Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2905
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Aya Hirano works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Aya Hirano appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Aya. Gintama: The Very Final is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ai Yoshimura, Ryuichi Kitahata, Tetsuro Kodama and others, Aya Hirano 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.
Gintama: The Very Final (2021) as Nobume Imai (voice) · Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022) as Dende (voice) · Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God (2007) as Misa Amane (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2905 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2007–2025
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Gintama: The Very Final
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Gintama: The Very Final
Most frequent director
Ai Yoshimura
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ai Yoshimura
Most common genre
Animation
7 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
6.3
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
2000s
7.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.41 film | — | 3.52 films |
| Action | — | 6.61 film | 7.53 films |
| Thriller | 7.41 film | — | 6.51 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.61 film | — |
| Crime | 7.41 film | — | 6.51 film |
| Romance | — | — | 6.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2007Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Misa Amane (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.2 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
2025今日もカレーですか？
The current state of the argument, as 黒部佳純.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Nobume Imai (voice)
Directed by Chizuru Miyawaki
as Marie Antoinette (voice)
Directed by Ai Yoshimura
as Dende (voice)
Directed by Tetsuro Kodama
as Misa Amane (voice)
Directed by Tetsuro Araki
as Lucy Heartfilia (voice)
Directed by Tatsuma Minamikawa
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
Nobume Imai (voice)
Gintama: The Very Final (2021)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nobume Imai (voice) gives Aya Hirano a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Marie Antoinette (voice)
The Rose of Versailles (2025)
Performance score7.5
The Rose of Versailles asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marie Antoinette (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dende (voice)
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)
Performance score7.5
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dende (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Misa Amane (voice)
Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God (2007)
Performance score7.5
Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Misa Amane (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 Nobume Imai (voice)
Start here. Gintama: The Very Final is the clearest statement of what Aya Hirano does — accessible, 104 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Aya 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.
Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God (2007)
Keeps the animation register of Gintama: The Very Final but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry (2017)
Keeps the fantasy register of Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)
Keeps the action register of Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Rose of Versailles (2025)
Keeps the animation register of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tetsuro Araki
Director
1 film together
Notably Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God
Tatsuma Minamikawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
Chizuru Miyawaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Gintama: The Very Final
Chika Nagaoka
Director
1 film together
Notably Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet
Tetsuro Kodama
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
Ryuichi Kitahata
Director
1 film together
Notably 今日もカレーですか？
Ai Yoshimura
Director
1 film together
Notably The Rose of Versailles
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chizuru Miyawaki
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gintama: The Very FinalTetsuro Kodama
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dragon Ball Super: Super HeroTetsuro Araki
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a GodAi Yoshimura
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Rose of VersaillesTatsuma Minamikawa
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fairy Tail: Dragon CryChika Nagaoka
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detective Conan: The Scarlet BulletRyuichi Kitahata
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
今日もカレーですか？Six 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
Gintama: The Very Final
as Nobume Imai (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
The Rose of Versailles
as Marie Antoinette (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
Gintama: The Very Final
as Nobume Imai (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet
as Maiko Shirahato (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Gintama: The Very Final
as Nobume Imai (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. Aya Hirano 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.
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
7 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
Gintama: The Very Final
as Nobume Imai (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gintama: The Very Final
as Nobume Imai (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Rose of Versailles
as Marie Antoinette (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet
as Maiko Shirahato (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Gintama: The Very Final
as Nobume Imai (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
as Lucy Heartfilia (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
as Lucy Heartfilia (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet
as Maiko Shirahato (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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