Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11545
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Mana Ashida 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.
Mana Ashida appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mana. Cells at Work! 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 mystery, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yukihiko Tsutsumi, Mamoru Hosoda, Hideki Takeuchi and others, Mana Ashida 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.
Cells at Work! (2024) as Niko Urushizaki · Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us (2018) as Largo (voice) · Pacific Rim (2013) as Young Mako
Career snapshot
Ranked #11545 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2013–2026
Career length
13 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Cells at Work!
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Cells at Work!
Most frequent director
Yukihiko Tsutsumi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Yukihiko Tsutsumi
Most common genre
Fantasy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.2
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
7.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Children of the Sea, Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us, Pacific Rim — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.1
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. Children of the Sea, Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us, Pacific Rim.
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 | — | 6.45 films |
| Action | 7.21 film | 7.42 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2013Pacific Rim
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Young Mako.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024Cells at Work!
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
2026Chimney Town: Frozen in Time
The current state of the argument, as Lubicchi (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.
10 of 10 films
as Niko Urushizaki
Directed by Hideki Takeuchi
as Scarlet (voice)
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
as Ruka Azumi (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Yui (voice)
Directed by Shinya Kawatsura
as Largo (voice)
Directed by Tetsuo Yajima
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
Niko Urushizaki
Cells at Work! (2024)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Niko Urushizaki gives Mana Ashida a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Scarlet (voice)
Scarlet (2025)
Performance score7.7
Scarlet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Scarlet (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ruka Azumi (voice)
Children of the Sea (2019)
Performance score7.7
Children of the Sea asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ruka Azumi (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Yui (voice)
The House of the Lost on the Cape (2021)
Performance score7.3
The House of the Lost on the Cape asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yui (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 Niko Urushizaki
Start here. Cells at Work! is the clearest statement of what Mana Ashida does — accessible, 110 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mana 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.
Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us (2018)
Keeps the fantasy register of Cells at Work! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Children of the Sea (2019)
Keeps the fantasy register of Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us but asks for a colder reading of it.
The House of the Lost on the Cape (2021)
Keeps the fantasy register of Children of the Sea but asks for a colder reading of it.
Scarlet (2025)
Keeps the drama register of The House of the Lost on the Cape but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Guillermo del Toro
Director
1 film together
Notably Pacific Rim
Tetsuo Yajima
Director
1 film together
Notably Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us
Shinya Kawatsura
Director
1 film together
Notably The House of the Lost on the Cape
Hideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Cells at Work!
Mamoru Hosoda
Director
1 film together
Notably Scarlet
Yukihiko Tsutsumi
Director
1 film together
Notably MYSTERY ARENA
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cells at Work!Tetsuo Yajima
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pokémon the Movie: The Power of UsGuillermo del Toro
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pacific RimMamoru Hosoda
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ScarletShinya Kawatsura
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The House of the Lost on the CapeYukihiko Tsutsumi
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MYSTERY ARENASix 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
Cells at Work!
as Niko Urushizaki
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us
as Largo (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
Cells at Work!
as Niko Urushizaki
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Pacific Rim
as Young Mako
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Cells at Work!
as Niko Urushizaki
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. Mana Ashida 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.
Fantasy Legend
Awarded
7 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
Children of the Sea
as Ruka Azumi (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cells at Work!
as Niko Urushizaki
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Chimney Town: Frozen in Time
as Lubicchi (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Children of the Sea
as Ruka Azumi (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cells at Work!
as Niko Urushizaki
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cells at Work!
as Niko Urushizaki
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The House of the Lost on the Cape
as Yui (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Pacific Rim
as Young Mako
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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