Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13484
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Akiko Hiramatsu represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 38 years in, and Akiko is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Akiko Hiramatsu appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Akiko. A Silent Voice: The Movie is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for animation, science fiction, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Fumitoshi Oizaki, Takahiro Natori, Naoko Yamada and others, Akiko Hiramatsu helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
A Silent Voice: The Movie (2016) as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice) · My Neighbor Totoro (1988) as Additional Voices (voice) · Aria the Benedizione (2021) as Airi S. Granzchesta (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #13484 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1988–2026
Career length
38 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
A Silent Voice: The Movie
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
A Silent Voice: The Movie
Most frequent director
Fumitoshi Oizaki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Fumitoshi Oizaki
Most common genre
Animation
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 28m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
8.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. A Silent Voice: The Movie — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
8.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. My Neighbor Totoro.
Most productive era
2020s
2 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1980s | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 8.31 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.51 film | — | 6.51 film |
| Romance | — | — | 8.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Additional Voices (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Sgt. Frog
The current state of the argument, as Aki Hinata (voice).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
5 of 5 films
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
Directed by Naoko Yamada
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Selena Biatz (voice)
Directed by Hiroshi Watanabe
as Aki Hinata (voice)
Directed by Fumitoshi Oizaki
as Airi S. Granzchesta (voice)
Directed by Takahiro Natori
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
A Silent Voice: The Movie (2016)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Yaeko Nishimiya (voice) gives Akiko Hiramatsu a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Additional Voices (voice)
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Performance score7.8
My Neighbor Totoro asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Selena Biatz (voice)
Slayers Return (1996)
Performance score7.0
Slayers Return asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Selena Biatz (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Aki Hinata (voice)
Sgt. Frog (2026)
Performance score6.5
Sgt. Frog asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aki Hinata (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
Start here. A Silent Voice: The Movie is the clearest statement of what Akiko Hiramatsu does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 8.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Akiko at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Keeps the animation register of A Silent Voice: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Slayers Return (1996)
Keeps the fantasy register of My Neighbor Totoro but asks for a colder reading of it.
Aria the Benedizione (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Slayers Return but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sgt. Frog (2026)
Keeps the animation register of Aria the Benedizione but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together
Notably My Neighbor Totoro
Hiroshi Watanabe
Director
1 film together
Notably Slayers Return
Naoko Yamada
Director
1 film together
Notably A Silent Voice: The Movie
Takahiro Natori
Director
1 film together
Notably Aria the Benedizione
Fumitoshi Oizaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Sgt. Frog
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Naoko Yamada
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Silent Voice: The MovieHayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Neighbor TotoroTakahiro Natori
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aria the BenedizioneHiroshi Watanabe
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Slayers ReturnFumitoshi Oizaki
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sgt. FrogSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
My Neighbor Totoro
as Additional Voices (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Akiko Hiramatsu has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
38 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Animation Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in animation, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
My Neighbor Totoro
as Additional Voices (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
My Neighbor Totoro
as Additional Voices (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Silent Voice: The Movie
as Yaeko Nishimiya (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
My Neighbor Totoro
as Additional Voices (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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