Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15246
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ai Maeda 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.
Ai Maeda appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ai. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2 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, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tomoya Takahashi, Ryota Nakamura, Chiaki Kon and others, Ai Maeda 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.
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2 (2021) as Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (voice) · Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice) · Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2 (2023) as Setsuna Meiou / Sailor Pluto (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #15246 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2003–2023
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2
Average Nutevio score
7.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2
Most frequent director
Tomoya Takahashi
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tomoya Takahashi
Most common genre
Fantasy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
6.8
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
8.2 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.1
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. Kill Bill: Vol. 1.
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 | — | 7.61 film | 8.21 film |
| Action | 8.21 film | 7.81 film | 7.14 films |
| Comedy | — | — | 4.81 film |
| Crime | 8.21 film | 7.81 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 7.72 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice). 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
2023Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 1
The current state of the argument, as Setsuna Meiou / Sailor Pluto (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.
8 of 8 films
as Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (voice)
Directed by Chiaki Kon
as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
as Setsuna Meiou / Sailor Pluto (voice)
Directed by Tomoya Takahashi
as Setsuna Meiou / Super Sailor Pluto (voice)
Directed by Chiaki Kon
as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
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
Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (voice)
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2 (2021)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (voice) gives Ai Maeda a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Performance score7.9
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Setsuna Meiou / Sailor Pluto (voice)
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2 (2023)
Performance score7.8
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Setsuna Meiou / Sailor Pluto (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Setsuna Meiou / Super Sailor Pluto (voice)
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 1 (2021)
Performance score7.7
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 1 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Setsuna Meiou / Super Sailor Pluto (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 Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (voice)
Start here. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2 is the clearest statement of what Ai Maeda does — accessible, 80 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ai 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.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Keeps the action register of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2011)
Same director as Kill Bill: Vol. 1, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 1 (2021)
Keeps the action register of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair but asks for a colder reading of it.
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2 (2023)
Keeps the fantasy register of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 1 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
2 films together
Notably Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Chiaki Kon
Director
2 films together
Notably Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2
Tomoya Takahashi
Director
2 films together
Notably Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2
Mari Okada
Director
1 film together
Notably Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
Ryota Nakamura
Director
1 film together
Notably Healin' Good♥Precure: GoGo! Big Transformation! The Town of Dreams
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chiaki Kon
Director
2 films together · 8.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2Quentin Tarantino
Director
2 films together · 8.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kill Bill: Vol. 1Tomoya Takahashi
Director
2 films together · 7.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2Mari Okada
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Maquia: When the Promised Flower BloomsRyota Nakamura
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Healin' Good♥Precure: GoGo! Big Transformation! The Town of DreamsSix 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
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
as O-Ren (anime sequence) (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
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2
as Setsuna Meiou / Sailor Pluto (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
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2
as Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (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. Ai Maeda 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
20 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.
Fantasy Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in fantasy, 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
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2
as Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
as O-Ren (anime sequence) (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos the Movie Part 2
as Setsuna Meiou / Sailor Pluto (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
as Millia (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 2
as Setsuna Meiou / Eternal Sailor Pluto (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Healin' Good♥Precure: GoGo! Big Transformation! The Town of Dreams
as Karen Minatsuki / Cure Aqua (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Healin' Good♥Precure: GoGo! Big Transformation! The Town of Dreams
as Karen Minatsuki / Cure Aqua (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
as O-Ren (anime sequence) (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
Harvey Keitel
Works with the same directors — Quentin Tarantino
Christopher Walken
Works with the same directors — Quentin Tarantino
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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