Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3960
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Showtaro Morikubo 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.
Showtaro Morikubo appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Showtaro. Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 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 fantasy, adventure, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shun Enokido, Koichi Sakamoto, Takaharu Ozaki and others, Showtaro Morikubo 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.
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad (2021) as Ultraman Taro · Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy (2021) as Ultraman Taro · Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- (2023) as Caster (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3960 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2017–2026
Career length
9 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad
Most frequent director
Koichi Sakamoto
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Koichi Sakamoto
Most common genre
Animation
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
2010s
6.6 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Utano Princesama Maji LOVE Kingdom, Mazinger Z: Infinity — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Utano Princesama Maji LOVE Kingdom, Mazinger Z: Infinity.
Most productive era
2020s
7 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 3.04 films |
| Action | 7.01 film | 8.23 films |
| Romance | 6.21 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Koji Kabuto (voice).
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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
2026Chimney Town: Frozen in Time
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.
9 of 9 films
as Ultraman Taro
Directed by Koichi Sakamoto
as Ultraman Taro
Directed by Koichi Sakamoto
as Koji Kabuto (voice)
Directed by Junji Shimizu
as Caster (voice)
Directed by Shun Enokido
as Bartolomeo (voice)
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
Ultraman Taro
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad (2021)
Performance score9.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ultraman Taro gives Showtaro Morikubo a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Ultraman Taro
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy (2021)
Performance score9.5
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ultraman Taro is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Koji Kabuto (voice)
Mazinger Z: Infinity (2017)
Performance score7.6
Mazinger Z: Infinity asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Koji Kabuto (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Caster (voice)
Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- (2023)
Performance score7.3
Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Caster (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 Ultraman Taro
Start here. Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad is the clearest statement of what Showtaro Morikubo does — accessible, 130 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Showtaro 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.
Mazinger Z: Infinity (2017)
Keeps the animation register of Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy (2021)
Keeps the action register of Mazinger Z: Infinity but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Piece Film Red (2022)
Keeps the action register of Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- (2023)
Keeps the action register of One Piece Film Red but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Takaharu Ozaki
Director
2 films together
Notably WAVE!! Surfing Yappe!! - Chapter 2
Koichi Sakamoto
Director
2 films together
Notably Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad
Junji Shimizu
Director
1 film together
Notably Mazinger Z: Infinity
Jouji Furuta
Director
1 film together
Notably Utano Princesama Maji LOVE Kingdom
Shun Enokido
Director
1 film together
Notably Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn-
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Koichi Sakamoto
Director
2 films together · 10.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined CrossroadTakaharu Ozaki
Director
2 films together · 0.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
WAVE!! Surfing Yappe!! - Chapter 2Shun Enokido
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn-Junji Shimizu
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mazinger Z: InfinityJouji Furuta
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Utano Princesama Maji LOVE KingdomSix 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
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad
as Ultraman Taro
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
One Piece Film Red
as Bartolomeo (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
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad
as Ultraman Taro
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
One Piece Film Red
as Bartolomeo (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad
as Ultraman Taro
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. Showtaro Morikubo 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.
Animation Legend
Awarded
8 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
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy
as Ultraman Taro
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy
as Ultraman Taro
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Chimney Town: Frozen in Time
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Chimney Town: Frozen in Time
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy
as Ultraman Taro
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
One Piece Film Red
as Bartolomeo (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn-
as Caster (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mazinger Z: Infinity
as Koji Kabuto (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
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
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 drama
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Showtaro Morikubo 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
