Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3538
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Mayumi Tanaka represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 40 years in, and Mayumi is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Mayumi Tanaka appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mayumi. Me & Roboco: The Movie is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ai Yoshimura, Akitaro Daichi, Tetsuro Kodama and others, Mayumi Tanaka 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.
Me & Roboco: The Movie (2025) as Royal Battle Roboco (voice) · Castle in the Sky (1986) as Pazu (voice) · Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022) as Krillin / Yajirobe (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3538 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1986–2026
Career length
40 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Me & Roboco: The Movie
Average Nutevio score
7.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
Me & Roboco: The Movie
Most frequent director
Ai Yoshimura
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ai Yoshimura
Most common genre
Animation
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 22m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.4
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
7.3
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
2020s
7.5 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. One Piece Heroines, The Rose of Versailles, Me & Roboco: The Movie — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.5
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.5
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. Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone, Castle in the Sky.
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 | 1980s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | — | 7.11 film |
| Action | 7.32 films | — | 7.21 film | 7.23 films |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.21 film | 7.82 films |
| Romance | — | — | — | 7.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Pazu (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.7 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
The current state of the argument, as Luffy (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.
9 of 9 films
as Royal Battle Roboco (voice)
Directed by Akitaro Daichi
as Pazu (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
Directed by Munehisa Sakai
as Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
Directed by Konosuke Uda
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
Royal Battle Roboco (voice)
Me & Roboco: The Movie (2025)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Royal Battle Roboco (voice) gives Mayumi Tanaka a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Pazu (voice)
Castle in the Sky (1986)
Performance score8.2
Castle in the Sky asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pazu (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
One Piece Film: Strong World (2009)
Performance score8.0
One Piece Film: Strong World asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Monkey D. Luffy (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
One Piece Film Red (2022)
Performance score7.8
One Piece Film Red asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Monkey D. Luffy (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 Royal Battle Roboco (voice)
Start here. Me & Roboco: The Movie is the clearest statement of what Mayumi Tanaka does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mayumi 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.
Castle in the Sky (1986)
Keeps the animation register of Me & Roboco: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Piece Film: Strong World (2009)
Keeps the fantasy register of Castle in the Sky but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Piece: Episode of Skypiea (2018)
Keeps the adventure register of One Piece Film: Strong World but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Piece Film Red (2022)
Keeps the action register of One Piece: Episode of Skypiea 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 Castle in the Sky
Daisuke Nishio
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone
Munehisa Sakai
Director
1 film together
Notably One Piece Film: Strong World
Konosuke Uda
Director
1 film together
Notably One Piece: Episode of Skypiea
Tetsuro Kodama
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
Akitaro Daichi
Director
1 film together
Notably Me & Roboco: The Movie
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.
Akitaro Daichi
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Me & Roboco: The MovieHayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Castle in the SkyTetsuro 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 HeroMunehisa Sakai
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
One Piece Film: Strong WorldKonosuke Uda
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
One Piece: Episode of SkypieaAi 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 VersaillesDaisuke Nishio
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dragon Ball Z: Dead ZoneSix 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
Castle in the Sky
as Pazu (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
One Piece Film: Strong World
as Monkey D. Luffy (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
Me & Roboco: The Movie
as Royal Battle Roboco (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Me & Roboco: The Movie
as Royal Battle Roboco (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Me & Roboco: The Movie
as Royal Battle Roboco (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. Mayumi Tanaka 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
40 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
9 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
Me & Roboco: The Movie
as Royal Battle Roboco (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Me & Roboco: The Movie
as Royal Battle Roboco (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 Maron Glacé Mont Blan (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
One Piece Film: Strong World
as Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Castle in the Sky
as Pazu (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
One Piece Film Red
as Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Castle in the Sky
as Pazu (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Rose of Versailles
as Maron Glacé Mont Blan (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Rumi Hiiragi
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Miyu Irino
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Mari Natsuki
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
Which Mayumi Tanaka performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
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