Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#22579
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Koji Yamamoto 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.
Koji Yamamoto appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Koji. Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland– is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Toshiya Shinohara, Hideki Takeuchi, Shinsuke Sato and others, Koji Yamamoto 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.
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland– (2025) as The Mad Hatter (voice) · Cells at Work! (2024) as Killer T Cell · Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny (2023) as Chou Sou (Zhuang Zhao)
Career snapshot
Ranked #22579 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2019–2027
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
Most frequent director
Shinsuke Sato
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Shinsuke Sato
Most common genre
Adventure
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
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
6.2
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
2020s
6.3 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Darwin's Game, Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–, Cells at Work! — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.3
Across 9 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.3
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. Kamen Rider Reiwa: The First Generation.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Action | 6.11 film | 7.06 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.12 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019Kamen Rider Reiwa: The First Generation
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Soreo Hiden.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024Cells at Work!
7.7 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
2027Darwin's Game
The current state of the argument, as Hīragi.
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.
10 of 10 films
as The Mad Hatter (voice)
Directed by Toshiya Shinohara
as Killer T Cell
Directed by Hideki Takeuchi
as Chou Sou (Zhuang Zhao)
Directed by Shinsuke Sato
as Mefilas
Directed by Shinji Higuchi
as Chou Sou (Zhuang Zhao)
Directed by Shinsuke Sato
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
The Mad Hatter (voice)
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland– (2025)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Mad Hatter (voice) gives Koji Yamamoto a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Killer T Cell
Cells at Work! (2024)
Performance score7.7
Cells at Work! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Killer T Cell is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Chou Sou (Zhuang Zhao)
Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny (2023)
Performance score7.3
Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chou Sou (Zhuang Zhao) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mefilas
Shin Ultraman (2022)
Performance score7.3
Shin Ultraman asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mefilas 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 The Mad Hatter (voice)
Start here. Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland– is the clearest statement of what Koji Yamamoto does — accessible, 96 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Koji 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.
Shin Ultraman (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland– — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny (2023)
Keeps the action register of Shin Ultraman but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cells at Work! (2024)
Keeps the action register of Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kingdom: Return of the Great General (2024)
Keeps the action register of Cells at Work! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Shinsuke Sato
Director
2 films together
Notably Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny
Teruaki Sugihara
Director
1 film together
Notably Kamen Rider Reiwa: The First Generation
Shinji Higuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Shin Ultraman
Hideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Cells at Work!
Toshiya Shinohara
Director
1 film together
Notably Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shinsuke Sato
Director
2 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kingdom III: The Flame of DestinyToshiya Shinohara
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–Hideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cells at Work!Shinji Higuchi
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shin UltramanTeruaki Sugihara
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 Reiwa: The First GenerationSix 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
Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny
as Chou Sou (Zhuang Zhao)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
as The Mad Hatter (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
Cells at Work!
as Killer T Cell
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny
as Chou Sou (Zhuang Zhao)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
as The Mad Hatter (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. Koji Yamamoto 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
as The Mad Hatter (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cells at Work!
as Killer T Cell
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
as The Mad Hatter (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
as The Mad Hatter (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cells at Work!
as Killer T Cell
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cells at Work!
as Killer T Cell
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Alice in Wonderland –Dive in Wonderland–
as The Mad Hatter (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cells at Work!
as Killer T Cell
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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