Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4916
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Aya Hisakawa 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 Hisakawa appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Aya. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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 action, science fiction, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tetsuro Kodama, Kohdai Kakimoto, Kyohei Ishiguro and others, Aya Hisakawa 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.
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022) as Bulma (voice) · Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018) as Bulma (voice) · Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021) as Tanaka (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #4916 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2018–2022
Career length
4 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Dragon Ball Super: Broly
Most frequent director
Tetsuro Kodama
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Tetsuro Kodama
Most common genre
Animation
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 33m
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
2010s
7.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Dragon Ball Super: Broly — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.0
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. Dragon Ball Super: Broly.
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 | — | 7.03 films |
| Action | 7.71 film | 6.63 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.22 films |
| Romance | — | 7.03 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 Bulma (voice). 7.7 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 Nonoe Hanazono (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 Bulma (voice)
Directed by Tatsuya Nagamine
as Bulma (voice)
Directed by Tetsuro Kodama
as Tanaka (voice)
Directed by Kyohei Ishiguro
as Yuna's mother (voice)
Directed by Toshimasa Kuroyanagi
as Ray Beams (voice)
Directed by Hisatoshi Shimizu
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
Bulma (voice)
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bulma (voice) gives Aya Hisakawa a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bulma (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. Bulma (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tanaka (voice)
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)
Performance score7.2
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tanaka (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Yuna's mother (voice)
Love Me, Love Me Not (2020)
Performance score6.9
Love Me, Love Me Not asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yuna's mother (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 Bulma (voice)
Start here. Dragon Ball Super: Broly is the clearest statement of what Aya Hisakawa does — accessible, 101 minutes, and rated 7.7 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.
Love Me, Love Me Not (2020)
Keeps the animation register of Dragon Ball Super: Broly but asks for a colder reading of it.
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)
Keeps the romance register of Love Me, Love Me Not but asks for a colder reading of it.
Eureka: Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution (2021)
Keeps the romance register of Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)
Keeps the action register of Eureka: Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tatsuya Nagamine
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Super: Broly
Toshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together
Notably Love Me, Love Me Not
Junji Shimizu
Director
1 film together
Notably Tropical-Rouge! Precure: The Snow Princess and the Miraculous Ring!
Hisatoshi Shimizu
Director
1 film together
Notably Eureka: Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution
Kyohei Ishiguro
Director
1 film together
Notably Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
Kohdai Kakimoto
Director
1 film together
Notably BanG Dream! Poppin'Dream!
Tetsuro Kodama
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tetsuro 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 HeroTatsuya Nagamine
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: BrolyKyohei Ishiguro
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Words Bubble Up Like Soda PopToshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love Me, Love Me NotHisatoshi Shimizu
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Eureka: Eureka Seven Hi-EvolutionKohdai Kakimoto
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BanG Dream! Poppin'Dream!Junji Shimizu
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tropical-Rouge! Precure: The Snow Princess and the Miraculous Ring!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
Dragon Ball Super: Broly
as Bulma (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
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
as Tanaka (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
Dragon Ball Super: Broly
as Bulma (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
BanG Dream! Poppin'Dream!
as Nonoe Hanazono (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dragon Ball Super: Broly
as Bulma (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 Hisakawa 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
Dragon Ball Super: Broly
as Bulma (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
as Bulma (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
as Tanaka (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Dragon Ball Super: Broly
as Bulma (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
as Bulma (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Tropical-Rouge! Precure: The Snow Princess and the Miraculous Ring!
as Yuri Tsukikage / Cure Moonlight (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Love Me, Love Me Not
as Yuna's mother (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Love Me, Love Me Not
as Yuna's mother (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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