Japanese voice actor Hiroshi Kamiya, who joined the cast of “My Hero Academia” in the seventh season, recently spoke openly about how difficult it was for him to get into his role. We summarize.
Character without humanity
Hiroshi Kamiya has been active as a voice actor for more than three decades and has taken on numerous defining roles during this time – including Levi Ackerman from “Attack on Titan”, Trafalgar Law from “One Piece” and Yato from “Noragami”. His repertoire clearly demonstrates his great experience and versatility.
It is therefore all the more astonishing that Kamiya described his role as the young version of All For One in “My Hero Academia” as one of the biggest challenges. The reason: The character is inherently evil, and Akio Otsuka, the voice actor for the older version, has so far embodied this role flawlessly.
Normally, villains are rarely a “completely pure embodiment of evil.” That’s why Kamiya usually tries to give them small weaknesses or a certain charm to make them appear more complex and exciting.
In the case of All For One, however, things were different: his predecessor, Akio Otsuka, consciously refrained from giving the character any humanity and instead consistently portrayed him as absolutely despicable.
Self-doubt and nervousness
The challenge of portraying this villain at the climax of the story and at the same time living up to Otsuka’s high standards put so much pressure on Kamiya that, despite his many years of experience, he had to struggle with self-doubt and nervousness in the studio for the first time in a long time.
It was difficult for him to identify with the character and see it as his own role. As the work progressed, Kamiya had to make a new decision and rethink his usual approach.
He tried to find joy in living out the character’s evil in all its depth so that his interpretation – similar to Otsuka’s – reached the audience emotionally. Ultimately he succeeded.
While we already got a small foretaste of this in the last episodes of the seventh season, the full potential should soon await us, as the eighth and final season of “My Hero Academia” has been running in simulcast on Crunchyroll since October 4, 2025.