Kawakami Tomoko, born on 25 April in Tokyo, debuted as a seiyuu in
1994, and has since voiced many lead roles in many anime. Here are a
few of them :
Tenjou Utena - Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Shindou Hikaru - Hakaru no go
Hinata Fuyuki - Keroro Gunsou
Kamio Misuzu - Air

She fell sick in August 2008, and was hospitalized in the same month
and had a surgery performed 3 days afterward. Due to her sickness,
she had been replaced by other seiyuu for all of her roles. She did
manage to do some seiyuu work occasionally in the past few years.

Kawakami-san, thank you for voicing our beloved Utena.....

Source here: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-06-10/utena-voice-actress-tomoko-kawakami-passes-away

Two weeks ago, after one and a half years of leaving it as an unfinished project, I finally extracted the internal IDE hard drives from my older computer and slapped them into external enclosures. I hadn't powered on my old computer since January 2010, so I was very happy to find that the hard drives were still functional. One of those drives contained 1.5GB of Aria-related media; on a nostalgic whim, I started listening to the music and drama selections again.

As I re-discovered the world of Aria over the past week, I felt a brief twinge of sadness when I recalled that Kawai Eri, one of the composers and songwriters who also provided the singing voice for the character Athena Glory, had passed away just two years ago at the young age of 43...

Tomoko-san was only 40.

I'll always miss Tomoko (or "Tomo-tomo", as the other Aria cast members called her) as Athena Glory in "Aria".

R.I.P.

-T.Z.
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"I believe that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
Then find someone whose life gives them vodka and have a party."
--Ron White, stand-up comedian.

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