Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5425
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Chikahiro Kobayashi 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.
Chikahiro Kobayashi appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Chikahiro. Cosmic Princess Kaguya! is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 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 science fiction, fantasy, music. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yasuhito Kikuchi, Kozo Kaiho, Tatsuyuki Nagai and others, Chikahiro Kobayashi 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.
Cosmic Princess Kaguya! (2026) as Homeroom Teacher (voice) · The First Slam Dunk (2022) as Yohei Mito (voice) · That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022) as Ranga (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #5425 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
Most frequent director
Yasuhito Kikuchi
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Yasuhito Kikuchi
Most common genre
Animation
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.2
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. Her Blue Sky, Lupin the Third: Prison of the Past — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
Across 2 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. Her Blue Sky, Lupin the Third: Prison of the Past.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | — | 7.81 film |
| Action | 7.01 film | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | 7.01 film | 7.22 films |
| Crime | 7.01 film | — |
| Romance | 7.41 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019Her Blue Sky
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kodama (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.3 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.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Akihiko Hazama (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.
7 of 7 films
as Homeroom Teacher (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Yohei Mito (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Ranga (voice)
Directed by Yasuhito Kikuchi
as Kodama (voice)
Directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai
as Younger Balmer Brother (voice)
Directed by Hatsuki Tsuji
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
Homeroom Teacher (voice)
Cosmic Princess Kaguya! (2026)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Homeroom Teacher (voice) gives Chikahiro Kobayashi a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Yohei Mito (voice)
The First Slam Dunk (2022)
Performance score7.6
The First Slam Dunk asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yohei Mito (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ranga (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. Ranga (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kodama (voice)
Her Blue Sky (2019)
Performance score7.2
Her Blue Sky asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kodama (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 Homeroom Teacher (voice)
Start here. Cosmic Princess Kaguya! is the clearest statement of what Chikahiro Kobayashi does — accessible, 141 minutes, and rated 8.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Chikahiro 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.
Her Blue Sky (2019)
Keeps the animation register of Cosmic Princess Kaguya! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Lupin the Third: Prison of the Past (2019)
Keeps the animation register of Her Blue Sky but asks for a colder reading of it.
The First Slam Dunk (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Lupin the Third: Prison of the Past 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 The First Slam Dunk but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Yasuhito Kikuchi
Director
2 films together
Notably That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
Hatsuki Tsuji
Director
1 film together
Notably Lupin the Third: Prison of the Past
Tatsuyuki Nagai
Director
1 film together
Notably Her Blue Sky
Kozo Kaiho
Director
1 film together
Notably Patlabor EZY: File 1
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Yasuhito Kikuchi
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
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet BondTatsuyuki Nagai
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Her Blue SkyHatsuki Tsuji
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lupin the Third: Prison of the PastKozo Kaiho
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Patlabor EZY: File 1Six 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
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
as Homeroom Teacher (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
Her Blue Sky
as Kodama (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
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
as Homeroom Teacher (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
as Homeroom Teacher (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
as Homeroom Teacher (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. Chikahiro Kobayashi 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
7 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
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
as Homeroom Teacher (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
as Homeroom Teacher (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Her Blue Sky
as Kodama (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 Ranga (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
as Homeroom Teacher (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Lupin the Third: Prison of the Past
as Younger Balmer Brother (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The First Slam Dunk
as Yohei Mito (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Lupin the Third: Prison of the Past
as Younger Balmer Brother (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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