Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3072
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Tomoaki Maeno 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.
Tomoaki Maeno appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tomoaki. HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 comedy, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yasuhito Kikuchi, Susumu Mitsunaka, Tomoya Takahashi and others, Tomoaki Maeno 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.
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle (2024) as Makoto Shimada (voice) · That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022) as Verudora (voice) · Trinity Seven: Heaven's Library & Crimson Lord (2019) as Abyss Trinity (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3072 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2017–2026
Career length
9 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
Average Nutevio score
5.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
Most frequent director
Yasuhito Kikuchi
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Yasuhito Kikuchi
Most common genre
Animation
12 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
2020s
5.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea, HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle, Delicious Party Precure Movie: Dreaming Children's Lunch! — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
5.1
Across 9 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
5.1
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. Genji Fantasy: The Cat Fell in Love With Hikaru Genji, Utano Princesama Maji LOVE Kingdom, Trinity Seven: Heaven's Library & Crimson Lord.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | — | 0.02 films |
| Action | 6.82 films | 6.52 films |
| Comedy | 4.53 films | 6.74 films |
| Romance | 6.31 film | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Invel Yura (voice).
Career peak
2022That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2024HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea
The current state of the argument, as Veldora (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.
13 of 13 films
as Makoto Shimada (voice)
Directed by Susumu Mitsunaka
as Verudora (voice)
Directed by Yasuhito Kikuchi
as Veldora (voice)
Directed by Yasuhito Kikuchi
as White Blood Cell U-1146 (Neutrophil) (voice)
Directed by Hirofumi Ogura
as Abyss Trinity (voice)
Directed by Hiroshi Nishikiori
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
Makoto Shimada (voice)
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle (2024)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Makoto Shimada (voice) gives Tomoaki Maeno a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Verudora (voice)
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022)
Performance score7.2
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Verudora (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Veldora (voice)
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea (2026)
Performance score7.0
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Veldora (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
White Blood Cell U-1146 (Neutrophil) (voice)
Cells at Work!! The Return of the Strongest Enemy: A Huge Uproar in the Body’s Bowels! (2020)
Performance score7.0
Cells at Work!! The Return of the Strongest Enemy: A Huge Uproar in the Body’s Bowels! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. White Blood Cell U-1146 (Neutrophil) (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 Makoto Shimada (voice)
Start here. HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle is the clearest statement of what Tomoaki Maeno does — accessible, 84 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tomoaki 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.
Trinity Seven: Heaven's Library & Crimson Lord (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cells at Work!! The Return of the Strongest Enemy: A Huge Uproar in the Body’s Bowels! (2020)
Keeps the action register of Trinity Seven: Heaven's Library & Crimson Lord but asks for a colder reading of it.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022)
Keeps the animation register of Cells at Work!! The Return of the Strongest Enemy: A Huge Uproar in the Body’s Bowels! but asks for a colder reading of it.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea (2026)
Same director as That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond, 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.
Takaharu Ozaki
Director
2 films together
Notably WAVE!! Surfing Yappe!! - Chapter 2
Yasuhito Kikuchi
Director
2 films together
Notably That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
Tatsuma Minamikawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
Hiroshi Nishikiori
Director
1 film together
Notably Trinity Seven: Heaven's Library & Crimson Lord
Jouji Furuta
Director
1 film together
Notably Utano Princesama Maji LOVE Kingdom
Rika Ota
Director
1 film together
Notably Genji Fantasy: The Cat Fell in Love With Hikaru Genji
Hirofumi Ogura
Director
1 film together
Notably Cells at Work!! The Return of the Strongest Enemy: A Huge Uproar in the Body’s Bowels!
Tomoya Takahashi
Director
1 film together
Notably The World's Greatest First Love: Proposal
Susumu Mitsunaka
Director
1 film together
Notably HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Yasuhito Kikuchi
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
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet BondTakaharu Ozaki
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
WAVE!! Surfing Yappe!! - Chapter 2Susumu Mitsunaka
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster BattleHiroshi Nishikiori
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Trinity Seven: Heaven's Library & Crimson LordTatsuma Minamikawa
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fairy Tail: Dragon CryHirofumi Ogura
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Jouji Furuta
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Utano Princesama Maji LOVE KingdomTomoya Takahashi
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The World's Greatest First Love: ProposalRika Ota
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Genji Fantasy: The Cat Fell in Love With Hikaru GenjiSix 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
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
as Verudora (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
Utano Princesama Maji LOVE Kingdom
as Camus (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
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
as Makoto Shimada (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
as Makoto Shimada (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle
as Makoto Shimada (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. Tomoaki Maeno 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
12 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
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
as Verudora (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Trinity Seven: Heaven's Library & Crimson Lord
as Abyss Trinity (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The World's Greatest First Love: Proposal
as Yukina, Kou (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
as Verudora (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry
as Invel Yura (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Delicious Party Precure Movie: Dreaming Children's Lunch!
as Rosemary (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Delicious Party Precure Movie: Dreaming Children's Lunch!
as Rosemary (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The World's Greatest First Love: Proposal
as Yukina, Kou (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
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Reference
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