Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#885
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kazuhiko Inoue 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.
Kazuhiko Inoue appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kazuhiko. Your Name. is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 action, mystery, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Katsuya Shigehara, Yuzuru Tachikawa, Susumu Mitsunaka and others, Kazuhiko Inoue 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.
Your Name. (2016) as Taki's Father (voice) · Gintama: The Very Final (2021) as Oboro (voice) · Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011) as Ryuji Morisaki (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #885 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2011–2025
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Your Name.
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Your Name.
Most frequent director
Makoto Shinkai
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Makoto Shinkai
Most common genre
Animation
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.5
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
8.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Your Name., Children Who Chase Lost Voices — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
8.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.9
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. Your Name., Children Who Chase Lost Voices.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 8.71 film | 7.02 films |
| Action | — | 7.24 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.01 film |
| Crime | — | 6.93 films |
| Romance | 8.71 film | 7.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2011Children Who Chase Lost Voices
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ryuji Morisaki (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2016Your Name.
8.7 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
2025Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback
The current state of the argument, as Ninzaburo Shiratori (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.
9 of 9 films
as Taki's Father (voice)
Directed by Makoto Shinkai
as Oboro (voice)
Directed by Chizuru Miyawaki
as Ryuji Morisaki (voice)
Directed by Makoto Shinkai
as Nyanko-sensei, Madara (voice)
Directed by Hideki Ito
as Ninzaburo Shiratori (voice)
Directed by Katsuya Shigehara
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
Taki's Father (voice)
Your Name. (2016)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Taki's Father (voice) gives Kazuhiko Inoue a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Oboro (voice)
Gintama: The Very Final (2021)
Performance score7.9
Gintama: The Very Final asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Oboro (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ryuji Morisaki (voice)
Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011)
Performance score7.6
Children Who Chase Lost Voices asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ryuji Morisaki (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Nyanko-sensei, Madara (voice)
Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange Visitor (2021)
Performance score7.4
Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange Visitor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nyanko-sensei, Madara (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 Taki's Father (voice)
Start here. Your Name. is the clearest statement of what Kazuhiko Inoue does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kazuhiko 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.
Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011)
Same director as Your Name., different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Gintama: The Very Final (2021)
Keeps the animation register of Children Who Chase Lost Voices but asks for a colder reading of it.
Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange Visitor (2021)
Keeps the animation register of Gintama: The Very Final but asks for a colder reading of it.
Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback (2025)
Keeps the animation register of Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange Visitor but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Makoto Shinkai
Director
2 films together
Notably Your Name.
Toshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together
Notably Love Me, Love Me Not
Hideki Ito
Director
1 film together
Notably Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange Visitor
Chizuru Miyawaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Gintama: The Very Final
Shinji Higuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Thunderbirds 55/GOGO
Susumu Mitsunaka
Director
1 film together
Notably Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween
Yuzuru Tachikawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine
Katsuya Shigehara
Director
1 film together
Notably Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Makoto Shinkai
Director
2 films together · 8.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Your Name.Chizuru Miyawaki
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gintama: The Very FinalKatsuya Shigehara
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detective Conan: One-Eyed FlashbackYuzuru Tachikawa
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detective Conan: Black Iron SubmarineHideki Ito
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange VisitorToshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love Me, Love Me NotSusumu Mitsunaka
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detective Conan: The Bride of HalloweenShinji Higuchi
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thunderbirds 55/GOGOSix 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
Your Name.
as Taki's Father (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
Your Name.
as Taki's Father (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
Your Name.
as Taki's Father (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gintama: The Very Final
as Oboro (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Your Name.
as Taki's Father (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. Kazuhiko Inoue 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
8 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
Your Name.
as Taki's Father (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gintama: The Very Final
as Oboro (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange Visitor
as Nyanko-sensei, Madara (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback
as Ninzaburo Shiratori (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Gintama: The Very Final
as Oboro (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine
as Ninzaburo Shiratori (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Love Me, Love Me Not
as Yuna's father (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Your Name.
as Taki's Father (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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