Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#56391
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Masachika Ichimura represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Masachika is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Masachika Ichimura appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Masachika. Bushido is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mamoru Hosoda, Kazuya Shiraishi, Motonori Sakakibara and others, Masachika Ichimura 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.
Bushido (2024) as Chobei · Scarlet (2025) as Amulet (voice) · Pokémon: The First Movie (1998) as Mewtwo (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #56391 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1998–2025
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Bushido
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Bushido
Most frequent director
Mamoru Hosoda
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Mamoru Hosoda
Most common genre
Action
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 56m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.7
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
7.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Scarlet, Bushido, Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.1
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.1
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. Pokémon: The First Movie.
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 | — | — | 7.13 films |
| Action | 6.91 film | 6.81 film | 6.92 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mewtwo (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024Bushido
7.4 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
2025Scarlet
The current state of the argument, as Amulet (voice).
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.
6 of 6 films
as Amulet (voice)
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
as Chobei
Directed by Kazuya Shiraishi
as Mewtwo (voice)
Directed by Kunihiko Yuyama
as Mewtwo (voice)
Directed by Motonori Sakakibara
as Kakuan Honda
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
Amulet (voice)
Scarlet (2025)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Amulet (voice) gives Masachika Ichimura a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Chobei
Bushido (2024)
Performance score7.2
Bushido asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chobei is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mewtwo (voice)
Pokémon: The First Movie (1998)
Performance score6.8
Pokémon: The First Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mewtwo (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mewtwo (voice)
Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution (2019)
Performance score6.7
Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mewtwo (voice) 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 Amulet (voice)
Start here. Scarlet is the clearest statement of what Masachika Ichimura does — accessible, 112 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Masachika 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.
Pokémon: The First Movie (1998)
Keeps the action register of Scarlet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution (2019)
Keeps the action register of Pokémon: The First Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai (2021)
Keeps the action register of Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bushido (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kunihiko Yuyama
Director
1 film together
Notably Pokémon: The First Movie
Motonori Sakakibara
Director
1 film together
Notably Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution
Kazuya Shiraishi
Director
1 film together
Notably Bushido
Mamoru Hosoda
Director
1 film together
Notably Scarlet
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kazuya Shiraishi
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BushidoMamoru Hosoda
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ScarletKunihiko Yuyama
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pokémon: The First MovieMotonori Sakakibara
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - EvolutionSix 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
Bushido
as Chobei
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Bushido
as Chobei
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Bushido
as Chobei
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai
as Kakuan Honda
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Scarlet
as Amulet (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. Masachika Ichimura 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
27 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in action, 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
Bushido
as Chobei
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Scarlet
as Amulet (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Wonderland
as Hippocrates (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Wonderland
as Hippocrates (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Pokémon: The First Movie
as Mewtwo (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Pokémon: The First Movie
as Mewtwo (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Pokémon: The First Movie
as Mewtwo (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Pokémon the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution
as Mewtwo (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Masachika Ichimura performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
