Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#10303
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Chika Sakamoto represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 41 years in, and Chika is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Chika Sakamoto appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Chika. Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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 comedy, adventure, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Masakazu Hashimoto, Hiroyuki Seshita, Tomohisa Taguchi and others, Chika Sakamoto 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.
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (2020) as Agumon (voice) · My Neighbor Totoro (1988) as Mei Kusakabe (voice) · Warriors of the Wind (1984) as Boy A (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #10303 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1984–2025
Career length
41 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Average Nutevio score
7.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Most frequent director
Hayao Miyazaki
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Hayao Miyazaki
Most common genre
Animation
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 36m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.3
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
1980s
7.9 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Warriors of the Wind — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.9
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
8.0
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, My Neighbor Totoro, Warriors of the Wind.
Most productive era
1980s
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 | 1980s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | 6.41 film | 7.22 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.41 film | 6.52 films |
| Crime | — | 6.41 film | 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 Boy A (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.1 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
2025Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers
The current state of the argument, as Honey Badger (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.
7 of 7 films
as Mei Kusakabe (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Agumon (voice)
Directed by Tomohisa Taguchi
as Boy A (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Baby (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Honey Badger (voice)
Directed by Masakazu Hashimoto
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
Mei Kusakabe (voice)
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mei Kusakabe (voice) gives Chika Sakamoto a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Agumon (voice)
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (2020)
Performance score7.8
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Agumon (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Boy A (voice)
Warriors of the Wind (1984)
Performance score7.7
Warriors of the Wind asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Boy A (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Baby (voice)
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Performance score7.6
Kiki's Delivery Service asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Baby (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 Mei Kusakabe (voice)
Start here. My Neighbor Totoro is the clearest statement of what Chika Sakamoto does — accessible, 86 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Chika 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.
Warriors of the Wind (1984)
Same director as My Neighbor Totoro, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Same director as Warriors of the Wind, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (2020)
Keeps the fantasy register of Kiki's Delivery Service but asks for a colder reading of it.
Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers (2025)
Keeps the adventure register of Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
3 films together
Notably My Neighbor Totoro
Kenji Kodama
Director
1 film together
Notably City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes
Tomohisa Taguchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Hiroyuki Seshita
Director
1 film together
Notably LUPIN THE 3rd vs. CAT'S EYE
Masakazu Hashimoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
3 films together · 7.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
My Neighbor TotoroTomohisa Taguchi
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution KizunaMasakazu Hashimoto
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe DancersKenji Kodama
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
City Hunter: Shinjuku Private EyesHiroyuki Seshita
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LUPIN THE 3rd vs. CAT'S EYESix 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
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Agumon (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 Neighbor Totoro
as Mei Kusakabe (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 Neighbor Totoro
as Mei Kusakabe (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Warriors of the Wind
as Boy A (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
My Neighbor Totoro
as Mei Kusakabe (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. Chika Sakamoto 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
41 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
7 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 Neighbor Totoro
as Mei Kusakabe (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Agumon (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Baby (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes
as Ai Kisugi (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Agumon (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
as Agumon (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
LUPIN THE 3rd vs. CAT'S EYE
as Ai Kisugi (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
My Neighbor Totoro
as Mei Kusakabe (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and action
Rumi Hiiragi
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Miyu Irino
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Mari Natsuki
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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