Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2795
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Mai Nakahara 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.
Mai Nakahara appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mai. Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shinsuke Yanagi, Chris Huang, Takahiro Natori and others, Mai Nakahara 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.
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain (2025) as Mika Hanaoka (voice) · Aria the Benedizione (2021) as Azusa B. McLaren / Guest B (voice) · SHIROBAKO the Movie (2020) as Yuka Okitsu (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2795 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2017–2025
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
Average Nutevio score
4.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
Most frequent director
Shinsuke Yanagi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Shinsuke Yanagi
Most common genre
Animation
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 2m
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
6.1
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
6.6 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.6
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. Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry.
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 | — | 7.22 films |
| Action | 6.61 film | 6.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.61 film | 7.13 films |
| Romance | — | 7.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Juvia Lockser (voice).
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2025Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Thunderbolt Fantasy: The Final Chapter
The current state of the argument, as Tan Hi (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 Mika Hanaoka (voice)
Directed by Shinsuke Yanagi
as Azusa B. McLaren / Guest B (voice)
Directed by Takahiro Natori
as Yuka Okitsu (voice)
Directed by Tsutomu Mizushima
as Juvia Lockser (voice)
Directed by Tatsuma Minamikawa
as Tan Hi (voice)
Directed by Chris Huang
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
Mika Hanaoka (voice)
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain (2025)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mika Hanaoka (voice) gives Mai Nakahara a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Azusa B. McLaren / Guest B (voice)
Aria the Benedizione (2021)
Performance score7.2
Aria the Benedizione asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Azusa B. McLaren / Guest B (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Yuka Okitsu (voice)
SHIROBAKO the Movie (2020)
Performance score6.8
SHIROBAKO the Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yuka Okitsu (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Juvia Lockser (voice)
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry (2017)
Performance score6.6
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Juvia Lockser (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 Mika Hanaoka (voice)
Start here. Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain is the clearest statement of what Mai Nakahara does — accessible, 83 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mai 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.
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry (2017)
Keeps the comedy register of Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain but asks for a colder reading of it.
SHIROBAKO the Movie (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry but asks for a colder reading of it.
Aria the Benedizione (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of SHIROBAKO the Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Thunderbolt Fantasy: The Final Chapter (2025)
Keeps the fantasy register of Aria the Benedizione but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tatsuma Minamikawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
Tsutomu Mizushima
Director
1 film together
Notably SHIROBAKO the Movie
Takahiro Natori
Director
1 film together
Notably Aria the Benedizione
Chris Huang
Director
1 film together
Notably Thunderbolt Fantasy: The Final Chapter
Shinsuke Yanagi
Director
1 film together
Notably Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shinsuke Yanagi
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the RainTakahiro Natori
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aria the BenedizioneTsutomu Mizushima
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SHIROBAKO the MovieTatsuma 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 CryChris Huang
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thunderbolt Fantasy: The Final ChapterSix 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
SHIROBAKO the Movie
as Yuka Okitsu (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
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (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
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (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. Mai Nakahara 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
6 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
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
as Juvia Lockser (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Thunderbolt Fantasy: The Final Chapter
as Tan Hi (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
as Juvia Lockser (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
as Juvia Lockser (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Mika Hanaoka (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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