Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kandai Ueda appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kandai. HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE is the clearest case: a film rated 6.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, physical performance, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Akira Yamazaki, Kandai Ueda 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.
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE (2023) as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite · Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~ (2024) as Undertaker · MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER (2022) as Azuma Yukishiro
Career snapshot
A Nutevio catalogue profile for Kandai Ueda.
Films in Nutevio
3
2022–2024
Career length
2 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.5
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
Average Nutevio score
2.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
Most frequent director
Akira Yamazaki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Akira Yamazaki
Most common genre
Action
1 title
Average runtime
2h 36m
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
2.2 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~, HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE, MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
2.2
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
3.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2020s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~, HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE, MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2020s |
|---|---|
| Action | 6.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
2022MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Azuma Yukishiro. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
6.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2024Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~
The current state of the argument, as Undertaker.
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.
3 of 3 films
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
Directed by Akira Yamazaki
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Undertaker
Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~ (2024)
Performance score6.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Undertaker gives Kandai Ueda a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE (2023)
Performance score6.5
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Illumi Zoldyck / Kite is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Azuma Yukishiro
MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER (2022)
Performance score6.5
MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Azuma Yukishiro 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 Undertaker
Start here. Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~ is the clearest statement of what Kandai Ueda does — accessible, 180 minutes, and rated 0.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kandai 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.
MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER (2022)
Same director as Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE (2023)
A deliberate change of key after MANKAI MOVIE「A3!」 AUTUMN & WINTER — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
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.
Akira Yamazaki
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGESix 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
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~
as Undertaker
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. Kandai Ueda has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
HUNTER X HUNTER THE STAGE
as Illumi Zoldyck / Kite
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Musical Kuroshitsuji ~The Public School's Secret 2024~
as Undertaker
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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