Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5950
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Norio Wakamoto represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Norio is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Norio Wakamoto appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Norio. Gintama: The Very Final is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, rewatchability. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tetsuro Kodama, Yasuichiro Yamamoto, Chizuru Miyawaki and others, Norio Wakamoto 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.
Gintama: The Very Final (2021) as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice) · VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl (2025) as Tommy J (voice) · Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022) as Cell Max (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #5950 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1993–2025
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Gintama: The Very Final
Average Nutevio score
7.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Gintama: The Very Final
Most frequent director
Tetsuro Kodama
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Tetsuro Kodama
Most common genre
Animation
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 23m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.3
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
7.1
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
2020s
7.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Detective Conan: Kaiju Gomera vs. Kamen Yaiba — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.6
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.8
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. Ninja Scroll.
Most productive era
2020s
4 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Action | 7.41 film | 7.93 films |
| Crime | — | 6.71 film |
| Horror | 7.41 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Ninja Scroll
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Utsutsu Mujuurou (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.2 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
2025VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl
The current state of the argument, as Tommy J (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.
5 of 5 films
as Tommy J (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
Directed by Chizuru Miyawaki
as Cell Max (voice)
Directed by Tetsuro Kodama
as Utsutsu Mujuurou (voice)
Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri
as Goro Otaki (voice)
Directed by Yasuichiro Yamamoto
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
Tommy J (voice)
VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl (2025)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Tommy J (voice) gives Norio Wakamoto a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
Gintama: The Very Final (2021)
Performance score7.9
Gintama: The Very Final asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Cell Max (voice)
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)
Performance score7.5
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cell Max (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Utsutsu Mujuurou (voice)
Ninja Scroll (1993)
Performance score7.2
Ninja Scroll asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Utsutsu Mujuurou (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 Tommy J (voice)
Start here. VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl is the clearest statement of what Norio Wakamoto does — accessible, 35 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Norio 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.
Ninja Scroll (1993)
Keeps the action register of VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl but asks for a colder reading of it.
Gintama: The Very Final (2021)
Keeps the action register of Ninja Scroll but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)
Keeps the action register of Gintama: The Very Final but asks for a colder reading of it.
Detective Conan: Kaiju Gomera vs. Kamen Yaiba (2022)
Keeps the animation register of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Director
1 film together
Notably Ninja Scroll
Chizuru Miyawaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Gintama: The Very Final
Yasuichiro Yamamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Detective Conan: Kaiju Gomera vs. Kamen Yaiba
Tetsuro Kodama
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chizuru Miyawaki
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gintama: The Very FinalTetsuro Kodama
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dragon Ball Super: Super HeroYoshiaki Kawajiri
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ninja ScrollYasuichiro Yamamoto
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detective Conan: Kaiju Gomera vs. Kamen YaibaSix 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
Gintama: The Very Final
as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Ninja Scroll
as Utsutsu Mujuurou (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
Gintama: The Very Final
as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gintama: The Very Final
as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl
as Tommy J (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. Norio Wakamoto 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
32 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.
Animation Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in animation, 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
Gintama: The Very Final
as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gintama: The Very Final
as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Ninja Scroll
as Utsutsu Mujuurou (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detective Conan: Kaiju Gomera vs. Kamen Yaiba
as Goro Otaki (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Gintama: The Very Final
as Katakuriko Matsudaira (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl
as Tommy J (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Ninja Scroll
as Utsutsu Mujuurou (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Detective Conan: Kaiju Gomera vs. Kamen Yaiba
as Goro Otaki (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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