Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#26853
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kyusaku Shimada 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.
Kyusaku Shimada appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kyusaku. The Ogre's Bride is the clearest case: a film rated 9.0 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 romance, fantasy, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Chihiro Ikeda, Yuya Ishii, Sang-il Lee and others, Kyusaku Shimada 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.
The Ogre's Bride (2026) as Usui · Kokuho (2025) as Umeki · Shin Ultraman (2022) as Taishi Okuma
Career snapshot
Ranked #26853 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2008–2026
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.0
The Ogre's Bride
Average Nutevio score
4.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.0
The Ogre's Bride
Most frequent director
Chihiro Ikeda
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Chihiro Ikeda
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.3
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
6.9 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Tokyo! — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.9
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. Tokyo!.
Most productive era
2020s
10 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 | 6.91 film | 3.02 films | 4.94 films |
| Action | — | — | 6.02 films |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | — | 5.32 films |
| Crime | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Romance | 6.91 film | — | 6.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2008Tokyo!
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Prison Director (segment "Merde").
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2026The Ogre's Bride
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.0 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
The current state of the argument.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Usui
Directed by Chihiro Ikeda
as Taishi Okuma
Directed by Shinji Higuchi
as Lieutenant Suehiro
Directed by Unknown
as Prison Director (segment "Merde")
Directed by Michel Gondry
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
Usui
The Ogre's Bride (2026)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Usui gives Kyusaku Shimada a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Umeki
Kokuho (2025)
Performance score7.6
Kokuho asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Umeki is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Taishi Okuma
Shin Ultraman (2022)
Performance score7.3
Shin Ultraman asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Taishi Okuma is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lieutenant Suehiro
Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (2021)
Performance score7.0
Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lieutenant Suehiro 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 Usui
Start here. The Ogre's Bride is the clearest statement of what Kyusaku Shimada does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 9.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kyusaku 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.
Tokyo! (2008)
Keeps the romance register of The Ogre's Bride but asks for a colder reading of it.
Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Tokyo! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Shin Ultraman (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kokuho (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Shin Ultraman — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together
Notably Tokyo!
Takahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together
Notably The Promised Land
Shinji Higuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Shin Ultraman
Satoshi Miki
Director
1 film together
Notably What to Do With the Dead Kaiju?
Shimako Sato
Director
1 film together
Notably The Yin Yang Master Zero
Sang-il Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Kokuho
Yuya Ishii
Director
1 film together
Notably The Secret Battlefield
Chihiro Ikeda
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ogre's Bride
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chihiro Ikeda
Director
1 film together · 9.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ogre's BrideSang-il Lee
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KokuhoShinji 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 UltramanMichel Gondry
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tokyo!Shimako Sato
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Yin Yang Master ZeroTakahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Promised LandSatoshi Miki
Director
1 film together · 4.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju?Yuya Ishii
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Secret BattlefieldSix 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
Shin Ultraman
as Taishi Okuma
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Ogre's Bride
as Usui
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Ogre's Bride
as Usui
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Ogre's Bride
as Usui
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Ogre's Bride
as Usui
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. Kyusaku Shimada 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
7 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 Ogre's Bride
as Usui
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Ogre's Bride
as Usui
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Ogre's Bride
as Usui
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Yin Yang Master Zero
as Katsuragi Shigetsune
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Ogre's Bride
as Usui
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Shin Ultraman
as Taishi Okuma
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Tokyo!
as Prison Director (segment "Merde")
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Promised Land
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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