Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9890
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Iori Saeki works on emotional range 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.
Iori Saeki appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Iori. Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era is the clearest case: a film rated 8.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are emotional range, drama, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, animation, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ken Yamamoto, Liao Chengzhi, Yukihiro Miyamoto and others, Iori Saeki 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.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era (2024) as King Halo (voice) · Revue Starlight: The Movie (2021) as (voice) · Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top Movie (2024) as King Halo (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #9890 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2019–2025
Career length
6 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.6
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
Average Nutevio score
7.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.6
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
Most frequent director
Ken Yamamoto
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ken Yamamoto
Most common genre
Animation
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.3
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
6.9
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
2020s
7.9 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. 100 METERS, Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era, Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top Movie — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.9
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Weathering with You.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.81 film | 8.25 films |
| Action | — | 8.32 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.83 films |
| Romance | 7.81 film | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
8.6 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
2025100 METERS
The current state of the argument, as Kawano (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.
7 of 7 films
as King Halo (voice)
Directed by Ken Yamamoto
as (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as King Halo (voice)
Directed by Liao Chengzhi
as Class B Costumer (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Kawano (voice)
Directed by Unknown
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
King Halo (voice)
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era (2024)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. King Halo (voice) gives Iori Saeki a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
(voice)
Revue Starlight: The Movie (2021)
Performance score8.1
Revue Starlight: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
King Halo (voice)
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top Movie (2024)
Performance score8.0
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. King Halo (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Class B Costumer (voice)
Revue Starlight: Rondo Rondo Rondo (2020)
Performance score7.8
Revue Starlight: Rondo Rondo Rondo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Class B Costumer (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 King Halo (voice)
Start here. Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era is the clearest statement of what Iori Saeki does — accessible, 108 minutes, and rated 8.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Iori 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.
Revue Starlight: Rondo Rondo Rondo (2020)
Keeps the fantasy register of Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era but asks for a colder reading of it.
Revue Starlight: The Movie (2021)
Same director as Revue Starlight: Rondo Rondo Rondo, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top Movie (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Revue Starlight: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
100 METERS (2025)
Keeps the drama register of Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Makoto Shinkai
Director
1 film together
Notably Weathering with You
Yukihiro Miyamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably The Quintessential Quintuplets∽
Liao Chengzhi
Director
1 film together
Notably Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top Movie
Ken Yamamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ken Yamamoto
Director
1 film together · 8.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New EraLiao Chengzhi
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top MovieMakoto Shinkai
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Weathering with YouYukihiro Miyamoto
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Quintessential Quintuplets∽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
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
as King Halo (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
Revue Starlight: The Movie
as (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
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
as King Halo (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Weathering with You
as (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
as King Halo (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. Iori Saeki 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
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
as King Halo (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Revue Starlight: The Movie
as (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
100 METERS
as Kawano (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Revue Starlight: Rondo Rondo Rondo
as Class B Costumer (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Revue Starlight: The Movie
as (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Revue Starlight: The Movie
as (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era
as King Halo (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Revue Starlight: The Movie
as (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and action
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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