Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6,020
of 15,890 eligible performers
Jun Fubuki 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.
Jun Fubuki appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jun. The Boy and the Heron is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 mystery, tv movie, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Takahiro Miki, Hayao Miyazaki, Rikiya Imaizumi and others, Jun Fubuki 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.
The Boy and the Heron (2023) as Utako (voice) · Dollhouse (2025) as Toshiko Suzuki · Call Me Chihiro (2023) as Tae
Career snapshot
Ranked #6,020 of 15,890 eligible performers in the Nutevio catalogue.
Films in Nutevio
11
2006–2026
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
The Boy and the Heron
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Dollhouse
Most frequent director
Takahiro Miki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Takahiro Miki
Most common genre
Fantasy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 58m
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
2000s
6.6 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Tales from Earthsea — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.5
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. Tales from Earthsea.
Most productive era
2020s
10 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.66 films |
| Action | — | 6.42 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.81 film |
| Romance | — | 6.41 film |
| Horror | — | 7.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Tenar (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.3 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
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.
11 of 11 films
as Utako (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Junko Asada
Directed by Unknown
as Tenar (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Tae
Directed by Rikiya Imaizumi
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
Utako (voice)
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Utako (voice) gives Jun Fubuki a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Toshiko Suzuki
Dollhouse (2025)
Performance score7.0
Dollhouse asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Toshiko Suzuki is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Junko Asada
The Asadas! (2020)
Performance score7.0
The Asadas! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Junko Asada is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tenar (voice)
Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Performance score6.8
Tales from Earthsea asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tenar (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 Utako (voice)
Start here. The Boy and the Heron is the clearest statement of what Jun Fubuki does — accessible, 124 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jun 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.
Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Keeps the fantasy register of The Boy and the Heron but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Asadas! (2020)
Same director as Tales from Earthsea, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Call Me Chihiro (2023)
Keeps the drama register of The Asadas! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dollhouse (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Call Me Chihiro — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Takahiro Horie
Director
1 film together
Notably Sensei, Would You Sit Beside Me?
Rikiya Imaizumi
Director
1 film together
Notably Call Me Chihiro
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boy and the Heron
Takahiro Miki
Director
1 film together
Notably My Beloved Stranger
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Boy and the HeronRikiya Imaizumi
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Call Me ChihiroTakahiro Miki
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Beloved StrangerTakahiro Horie
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sensei, Would You Sit Beside Me?Six 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
The Boy and the Heron
as Utako (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
The Boy and the Heron
as Utako (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
The Boy and the Heron
as Utako (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Final Alchemy
as Pinako Rockbell
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Boy and the Heron
as Utako (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. Jun Fubuki 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
20 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Fantasy Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in fantasy, 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
The Boy and the Heron
as Utako (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dollhouse
as Toshiko Suzuki
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
My Beloved Stranger
as Kazue Maezono
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Dollhouse
as Toshiko Suzuki
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Revenge of Scar
as Pinako Rockbell
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Final Alchemy
as Pinako Rockbell
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Boy and the Heron
as Utako (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spirit World
as Meiko
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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