Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#23068
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kuranosuke Sasaki 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.
Kuranosuke Sasaki appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kuranosuke. We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 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 crime, thriller, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hideo Jojo, Masaharu Take, Setsuro Wakamatsu and others, Kuranosuke Sasaki 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.
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous (2020) as Sasuke Noda · Godzilla Minus One (2023) as Yoji Akitsu · We Are Little Zombies (2019) as Takami Gen
Career snapshot
Ranked #23068 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
Average Nutevio score
5.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
Most frequent director
Hideo Jojo
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Hideo Jojo
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
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
6.1
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
6.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Aircraft Carrier Ibuki, We Are Little Zombies — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
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. Aircraft Carrier Ibuki, We Are Little Zombies.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 6.32 films | 5.72 films |
| Action | — | 3.82 films |
| Thriller | — | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | — | 8.31 film |
| Crime | — | 4.22 films |
| Romance | — | 5.31 film |
| Horror | — | 3.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Toshiya Niinami, Second-in Chief of Ibuki.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
8.3 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
The current state of the argument, as Seiji Akitsu.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Yoji Akitsu
Directed by Unknown
as Kunieda
Directed by Hideo Jojo
as Seiji Akitsu
Directed by Unknown
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
Sasuke Noda
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous (2020)
Performance score8.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sasuke Noda gives Kuranosuke Sasaki a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Yoji Akitsu
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Performance score7.4
Godzilla Minus One asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yoji Akitsu is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Takami Gen
We Are Little Zombies (2019)
Performance score6.7
We Are Little Zombies asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Takami Gen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kunieda
Nameless (2026)
Performance score6.5
Nameless asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kunieda 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 Sasuke Noda
Start here. We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous is the clearest statement of what Kuranosuke Sasaki does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 8.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kuranosuke 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.
We Are Little Zombies (2019)
A deliberate change of key after We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
A deliberate change of key after We Are Little Zombies — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Nameless (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Godzilla Minus One — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Godzilla Minus Zero (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Nameless — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Makoto Nagahisa
Director
1 film together
Notably We Are Little Zombies
Setsuro Wakamatsu
Director
1 film together
Notably Aircraft Carrier Ibuki
Masaharu Take
Director
1 film together
Notably We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
Hideo Jojo
Director
1 film together
Notably Nameless
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Masaharu Take
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Make Antiques! Kyoto RendezvousMakoto Nagahisa
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Are Little ZombiesSetsuro Wakamatsu
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aircraft Carrier IbukiHideo Jojo
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NamelessSix 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
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
as Sasuke Noda
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
We Are Little Zombies
as Takami Gen
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
as Sasuke Noda
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Godzilla Minus One
as Yoji Akitsu
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
as Sasuke Noda
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. Kuranosuke Sasaki 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
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
as Sasuke Noda
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Godzilla Minus One
as Yoji Akitsu
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Memory Eraser
as Chiaki Takaharu
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Homestay
as Osamu Kobayashi
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Godzilla Minus One
as Yoji Akitsu
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Godzilla Minus One
as Yoji Akitsu
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
We Are Little Zombies
as Takami Gen
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Aircraft Carrier Ibuki
as Toshiya Niinami, Second-in Chief of Ibuki
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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