaps the fansubbers mentioned it on their blog? I’d love to revisit those hallowed halls, but alas, I cannot remember the name of the group (if anyone else does, do let me know.) even though the documentary was perhaps overeager in its cataloguing of events, I was fairly interested in the things that mr. kamiya had to say about the incident and his subsequent month-long hospitalization – borrowing from the fan translation, 

“That time, the role that I was meant to play, was played excellently by another person. And it’s not that any big problem arose from that, but it just occurred to me that, “Ah, so ultimately, things work out even if it’s not me.”

“I can be replaced.“

seeing this, I was shocked – I started this whole search to verify a memory I had of an edgelord thing I did as a teen, waiting for the ‘real voice’ of the character before I would watch the final episode of a TV show… but I had never actually considered the impact the accident would have had on the actor himself. my recollection of the incident as being an ‘edgelord’ move perhaps stems from a reimagining of the incident as being needlessly sentimental – but perhaps, in reality, I’ve been telling this story jokingly all this time to downplay how important the incident actually was to me.

edgelord or not, I was the right age and in the right circumstances for that specific intensity of feeling – and the series at hand perfectly served my needs. for context, honey & clover is an anime (based on a manga by Umino Chica) about the trials and tribulations of a group of youngsters at an art college – while much of the plot surrounds their various romantic fiascos, the sections that hit me hardest as a teen were the art school parts. I was myself at the time just starting out at an intensive arts high school, and struggling desperately with finding my way – takemoto’s storyline in particular resonated with me deeply: 

in the end, I actually didn’t find my way in art school – instead, I ended up falling arse over tit all the way back down the sheer cliff of secondary education, only to claw my way back up towards anything you could even feasibly call a ‘path’. I never abandoned art, though – I just took to studying it rather than making it. and interestingly, it was on the very morning of the viva voce for my PhD, in a bout of self-flagellation, that I pulled out my copies of honey & clover to tearfully explain to my partner how I’d never pass*, because my thesis was just the same as takemoto’s Tower of Youth (read right to left): 

I’m glad I waited for that final episode, because (with minimal spoilers), takemoto’s story is beautifully rounded off when another protagonist says they know that the work he’ll do on the path he has chosen will be outstanding – all because of that very tower: 

back in 2006, I wouldn’t have wanted to bring my time with honey & clover to a close with anyone other than hiroshi kamiya filling the role – he brought takemoto to life, and for me, could never have been replaced. 

*I did pass, by the way :^)