Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#22969
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Takumi Kitamura 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.
Takumi Kitamura appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Takumi. Sakura is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 drama, action, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Takahiro Miki, Shinobu Sasaki, Tsutomu Hanabusa and others, Takumi Kitamura 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.
Sakura (2020) as Kaoru · Tokyo Revengers (2021) as Takemichi Hanagaki · My Blood and Bones in a Flowing Galaxy (2021) as Arashi
Career snapshot
Ranked #22969 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Sakura
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Sakura
Most frequent director
Tsutomu Hanabusa
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Tsutomu Hanabusa
Most common genre
Drama
16 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
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
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Hello World, Seven Days War, You Shine in the Moonlight — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.9
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. Hello World, Seven Days War, You Shine in the Moonlight.
Most productive era
2020s
14 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 | 6.94 films | 6.512 films |
| Action | 6.51 film | 7.04 films |
| Thriller | — | 7.51 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.74 films |
| Crime | — | 7.15 films |
| Romance | 7.42 films | 7.34 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019Hello World
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Naomi Katagaki – now (voice).
Highest rated performance
2020Sakura
8.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2021Tokyo Revengers
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Sakamoto Days
The current state of the argument, as Yoichi Nagumo.
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.
18 of 18 films
as Takemichi Hanagaki
Directed by Tsutomu Hanabusa
as Takuya Matsumoto
Directed by Unknown
as Naomi Katagaki – now (voice)
Directed by Tomohiko Ito
as Sota Kubota
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.
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The defining work
#1
Takemichi Hanagaki
Tokyo Revengers (2021)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Takemichi Hanagaki gives Takumi Kitamura a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kaoru
Sakura (2020)
Performance score8.2
Sakura asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kaoru is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Takuya Matsumoto
BAKA's Identity (2025)
Performance score8.1
BAKA's Identity asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Takuya Matsumoto is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Naomi Katagaki – now (voice)
Hello World (2019)
Performance score7.9
Hello World asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Naomi Katagaki – now (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 Takemichi Hanagaki
Start here. Tokyo Revengers is the clearest statement of what Takumi Kitamura does — accessible, 120 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Takumi 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.
Hello World (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Tokyo Revengers but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sakura (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Hello World but asks for a colder reading of it.
Our 30-Minute Sessions (2020)
Same director as Sakura, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
BAKA's Identity (2025)
Same director as Our 30-Minute Sessions, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tsutomu Hanabusa
Director
3 films together
Notably Tokyo Revengers
Takahiro Miki
Director
2 films together
Notably Love Me, Love Me Not
Yukihiko Tsutsumi
Director
1 film together
Notably 12 Suicidal Teens
Sho Tsukikawa
Director
1 film together
Notably You Shine in the Moonlight
Yuta Murano
Director
1 film together
Notably Seven Days War
Tomohiko Ito
Director
1 film together
Notably Hello World
Toshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together
Notably Love Me, Love Me Not
Shinobu Sasaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Our Dinosaur Diary
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tsutomu Hanabusa
Director
3 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Tokyo RevengersTakahiro Miki
Director
2 films together · 5.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Love Me, Love Me NotSho Tsukikawa
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You Shine in the MoonlightTomohiko Ito
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hello WorldToshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love Me, Love Me NotYuta Murano
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Seven Days WarYukihiko Tsutsumi
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
12 Suicidal TeensShinobu Sasaki
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Our Dinosaur DiarySix 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
Sakura
as Kaoru
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
My Blood and Bones in a Flowing Galaxy
as Arashi
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Sakura
as Kaoru
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Love Me, Love Me Not
as High School Boy (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Tokyo Revengers
as Takemichi Hanagaki
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. Takumi Kitamura 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
16 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Lonely Castle in the Mirror
as Rion Mizumori (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Tokyo Revengers
as Takemichi Hanagaki
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
My Blood and Bones in a Flowing Galaxy
as Arashi
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Lonely Castle in the Mirror
as Rion Mizumori (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Tokyo Revengers
as Takemichi Hanagaki
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sakamoto Days
as Yoichi Nagumo
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Love Me, Love Me Not
as High School Boy (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Love Me, Love Me Not
as High School Boy (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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