David Tanaka, a longtime favourite, passed away on today’s episode of Neighbours, which also featured Takaya Honda’s last scenes after nearly seven and a half years of acting.
For several weeks, Neighbours has been hinting at an impending tragedy. In this scenario, villains Eden Shaw (Costa D’Angelo) and Veronica McLain (Ellen Grimshaw) were going to ruin David (Takaya Honda), Aaron (Matt Wilson), Nicolette (Hannah Monson), Leo (Tim Kano), and Krista’s (Majella Davis) vacation.
The identity of the deceased was kept a secret by spoilers and a recent promo, so it was unclear if Veronica, Eden, or both would be responsible for our beloved’s passing.
The victim has now been revealed, and David Tanaka’s last scenes have aired. The cast of Neighbours has given amazing performances as their characters responded to the news.
Ray Messner / Amazon Freevee
Yesterday’s episode saw Nicolette left alone in the holiday property, with no idea that Veronica was hiding on the roof.
The two found themselves in a dramatic confrontation, with Veronica keen to track down her estranged husband Sasha (Sunny S. Walia), who she believed was on the trip with Nicolette.
In the end, the two made peace as Veronica finally accepted that it was Sasha who had been persuing Nicolette, but that Nicolette and Sasha weren’t together.
That just left the small matter of Eden. As David, Aaron, Leo and Krista went on a bushwalk together, the newer of the two couples dropped hints about wanting some alone time, and David and Aaron eventually left them in peace.
Soon after, as they lay together on the forest floor, Leo and Krista were startled to hear a voice – Eden’s! He’s out of prison, and somehow knows that Krista is pregnant with his baby.
As Krista told him that she wanted nothing to do with him, Eden looked at Leo with an evil smirk – “You think he’s gonna raise my kid?”
After knocking Krista to the ground, Eden dived at Leo and the pair grappled together, inches away from a sheer drop. David and Aaron, upon hearing the shouting, rushed to help, as Eden picked up a rock and held it above Leo’s head, ready to strike.
David rushed over and dived at Eden, pulling him off Leo but causing both David and Eden to tumble down the side of the high embankment.
As we returned to the action in Thursday’s emotional episode, Aaron, Leo and Krista were trying to find a way down the embankment, with no idea whether David or Eden were dead or alive.
Thankfully, things were looking positive for David, who was conscious on the ground below, apparently not too badly harmed.
He dragged himself over to Eden and quickly realised he was suffering internal bleeding. David did his best to make him comfortable, before Aaron and Leo eventually arrived.
While Aaron was keen to get help for David, he insisted that he was fine – just a broken ankle and maybe a broken rib – and that it was Eden who needed to get to hospital right away.
David insisted to Aaron that he didn’t want a repeat of the Gareth Bateman (Jack Pearson) situation two years ago, where David chose not to help Gareth at River Bend, and instead let him die.
With no phone signal to call an ambulance, Aaron heeded to David’s wishes and transported a badly injured Eden to the hospital.
By the time he and Leo returned, David was unconscious and slumped against a tree. As Aaron rushed over to him, it soon became clear that David had died, having lost a significant amount of blood from his abdomen.
It seemed that David knew that he was at risk of bleeding out, but kept the development from Aaron and Leo to ensure that they look Eden to the hospital instead. He had chosen Eden over himself, with the guilt from his actions two years ago still haunting him.
Ray Messner / Amazon Freevee
What followed were some of the most powerful but harrowing scenes of Neighbours in recent years. With no phone signal, David’s husband and brother were left with no choice but to pick up his body and carry him back to the car. Aaron later sat in the back, barely able to process what had happened, as David’s head lay upon his lap.
Back in Erinsborough and it was on Jane (Annie Jones) to share the tragic news with the residents of Ramsay Street, as she paid a visit to No. 22 to let Toadie (Ryan Moloney) and Terese (Rebekah Elmaloglou) know.
Terese’s first thought was of ex-husband Paul (Stefan Dennis), as she commented on how ‘this will kill Paul’, before heading off to Lassiters, wanting to be the one to break the news to him.
The tearjerking episodes produced a standout performance from Matt Wilson, with Aaron now facing life in Erinsborough without his beloved ‘boo’.
Ray Messner / Amazon Freevee
David’s death brings to an end Takaya Honda’s time on Neighbours, which began back in 2016, making him one of the show’s longest-serving characters of recent years. David arrived alongside twin brother Leo as they tried to identify their biological father, who was finally found to be Paul Robinson.
One of David’s earliest arcs also saw him struggle with his sexuality. David wasn’t yet open about being gay, and grappled with his growing affections for new neighbour Aaron simultaneously wrestling with the notion of coming out to his brother.
In the end, David accepted his sexuality and got nothing but good comments from his friends and family. He and Aaron went on to marry in 2018, in what was the first same-sex marriage on Australian television.
After getting married, the pair decided to begin fostering, and a protracted plot arc saw them take in 13-year old Emmett (Ezra Justin), and then Emmett’s problematic brother Brent (Texas Watterston).
One of David’s major stories saw him and Aaron decide to have a baby of their own with their flatmate Nicolette, in a co-parenting arrangement where all three would be the baby’s parents.
A night of cocktails saw the trio make a spur-of-the-moment decision to deploy a turkey baster as their method of conception, and all three were astonished when Nicolette learned she was pregnant shortly after.
David’s dad Paul was never a fan of Nicolette, and his comments about how she would never be part of their family pushed her over the brink, prompting her to depart town with David and Aaron’s newborn kid in tow.
Paul was forced to head to Canberra to track Nicolette down, where he found that she had recently given birth.
Jackson Finter / Amazon Freevee
Paul offered to buy the baby back for $1million, but Nicolette secretly handed over a different baby, who, in a complicated and convoluted turn of events, turned out to be the daughter of Leo and his ex-girlfriend Britney (Montana Cox), whom he was dating while living in New York.
Nicolette eventually returned to Erinsborough, and while the trust issues ensued for many months, David, Aaron and Nicolette did eventually settle into shared parenthood with their new daughter, Isla.
Shortly before Neighbours‘ cancellation in 2022, David was struck off from working as a doctor, after failing to provide treatment to Gareth Bateman, who was left severely injured after crashing though his van windscreen.
After Aaron was attacked by Gareth and left for dead, a distraught David decided not to accept medical attention. The career-focused doctor experienced a bit of an identity crisis after the discovery, which resulted in him losing his medical licence and serving a brief period of time in jail.
After the show was cancelled, David ran the Drinks Divas van with Melanie for a year. After a shocking turn of events saw Paul cover up Krista’s death-not-death, he left Erinsborough with Aaron, Nicolette, and daughter Isla.
Since coming back to Erinsborough, David and Aaron have been teasing plans to repurchase No. 32 from Leo. In addition, the couple recently announced their intention to become parents to a new child, with Nicolette serving as the biological mother once more.
Even more, David started to gradually get back in touch with Paul, referring to him as “dad” for the first time since their fallout from Paul’s actions on the Lassiters rooftop a year prior.
The recent happiness that David and Aaron have been experiencing over the past few weeks was obviously too good to be true—neighbors being neighbors—and prepared them for the tragic episode and David’s premature death.
Though Neighbours will mourn the loss of David and actor Takaya Honda, their departure will come at a great cost because they were responsible for some of the most impactful episodes of the renewed series, demonstrating that Amazon was correct to renew it.
Next week will see the fallout of the tragic event, as Aaron, Leo, Paul and Nicolette come to terms with David’s death, and a shocking secret is revealed that will send one character’s guilt into overdrive.
