Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#82724
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Kenjirou Ishimaru 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.
Kenjirou Ishimaru appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kenjirou. Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O! is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, action, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ryuta Tasaki, Shojiro Nakazawa, Kyouhei Yamaguchi and others, Kenjirou Ishimaru 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.
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O! (2020) as Narrator · The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood (2021) · Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever (2018) as Owner
Career snapshot
Ranked #82724 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1999–2021
Career length
22 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
Most frequent director
Ryuta Tasaki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ryuta Tasaki
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 19m
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
2020s
6.9 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood, Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero Chronicles, Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O! — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.9
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.9
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. Ring 2.
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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Action | — | 6.11 film | 7.02 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.11 film | 7.32 films |
| Horror | 5.81 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1999Ring 2
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Detective Omuta.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
8.0 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.
Most recent film
2021Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero Chronicles
The current state of the argument, as Owner.
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 Narrator
Directed by Shojiro Nakazawa
Directed by Unknown
as Owner
Directed by Ryuta Tasaki
as Owner
Directed by Kyouhei Yamaguchi
as Detective Omuta
Directed by Hideo Nakata
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
Narrator
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O! (2020)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Narrator gives Kenjirou Ishimaru a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood (2021)
Performance score6.6
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood 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#3
Owner
Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero Chronicles (2021)
Performance score6.5
Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero Chronicles asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Owner is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Owner
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever (2018)
Performance score6.5
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Owner 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 Narrator
Start here. Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O! is the clearest statement of what Kenjirou Ishimaru does — accessible, 23 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kenjirou 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.
Ring 2 (1999)
A deliberate change of key after Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O! — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever (2018)
Keeps the science fiction register of Ring 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero Chronicles (2021)
A deliberate change of key after The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hideo Nakata
Director
1 film together
Notably Ring 2
Kyouhei Yamaguchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever
Shojiro Nakazawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
Ryuta Tasaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero Chronicles
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shojiro Nakazawa
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!Kyouhei Yamaguchi
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations ForeverRyuta Tasaki
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero ChroniclesHideo Nakata
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ring 2Six 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
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
as Narrator
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever
as Owner
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
as Narrator
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
as Narrator
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. Kenjirou Ishimaru 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
22 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
3 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
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
as Narrator
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
as Narrator
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever
as Owner
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Ring 2
as Detective Omuta
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kamen Rider Den-O: The Birth of Pretty Den-O!
as Narrator
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: Super Hero Chronicles
as Owner
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever
as Owner
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood
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
Community
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Reference
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