Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12311
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kazuya Saji works on emotional range 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.
Kazuya Saji appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kazuya. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are emotional range, quiet performance, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shinsuke Yanagi, Soichi Masui, Yutaro Kubo and others, Kazuya Saji 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.
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2018) as Father of the Boy and Girl (voice) · Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid (2023) as Physics Teacher (voice) · The Girl from the Other Side (2023) as (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #12311 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
2018–2025
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
Average Nutevio score
7.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
Most frequent director
Shinsuke Yanagi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Shinsuke Yanagi
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 24m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
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
6.7
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
7.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.2
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. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.91 film | 7.63 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.41 film |
| Romance | 7.91 film | 7.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2018I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Father of the Boy and Girl (voice). 7.9 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
2025Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
The current state of the argument, as Teacher (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.
4 of 4 films
as Father of the Boy and Girl (voice)
Directed by Shinichiro Ushijima
as Physics Teacher (voice)
Directed by Soichi Masui
as (voice)
Directed by Yutaro Kubo
as Teacher (voice)
Directed by Shinsuke Yanagi
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
Father of the Boy and Girl (voice)
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2018)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Father of the Boy and Girl (voice) gives Kazuya Saji a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Physics Teacher (voice)
Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid (2023)
Performance score7.5
Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Physics Teacher (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
(voice)
The Girl from the Other Side (2023)
Performance score7.4
The Girl from the Other Side 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 movie#4
Teacher (voice)
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain (2025)
Performance score7.2
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Teacher (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 Father of the Boy and Girl (voice)
Start here. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is the clearest statement of what Kazuya Saji does — accessible, 108 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kazuya 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.
Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid (2023)
Keeps the drama register of I Want to Eat Your Pancreas but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Girl from the Other Side (2023)
Keeps the fantasy register of Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid but asks for a colder reading of it.
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain (2025)
Keeps the drama register of The Girl from the Other Side but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Shinichiro Ushijima
Director
1 film together
Notably I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
Yutaro Kubo
Director
1 film together
Notably The Girl from the Other Side
Soichi Masui
Director
1 film together
Notably Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid
Shinsuke Yanagi
Director
1 film together
Notably Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shinichiro Ushijima
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Want to Eat Your PancreasSoichi Masui
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack KidYutaro Kubo
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Girl from the Other SideShinsuke Yanagi
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the RainSix 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
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
as Father of the Boy and Girl (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
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
as Father of the Boy and Girl (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
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
as Father of the Boy and Girl (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Teacher (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
as Father of the Boy and Girl (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. Kazuya Saji 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 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
The Girl from the Other Side
as (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Girl from the Other Side
as (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Teacher (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Girl from the Other Side
as (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
as Father of the Boy and Girl (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Girl from the Other Side
as (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Teacher (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Senpai Is an Otokonoko Movie: Sunshine After the Rain
as Teacher (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Mark Ruffalo
Built a career in the same territory: mystery and drama
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Have your say
Community
Which Kazuya Saji performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
