Akari Takaishi

Takaishi's career breaks into three fairly clean phases. First: the stage and group years. After winning the Avex contest in 2014, she performed with α-X's and began appearing in theater productions, including *Sound of Waves* (2017) and *Women's Baseball* (2019) (Wikipedia). Her first credited stage role came in 2016 with *人魚外伝～Anecdote of Mermaid～* (TMDB). Smaller film roles followed from 2017, and television work began in 2020 — a slow build, but a deliberate one. The second phase is really the *Baby Assassins* era, and it's the one that defined her internationally. The original *Baby Assassins* (2021) cast her as Chisato Sugimoto, a high school student who moonlights as a contract killer — and the film's blend of deadpan comedy and genuinely brutal action sequences gave Takaishi material that showcased both physical discipline and comic timing. The sequel, *Baby Assassins 2* (2023), hit 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (Wikipedia), and a third installment, *Baby Assassins: Nice Days*, arrived in 2024. Three films in three years, same character, growing audience. That's a franchise. The third phase — and we're in it now — looks like a deliberate expansion beyond the action lane. In 2024 alone, she appeared in *Ghost Killer* as Fumika Matsuoka, provided the voice of Kimi Sakunaga in the animated *The Colors Within*, and took on the role of Makoto Tomita in *Stolen Identity: Final Hacking Game* (Wikipedia). On the television side, she starred as Mikoto Ochiai across two seasons of the Asadora drama *Falling High School Girl and Irresponsible Teacher* (2023–24), and in 2025 she stepped into the lead role of Toki Matsuno in *The Ghost Writer's Wife* — an NHK Asadora serial, which in Japan carries real cultural weight. Hard to say if she'll stay in the action space long-term or lean further into dramatic television, but the 2024–2025 slate suggests she isn't interested in being boxed in.