Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#34816
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Hana Sugisaki 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.
Hana Sugisaki appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Hana. When Marnie Was There 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, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Nobuhiro Doi, Takashi Miike, Kyohei Ishiguro and others, Hana Sugisaki 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.
When Marnie Was There (2014) as Sayaka (voice) · Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021) as Smile (voice) · Unreachable (2025) as Yuuka Kataishi
Career snapshot
Ranked #34816 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2014–2025
Career length
11 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
When Marnie Was There
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Unreachable
Most frequent director
Hisashi Kimura
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Hisashi Kimura
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
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
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Promised Land, 12 Suicidal Teens, Bleach — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.0
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. The Promised Land, 12 Suicidal Teens, Bleach.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 6.73 films | 6.75 films |
| Action | 6.51 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.43 films |
| Crime | 6.21 film | 6.31 film |
| Romance | — | 7.01 film |
| Horror | — | 6.31 film |
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 Sayaka (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
2025Unreachable
The current state of the argument, as Yuuka Kataishi.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Sayaka (voice)
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
as Smile (voice)
Directed by Kyohei Ishiguro
as Yuuka Kataishi
Directed by Nobuhiro Doi
as Rukia Kuchiki
Directed by Shinsuke Sato
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
Sayaka (voice)
When Marnie Was There (2014)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sayaka (voice) gives Hana Sugisaki a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Smile (voice)
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)
Performance score7.4
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Smile (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Yuuka Kataishi
Unreachable (2025)
Performance score7.3
Unreachable asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yuuka Kataishi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sayo
We're Broke, My Lord! (2023)
Performance score7.0
We're Broke, My Lord! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sayo 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 Sayaka (voice)
Start here. When Marnie Was There is the clearest statement of what Hana Sugisaki does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Hana 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.
Bleach (2018)
A deliberate change of key after When Marnie Was There — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Bleach — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
We're Broke, My Lord! (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Unreachable (2025)
A deliberate change of key after We're Broke, My Lord! — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hisashi Kimura
Director
2 films together
Notably 99.9 Criminal Lawyer: The Movie
Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Director
1 film together
Notably When Marnie Was There
Shinsuke Sato
Director
1 film together
Notably Bleach
Yukihiko Tsutsumi
Director
1 film together
Notably 12 Suicidal Teens
Takahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together
Notably The Promised Land
Shunsuke Kariyama
Director
1 film together
Notably Blue, Painful, Fragile
Kyohei Ishiguro
Director
1 film together
Notably Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
Takashi Miike
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Yokai War: Guardians
Nobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together
Notably Unreachable
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hisashi Kimura
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
99.9 Criminal Lawyer: The MovieHiromasa Yonebayashi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
When Marnie Was ThereKyohei Ishiguro
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Words Bubble Up Like Soda PopNobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UnreachableShinsuke Sato
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BleachShunsuke Kariyama
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blue, Painful, FragileTakashi Miike
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Great Yokai War: GuardiansYukihiko Tsutsumi
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
12 Suicidal TeensTakahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Promised LandSix 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
When Marnie Was There
as Sayaka (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
When Marnie Was There
as Sayaka (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
When Marnie Was There
as Sayaka (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
When Marnie Was There
as Sayaka (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
When Marnie Was There
as Sayaka (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. Hana Sugisaki 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in drama, 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
When Marnie Was There
as Sayaka (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
When Marnie Was There
as Sayaka (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Imaginary
as Aurora (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
12 Suicidal Teens
as Anri
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Bleach
as Rukia Kuchiki
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Bleach
as Rukia Kuchiki
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Imaginary
as Aurora (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
99.9 Criminal Lawyer: SP
as Honoka Kono
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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