Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15550
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kaoru Kobayashi represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Kaoru is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kaoru Kobayashi appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kaoru. Princess Mononoke is the clearest case: a film rated 8.4 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 crime, drama, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Baku Kinoshita, Takashi Miike, Shimako Sato and others, Kaoru 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.
Princess Mononoke (1997) as Jikobo (voice) · The Last Blossom (2025) as Akutsu (1986) (voice) · We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021) as Hirotaro Yamane
Career snapshot
Ranked #15550 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1997–2025
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
Princess Mononoke
Average Nutevio score
7.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Princess Mononoke
Most frequent director
Hayao Miyazaki
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Hayao Miyazaki
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
2h 0m
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
6.9
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
1990s
8.4 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Princess Mononoke — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
8.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
8.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Princess Mononoke.
Most productive era
2020s
7 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 7.01 film | 7.56 films |
| Action | — | — | — | 6.91 film |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 7.02 films |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 6.91 film |
| Crime | — | — | — | 8.11 film |
| Romance | — | — | — | 7.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jikobo (voice). 8.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2025The Last Blossom
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2025Sham
The current state of the argument.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Akutsu (1986) (voice)
Directed by Baku Kinoshita
as Jikobo (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Noble Pelican (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
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
Akutsu (1986) (voice)
The Last Blossom (2025)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Akutsu (1986) (voice) gives Kaoru Kobayashi a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jikobo (voice)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Performance score8.3
Princess Mononoke asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jikobo (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hirotaro Yamane
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021)
Performance score7.5
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hirotaro Yamane is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Shoichi Hoshino
Dr. Coto's Clinic (2022)
Performance score7.4
Dr. Coto's Clinic asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shoichi Hoshino 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 Akutsu (1986) (voice)
Start here. The Last Blossom is the clearest statement of what Kaoru Kobayashi does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kaoru 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.
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Keeps the animation register of The Last Blossom but asks for a colder reading of it.
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Princess Mononoke — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Dr. Coto's Clinic (2022)
Keeps the drama register of We Made a Beautiful Bouquet but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Dr. Coto's Clinic but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
2 films together
Notably Princess Mononoke
Nobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together
Notably We Made a Beautiful Bouquet
Takeshi Kitano
Director
1 film together
Notably Kubi
Shimako Sato
Director
1 film together
Notably The Yin Yang Master Zero
Takashi Miike
Director
1 film together
Notably Sham
Baku Kinoshita
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last Blossom
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
2 films together · 7.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Princess MononokeBaku Kinoshita
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Last BlossomNobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Made a Beautiful BouquetTakashi Miike
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShamTakeshi Kitano
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KubiShimako Sato
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Yin Yang Master ZeroSix 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
Princess Mononoke
as Jikobo (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
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet
as Hirotaro Yamane
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Princess Mononoke
as Jikobo (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Dr. Coto's Clinic
as Shoichi Hoshino
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Last Blossom
as Akutsu (1986) (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. Kaoru 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.
Career Achievement
Awarded
28 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
7 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
Princess Mononoke
as Jikobo (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Last Blossom
as Akutsu (1986) (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Boy and the Heron
as Noble Pelican (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Yin Yang Master Zero
as Fujiwara Yosuke
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Princess Mononoke
as Jikobo (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kubi
as Tokugawa Ieyasu
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Last Blossom
as Akutsu (1986) (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Princess Mononoke
as Jikobo (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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