Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6286
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ken Yasuda 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.
Ken Yasuda appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ken. Spirited Away is the clearest case: a film rated 8.8 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 mystery, horror, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hideaki Anno, Yusuke Taki, Takahisa Zeze and others, Ken Yasuda 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.
Spirited Away (2001) as Oshira-sama (voice) · Howl's Moving Castle (2004) as (voice) · Fragments of the Last Will (2022)
Career snapshot
Ranked #6286 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2001–2025
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.8
Spirited Away
Average Nutevio score
7.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Spirited Away
Most frequent director
Hayao Miyazaki
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Hayao Miyazaki
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 59m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.4
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
7.2
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
2000s
8.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
8.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.72 films | 7.52 films |
| Action | — | 6.82 films | 7.02 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.71 film |
| Comedy | — | 7.03 films | 6.32 films |
| Crime | — | 6.71 film | 7.01 film |
| Romance | — | — | 5.71 film |
| Horror | — | — | 7.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2001Spirited Away
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Oshira-sama (voice). 8.8 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
2025Dollhouse
The current state of the argument, as Yamamoto.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Oshira-sama (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Directed by Takahisa Zeze
as Takashi Nishimura
Directed by Nobuhiro Doi
as Toichi (voice)
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
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
Oshira-sama (voice)
Spirited Away (2001)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Oshira-sama (voice) gives Ken Yasuda a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
(voice)
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Performance score8.2
Howl's Moving Castle 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#3
Fragments of the Last Will
Fragments of the Last Will (2022)
Performance score7.9
Fragments of the Last Will asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Takashi Nishimura
Flying Colors (2015)
Performance score7.7
Flying Colors asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Takashi Nishimura 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 Oshira-sama (voice)
Start here. Spirited Away is the clearest statement of what Ken Yasuda does — accessible, 125 minutes, and rated 8.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ken 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.
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Same director as Spirited Away, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
When Marnie Was There (2014)
Keeps the animation register of Howl's Moving Castle but asks for a colder reading of it.
Flying Colors (2015)
Keeps the drama register of When Marnie Was There but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fragments of the Last Will (2022)
Keeps the drama register of Flying Colors 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 Spirited Away
Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Director
1 film together
Notably When Marnie Was There
Nobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together
Notably Flying Colors
Takahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together
Notably Fragments of the Last Will
Yusuke Taki
Director
1 film together
Notably In Love and Deep Water
Hideaki Anno
Director
1 film together
Notably Shin Kamen Rider
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
2 films together · 8.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Spirited AwayTakahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fragments of the Last WillHiromasa Yonebayashi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
When Marnie Was ThereNobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Flying ColorsHideaki Anno
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shin Kamen RiderYusuke Taki
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
In Love and Deep WaterSix 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
Spirited Away
as Oshira-sama (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
Spirited Away
as Oshira-sama (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
Spirited Away
as Oshira-sama (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Howl's Moving Castle
as (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Spirited Away
as Oshira-sama (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. Ken Yasuda 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
24 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Spirited Away
as Oshira-sama (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dollhouse
as Yamamoto
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Fragments of the Last Will
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Dollhouse
as Yamamoto
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Howl's Moving Castle
as (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Dragon Quest: Your Story
as Pusan (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Dragon Quest: Your Story
as Pusan (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spirited Away
as Oshira-sama (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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