Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16309
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Mei Nagano 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.
Mei Nagano appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mei. 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, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hideki Takeuchi, Sho Tsukikawa, Mei Nagano 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 Red Blood Cell / AE-3803 · You Shine in the Moonlight (2019) as Mamizu Watarase · Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins (2012) as Tsubame Sanjo
Career snapshot
Ranked #16309 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
2012–2024
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Cells at Work!
Average Nutevio score
7.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Cells at Work!
Most frequent director
Hideki Takeuchi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Hideki Takeuchi
Most common genre
Action
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.6
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. NiNoKuni, You Shine in the Moonlight, Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins — 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
7.2
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. NiNoKuni, You Shine in the Moonlight, Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.51 film | 7.01 film |
| Action | 7.02 films | 7.32 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.32 films |
| Romance | 7.02 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2012Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Tsubame Sanjo.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
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. The current state of the argument, as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
Directed by Hideki Takeuchi
as Mamizu Watarase
Directed by Sho Tsukikawa
as Tomoyo Shiino
Directed by Unknown
as Naoko Tanaka
Directed by Unknown
as Tsubame Sanjo
Directed by Unknown
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
Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
Cells at Work! (2024)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Red Blood Cell / AE-3803 gives Mei Nagano a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mamizu Watarase
You Shine in the Moonlight (2019)
Performance score8.1
You Shine in the Moonlight asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mamizu Watarase is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tomoyo Shiino
My Broken Mariko (2022)
Performance score7.6
My Broken Mariko asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tomoyo Shiino is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Naoko Tanaka
Hell's Garden (2021)
Performance score7.4
Hell's Garden asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Naoko Tanaka 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 Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
Start here. Cells at Work! is the clearest statement of what Mei Nagano 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 Mei 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.
Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins (2012)
Keeps the action register of Cells at Work! but asks for a colder reading of it.
You Shine in the Moonlight (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hell's Garden (2021)
A deliberate change of key after You Shine in the Moonlight — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
My Broken Mariko (2022)
Same director as Hell's Garden, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
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!Sho Tsukikawa
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You Shine in the MoonlightSix 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
Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins
as Tsubame Sanjo
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
You Shine in the Moonlight
as Mamizu Watarase
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 Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins
as Tsubame Sanjo
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Cells at Work!
as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
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. Mei Nagano 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in action, 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
Cells at Work!
as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cells at Work!
as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
NiNoKuni
as Asha / Kotona (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins
as Tsubame Sanjo
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cells at Work!
as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cells at Work!
as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
NiNoKuni
as Asha / Kotona (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cells at Work!
as Red Blood Cell / AE-3803
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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