Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#19011
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kengo Kora 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.
Kengo Kora appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kengo. Town Without Sea 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, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, tv movie, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Wataru Suzuki, Kuruma Takahira, Toichiro Ruto and others, Kengo Kora 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.
Town Without Sea (2020) as Kobayashi-sensei · The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013) as Sutemaru (voice) · Shoplifters (2018) as Takumi Maezono
Career snapshot
Ranked #19011 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2013–2026
Career length
13 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Town Without Sea
Average Nutevio score
5.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
Most frequent director
Wataru Suzuki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Wataru Suzuki
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 19m
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
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. No Longer Human, Under Your Bed, Shoplifters — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.1
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. No Longer Human, Under Your Bed, Shoplifters.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 7.04 films | 5.54 films |
| Action | — | 6.91 film |
| Thriller | 6.73 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 7.21 film |
| Crime | 7.61 film | 6.91 film |
| Romance | — | 7.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
2013The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sutemaru (voice). Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2020Town Without Sea
8.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026BREAK SHOT
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.
10 of 10 films
as Kobayashi-sensei
Directed by Elaiza Ikeda
as Sutemaru (voice)
Directed by Isao Takahata
as Takumi Maezono
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
as Kaoru Date
Directed by Toichiro Ruto
as Naoto Mitsui
Directed by Mari Asato
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
Kobayashi-sensei
Town Without Sea (2020)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kobayashi-sensei gives Kengo Kora a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sutemaru (voice)
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)
Performance score7.8
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sutemaru (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Takumi Maezono
Shoplifters (2018)
Performance score7.4
Shoplifters asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Takumi Maezono is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kaoru Date
G-Men (2023)
Performance score7.1
G-Men asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kaoru Date 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 Kobayashi-sensei
Start here. Town Without Sea is the clearest statement of what Kengo Kora does — accessible, 105 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kengo 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.
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)
Keeps the drama register of Town Without Sea but asks for a colder reading of it.
Shoplifters (2018)
Keeps the drama register of The Tale of The Princess Kaguya but asks for a colder reading of it.
Under Your Bed (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Shoplifters but asks for a colder reading of it.
G-Men (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Under Your Bed but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Isao Takahata
Director
1 film together
Notably The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together
Notably Shoplifters
Mari Asato
Director
1 film together
Notably Under Your Bed
Elaiza Ikeda
Director
1 film together
Notably Town Without Sea
Tsutomu Hanabusa
Director
1 film together
Notably Tokyo Revengers 2 Part 1: Bloody Halloween - Destiny
Toichiro Ruto
Director
1 film together
Notably G-Men
Kuruma Takahira
Director
1 film together
Notably BREAK SHOT
Wataru Suzuki
Director
1 film together
Notably 手塚治虫の戦争
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Elaiza Ikeda
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Town Without SeaIsao Takahata
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Tale of The Princess KaguyaHirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShopliftersToichiro Ruto
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
G-MenTsutomu Hanabusa
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tokyo Revengers 2 Part 1: Bloody Halloween - DestinyMari Asato
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Under Your BedWataru Suzuki
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
手塚治虫の戦争Kuruma Takahira
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BREAK SHOTSix 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 Tale of The Princess Kaguya
as Sutemaru (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 Tale of The Princess Kaguya
as Sutemaru (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
Town Without Sea
as Kobayashi-sensei
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Shoplifters
as Takumi Maezono
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Town Without Sea
as Kobayashi-sensei
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. Kengo Kora 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
8 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
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
as Sutemaru (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Shoplifters
as Takumi Maezono
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
as Sutemaru (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
as Sutemaru (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Town Without Sea
as Kobayashi-sensei
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Tokyo Revengers 2 Part 1: Bloody Halloween - Destiny
as Shinichiro Sano
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
G-Men
as Kaoru Date
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Under Your Bed
as Naoto Mitsui
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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