Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7059
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Toru Nara 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.
Toru Nara appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Toru. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising 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 versatility, transformation, physical performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tensai Okamura, Shunsuke Tada, Kenji Nagasaki, Toru Nara 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.
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising (2019) as Rikido Sato (voice) · My Hero Academia: Two Heroes (2018) as Rikido Sato (voice) · Tekkonkinkreet (2006) as Chinpira (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #7059 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
2006–2024
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
Most frequent director
Shunsuke Tada
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Shunsuke Tada
Most common genre
Animation
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.2
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
7.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, My Hero Academia: Two Heroes — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Tekkonkinkreet.
Most productive era
2020s
3 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.11 film |
| Action | 7.41 film | 7.72 films | 7.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2006Tekkonkinkreet
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Chinpira (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
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
2024My Hero Academia: You're Next
The current state of the argument, as Rikido Sato (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.
6 of 6 films
as Rikido Sato (voice)
Directed by Kenji Nagasaki
as Rikido Sato (voice)
Directed by Kenji Nagasaki
as Chinpira (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Rikido Sato (voice)
Directed by Tensai Okamura
as Mashengo, Louis
Directed by Shunsuke Tada
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
Rikido Sato (voice)
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising (2019)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Rikido Sato (voice) gives Toru Nara a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rikido Sato (voice)
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes (2018)
Performance score7.4
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rikido Sato (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Chinpira (voice)
Tekkonkinkreet (2006)
Performance score7.2
Tekkonkinkreet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chinpira (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Rikido Sato (voice)
My Hero Academia: You're Next (2024)
Performance score7.1
My Hero Academia: You're Next asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rikido Sato (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 Rikido Sato (voice)
Start here. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising is the clearest statement of what Toru Nara does — accessible, 104 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Toru 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.
Tekkonkinkreet (2006)
Keeps the action register of My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising but asks for a colder reading of it.
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes (2018)
Keeps the action register of Tekkonkinkreet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue 1 (2022)
Keeps the animation register of My Hero Academia: Two Heroes but asks for a colder reading of it.
My Hero Academia: You're Next (2024)
Keeps the science fiction register of Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue 1 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kenji Nagasaki
Director
2 films together
Notably My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
Shunsuke Tada
Director
2 films together
Notably Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue 1
Tensai Okamura
Director
1 film together
Notably My Hero Academia: You're Next
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kenji Nagasaki
Director
2 films together · 7.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
My Hero Academia: Heroes RisingShunsuke Tada
Director
2 films together · 3.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue 1Tensai Okamura
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Hero Academia: You're NextSix 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
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
as Rikido Sato (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
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes
as Rikido Sato (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
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
as Rikido Sato (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes
as Rikido Sato (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
as Rikido Sato (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. Toru Nara 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
6 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
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
as Rikido Sato (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
as Rikido Sato (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes
as Rikido Sato (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes
as Rikido Sato (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
as Rikido Sato (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
My Hero Academia: You're Next
as Rikido Sato (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue 1
as Mashengo, Louis
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue 1
as Mashengo, Louis
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 Toru Nara 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
