Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2926
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ayaka Asai 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.
Ayaka Asai appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ayaka. Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, animation, music. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Chen Dali, Taichi Ogawa, Tomohisa Taguchi and others, Ayaka Asai 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.
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (2020) as Miyako Inoue (voice) · Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends- (2022) as Erika Kose (voice) · The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie (2026) as Chihiro Kobayashi (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2926 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2018–2026
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Most frequent director
Taichi Ogawa
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Taichi Ogawa
Most common genre
Animation
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 16m
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
7.4 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Hello World, Sound! Euphonium the Movie - Our Promise: A Brand New Day, The Testament of Sister New Devil: Departures — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.4
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.4
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. Hello World, Sound! Euphonium the Movie - Our Promise: A Brand New Day, The Testament of Sister New Devil: Departures.
Most productive era
2020s
7 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 | 7.33 films | 2.33 films |
| Action | 7.61 film | 7.52 films |
| Comedy | — | 8.01 film |
| Romance | 7.31 film | 8.02 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
2018The Testament of Sister New Devil: Departures
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mio Naruse (voice). Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2020Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
8.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026Sound! Euphonium: The Final Movie, Part 2
The current state of the argument, as Hazuki Katou (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.
11 of 11 films
as Chihiro Kobayashi (voice)
Directed by Chen Dali
as Mio Naruse (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Erika Kose (voice)
Directed by Mamoru Hatakeyama
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
Directed by Tomohisa Taguchi
as Hazuki Katou (voice)
Directed by Naoko Yamada
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
Chihiro Kobayashi (voice)
The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie (2026)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chihiro Kobayashi (voice) gives Ayaka Asai a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mio Naruse (voice)
The Testament of Sister New Devil: Departures (2018)
Performance score7.9
The Testament of Sister New Devil: Departures asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mio Naruse (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Erika Kose (voice)
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends- (2022)
Performance score7.8
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends- asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Erika Kose (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Miyako Inoue (voice)
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (2020)
Performance score7.8
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Miyako Inoue (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 Chihiro Kobayashi (voice)
Start here. The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie is the clearest statement of what Ayaka Asai does — accessible, 101 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ayaka 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.
The Testament of Sister New Devil: Departures (2018)
Keeps the animation register of The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Liz and the Blue Bird (2018)
Keeps the animation register of The Testament of Sister New Devil: Departures but asks for a colder reading of it.
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (2020)
Keeps the animation register of Liz and the Blue Bird but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends- (2022)
Keeps the animation register of Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tomohisa Taguchi
Director
2 films together
Notably Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Taichi Ogawa
Director
2 films together
Notably Sound! Euphonium: The Final Movie, Part 1
Naoko Yamada
Director
1 film together
Notably Liz and the Blue Bird
Tatsuya Ishihara
Director
1 film together
Notably Sound! Euphonium the Movie - Our Promise: A Brand New Day
Tomohiko Ito
Director
1 film together
Notably Hello World
Mamoru Hatakeyama
Director
1 film together
Notably Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends-
Chen Dali
Director
1 film together
Notably The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tomohisa Taguchi
Director
2 films together · 7.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution KizunaTaichi Ogawa
Director
2 films together · 0.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Sound! Euphonium: The Final Movie, Part 1Mamoru Hatakeyama
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends-Chen Dali
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Dangers in My Heart: The MovieNaoko Yamada
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Liz and the Blue BirdTomohiko Ito
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hello WorldTatsuya Ishihara
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sound! Euphonium the Movie - Our Promise: A Brand New DaySix 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
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (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
The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie
as Chihiro Kobayashi (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
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie
as Chihiro Kobayashi (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. Ayaka Asai 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
11 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
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Dangers in My Heart: The Movie
as Chihiro Kobayashi (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Miyako Inoue (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Sound! Euphonium the Movie - Our Promise: A Brand New Day
as Hazuki Katou (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island
as Barbara / Katz Hawin (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 adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
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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