Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9032
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kazuki Yao represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Kazuki is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kazuki Yao appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kazuki. Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are transformation, emotional range, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Koichi Sakamoto, Munehisa Sakai, Hiroshi Watanabe, Kazuki Yao 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.
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age (2024) as Ninjaman (voice) · One Piece Film: Strong World (2009) as Franky (voice) · One Piece Film Red (2022) as Franky (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #9032 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1996–2024
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
Average Nutevio score
7.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
Most frequent director
Koichi Sakamoto
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Koichi Sakamoto
Most common genre
Animation
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 16m
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
7.0
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
8.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age, One Piece Film Red — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
8.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
8.6
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. Slayers Return.
Most productive era
2020s
2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | — | — | 8.62 films |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | — | — | 10.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1996Slayers Return
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Zahhard (voice).
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2024Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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. The current state of the argument, as Ninjaman (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.
5 of 5 films
as Ninjaman (voice)
Directed by Koichi Sakamoto
as Franky (voice)
Directed by Munehisa Sakai
as Franky (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Zahhard (voice)
Directed by Hiroshi Watanabe
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
Ninjaman (voice)
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age (2024)
Performance score9.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ninjaman (voice) gives Kazuki Yao a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Franky (voice)
One Piece Film: Strong World (2009)
Performance score7.2
One Piece Film: Strong World asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Franky (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Franky (voice)
One Piece Film Red (2022)
Performance score7.1
One Piece Film Red asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Franky (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
(voice)
Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land (2019)
Performance score6.5
Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. (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 Ninjaman (voice)
Start here. Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age is the clearest statement of what Kazuki Yao does — accessible, 32 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kazuki 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.
Slayers Return (1996)
Keeps the comedy register of Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Piece Film: Strong World (2009)
Keeps the fantasy register of Slayers Return but asks for a colder reading of it.
Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land (2019)
Keeps the animation register of One Piece Film: Strong World but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Piece Film Red (2022)
Same director as Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
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.
Koichi Sakamoto
Director
1 film together · 10.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle AgeMunehisa Sakai
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
One Piece Film: Strong WorldHiroshi Watanabe
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Slayers ReturnSix 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
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (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
One Piece Film: Strong World
as Franky (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
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (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. Kazuki Yao 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.
Animation Legend
Awarded
4 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
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
One Piece Film: Strong World
as Franky (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
One Piece Film: Strong World
as Franky (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
One Piece Film Red
as Franky (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
One Piece Film Red
as Franky (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Ninja Sentai Kakuranger Part 3: The Fights of Middle Age
as Ninjaman (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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