Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6378
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Rei Sakuma represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Rei is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Rei Sakuma appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Rei. Kiki's Delivery Service is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for animation, romance, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Daiji Suzuki, Tomotaka Shibayama, Hayao Miyazaki, Rei Sakuma 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.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) as Jiji (voice) · Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy (2021) · A Whisker Away (2020) as Tamaki (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #6378 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1989–2021
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Kiki's Delivery Service
Average Nutevio score
7.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
A Whisker Away
Most frequent director
Daiji Suzuki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Daiji Suzuki
Most common genre
Animation
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 33m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.9
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
1980s
7.8 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Kiki's Delivery Service — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Kiki's Delivery Service.
Most productive era
2020s
2 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 | 1980s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 7.61 film |
| Romance | — | — | 7.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jiji (voice). 7.8 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
2021Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy
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.
4 of 4 films
as Jiji (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Directed by Daiji Suzuki
as Tamaki (voice)
Directed by Tomotaka Shibayama
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
Jiji (voice)
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jiji (voice) gives Rei Sakuma a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy
Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy (2021)
Performance score7.4
Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tamaki (voice)
A Whisker Away (2020)
Performance score7.4
A Whisker Away asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tamaki (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
(voice)
Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land (2019)
Performance score6.5
Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. (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 Jiji (voice)
Start here. Kiki's Delivery Service is the clearest statement of what Rei Sakuma does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Rei 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.
Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land (2019)
Keeps the family register of Kiki's Delivery Service but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Whisker Away (2020)
Keeps the animation register of Anpanman: Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land but asks for a colder reading of it.
Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy (2021)
Keeps the animation register of A Whisker Away but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kiki's Delivery ServiceDaiji Suzuki
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu AcademyTomotaka Shibayama
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Whisker AwaySix 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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (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. Rei Sakuma 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
4 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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Whisker Away
as Tamaki (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Jiji (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Whisker Away
as Tamaki (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Crayon Shin-chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkazu Academy
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
Which Rei Sakuma performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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