Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2706
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Masako Nozawa represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 39 years in, and Masako is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Masako Nozawa appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Masako. Weathering with You is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, animation, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Akitaro Daichi, Tetsuro Kodama, Makoto Shinkai and others, Masako Nozawa 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.
Weathering with You (2019) as Fortuneteller (voice) · Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022) as Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (voice) · Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018) as Son Goku / Son Goten / Bardock (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2706 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1986–2025
Career length
39 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Weathering with You
Average Nutevio score
7.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
Me & Roboco: The Movie
Most frequent director
Daisuke Nishio
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Daisuke Nishio
Most common genre
Animation
8 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
7.2
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
7.0
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
7.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Weathering with You, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
8.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone, Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies.
Most productive era
2010s
3 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 | 1980s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.81 film | — |
| Action | 6.82 films | 7.71 film | 7.71 film |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | — | 6.72 films |
| Romance | — | 7.81 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1986Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Son Goku (voice).
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
7.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Showa Gag Manga Roboco (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 Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (voice)
Directed by Tetsuro Kodama
as Son Goku / Son Goten / Bardock (voice)
Directed by Tatsuya Nagamine
as Fortuneteller (voice)
Directed by Makoto Shinkai
as Son Gokû / Son Gohan (voice)
Directed by Daisuke Nishio
as Son Goku (voice)
Directed by Daisuke Nishio
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
Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (voice)
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (voice) gives Masako Nozawa a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Son Goku / Son Goten / Bardock (voice)
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)
Performance score8.2
Dragon Ball Super: Broly asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Son Goku / Son Goten / Bardock (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fortuneteller (voice)
Weathering with You (2019)
Performance score7.6
Weathering with You asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fortuneteller (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Son Gokû / Son Gohan (voice)
Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone (1989)
Performance score7.4
Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Son Gokû / Son Gohan (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 Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (voice)
Start here. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is the clearest statement of what Masako Nozawa does — accessible, 100 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Masako 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.
Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies (1986)
Keeps the action register of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone (1989)
Same director as Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)
Keeps the action register of Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone but asks for a colder reading of it.
Weathering with You (2019)
Keeps the animation register of Dragon Ball Super: Broly but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Daisuke Nishio
Director
2 films together
Notably Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone
Tetsuo Yajima
Director
1 film together
Notably Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us
Tatsuya Nagamine
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Super: Broly
Makoto Shinkai
Director
1 film together
Notably Weathering with You
Tetsuro Kodama
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
Akitaro Daichi
Director
1 film together
Notably Me & Roboco: The Movie
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Daisuke Nishio
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Dragon Ball Z: Dead ZoneMakoto Shinkai
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Weathering with YouTetsuro 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: BrolyTetsuo Yajima
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pokémon the Movie: The Power of UsAkitaro Daichi
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Me & Roboco: The MovieSix 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
Weathering with You
as Fortuneteller (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
Weathering with You
as Fortuneteller (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
Weathering with You
as Fortuneteller (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Weathering with You
as Fortuneteller (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
as Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (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. Masako Nozawa 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
39 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.
Animation Legend
Awarded
8 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
Weathering with You
as Fortuneteller (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 Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Weathering with You
as Fortuneteller (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Birth of Kitaro: The Mystery of GeGeGe
as Medama-Oyaji (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
as Son Goku / Son Gohan / Son Goten / Gotenks (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies
as Son Goku (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Weathering with You
as Fortuneteller (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone
as Son Gokû / Son Gohan (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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