Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4521
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Yu Aoi 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.
Yu Aoi appears in 19 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yu. Rurouni Kenshin: The Final 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 drama, action, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shuichi Okita, Shunji Iwai and others, Yu Aoi 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.
Rurouni Kenshin: The Final (2021) as Megumi Takani · Rurouni Kenshin Part III: The Legend Ends (2014) as Megumi Takani · Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins (2012) as Megumi Takani
Career snapshot
Ranked #4521 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
19
2001–2025
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Rurouni Kenshin: The Final
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Rurouni Kenshin Part III: The Legend Ends
Most frequent director
Shunji Iwai
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Shunji Iwai
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
2h 1m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
6.7
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
2000s
7.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Redline, Tokyo!, Tekkonkinkreet — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.0
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Redline, Tokyo!, Tekkonkinkreet.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.92 films | 6.83 films | 6.66 films |
| Action | 7.12 films | 7.24 films | 7.31 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.81 film | 6.51 film |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | 6.92 films | 6.41 film |
| Crime | 7.11 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.71 film | — | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Shiori Tsuda.
Career peak
2009Redline
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2012Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Tokyo Taxi
The current state of the argument, as Young Sumire.
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.
19 of 19 films
as Tetsuko "Alice" Arisugawa (voice)
Directed by Shunji Iwai
as Megumi Takani
Directed by Unknown
as Megumi Takani
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
Sonoshee McLaren (voice)
Redline (2009)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sonoshee McLaren (voice) gives Yu Aoi a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Tetsuko "Alice" Arisugawa (voice)
The Case of Hana & Alice (2015)
Performance score7.5
The Case of Hana & Alice asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tetsuko "Alice" Arisugawa (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Shiori Tsuda
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
Performance score7.5
All About Lily Chou-Chou asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shiori Tsuda is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Megumi Takani
Rurouni Kenshin: The Final (2021)
Performance score7.4
Rurouni Kenshin: The Final asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Megumi Takani 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 Sonoshee McLaren (voice)
Start here. Redline is the clearest statement of what Yu Aoi does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yu 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.
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
A deliberate change of key after Redline — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rurouni Kenshin Part III: The Legend Ends (2014)
A deliberate change of key after All About Lily Chou-Chou — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Case of Hana & Alice (2015)
A deliberate change of key after Rurouni Kenshin Part III: The Legend Ends — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rurouni Kenshin: The Final (2021)
A deliberate change of key after The Case of Hana & Alice — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Shunji Iwai
Director
2 films together
Notably All About Lily Chou-Chou
Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together
Notably Tokyo!
Shinji Aramaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Space Pirate Captain Harlock
Shuichi Okita
Director
1 film together
Notably Ora, Ora Be Goin' Alone
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Wife of a Spy
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shunji Iwai
Director
2 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
All About Lily Chou-ChouMichel Gondry
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tokyo!Shinji Aramaki
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Space Pirate Captain HarlockKiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wife of a SpyShuichi Okita
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ora, Ora Be Goin' AloneSix 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 Megumi Takani
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Tokyo!
as Pizza-Delivery Girl (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins
as Megumi Takani
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Tokyo!
as Pizza-Delivery Girl (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Redline
as Sonoshee McLaren (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. Yu Aoi 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
24 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
11 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
Children of the Sea
as Kanako Azumi (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Tokyo Ghoul
as Rize Kamishiro
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Romance Doll
as Sonoko Kitamura
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Children of the Sea
as Kanako Azumi (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Rurouni Kenshin: The Final
as Megumi Takani
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Rurouni Kenshin: The Final
as Megumi Takani
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Tokyo!
as Pizza-Delivery Girl (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Space Pirate Captain Harlock
as Miime (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Mark Ruffalo
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Tom Wilkinson
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
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Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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