Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3127
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Shinpachi Tsuji represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Shinpachi is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Shinpachi Tsuji appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Shinpachi. Perfect Blue 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 quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for fantasy, adventure, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yasuhito Kikuchi, Shunichi Yoshizawa, Takahiro Omori and others, Shinpachi Tsuji 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.
Perfect Blue (1998) as Tadokoro (voice) · Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) as Hotel Receptionist (voice) · Hotarubi no Mori e (2011) as Hotaru's Grandfather (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3127 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1989–2022
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Perfect Blue
Average Nutevio score
7.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Perfect Blue
Most frequent director
Yasuhito Kikuchi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Yasuhito Kikuchi
Most common genre
Animation
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 27m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.5
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
1990s
8.2 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Perfect Blue — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
8.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
8.3
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
2010s
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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thriller | — | 8.21 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | 7.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Hotel Receptionist (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1998Perfect Blue
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
2022That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
The current state of the argument, as Chikuan (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 Tadokoro (voice)
Directed by Satoshi Kon
as Hotaru's Grandfather (voice)
Directed by Takahiro Omori
as Hotel Receptionist (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Chikuan (voice)
Directed by Yasuhito Kikuchi
as Donyell Tos (voice)
Directed by Shunichi Yoshizawa
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
Tadokoro (voice)
Perfect Blue (1998)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Tadokoro (voice) gives Shinpachi Tsuji a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Hotaru's Grandfather (voice)
Hotarubi no Mori e (2011)
Performance score7.7
Hotarubi no Mori e asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hotaru's Grandfather (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hotel Receptionist (voice)
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Performance score7.6
Kiki's Delivery Service asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hotel Receptionist (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Chikuan (voice)
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022)
Performance score7.2
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chikuan (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 Tadokoro (voice)
Start here. Perfect Blue is the clearest statement of what Shinpachi Tsuji does — accessible, 81 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Shinpachi 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.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Keeps the animation register of Perfect Blue but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hotarubi no Mori e (2011)
Keeps the fantasy register of Kiki's Delivery Service but asks for a colder reading of it.
Gundam Reconguista in G Movie I: Go! Core Fighter (2019)
Keeps the animation register of Hotarubi no Mori e but asks for a colder reading of it.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022)
Keeps the adventure register of Gundam Reconguista in G Movie I: Go! Core Fighter but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Kiki's Delivery Service
Satoshi Kon
Director
1 film together
Notably Perfect Blue
Takahiro Omori
Director
1 film together
Notably Hotarubi no Mori e
Shunichi Yoshizawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Gundam Reconguista in G Movie I: Go! Core Fighter
Yasuhito Kikuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Satoshi Kon
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Perfect BlueHayao 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 ServiceTakahiro Omori
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hotarubi no Mori eYasuhito Kikuchi
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet BondShunichi Yoshizawa
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gundam Reconguista in G Movie I: Go! Core FighterSix 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
Perfect Blue
as Tadokoro (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 Hotel Receptionist (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
Perfect Blue
as Tadokoro (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
as Chikuan (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Perfect Blue
as Tadokoro (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. Shinpachi Tsuji 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
33 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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Hotel Receptionist (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Perfect Blue
as Tadokoro (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hotarubi no Mori e
as Hotaru's Grandfather (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Hotel Receptionist (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Perfect Blue
as Tadokoro (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
as Chikuan (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hotarubi no Mori e
as Hotaru's Grandfather (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
as Chikuan (voice)
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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Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Takashi Naito
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Yasuko Sawaguchi
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Tatsuya Gashuin
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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