Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#10886
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kento Kaku 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.
Kento Kaku appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kento. Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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 horror, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Dave Boyle, Aya Matsuki, Masakazu Hashimoto and others, Kento Kaku 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.
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie (2023) as Nao Otowa · Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission (2023) as Nao Otowa · SPY x FAMILY CODE: White (2023) as Luca (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #10886 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2020–2026
Career length
6 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
Average Nutevio score
5.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
Most frequent director
Aya Matsuki
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Aya Matsuki
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 21m
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
6.1
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
2020s
5.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Never After Dark, Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - Capital Crisis, Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
5.0
Across 11 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
5.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2020s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Never After Dark, Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - Capital Crisis, Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers.
Most productive era
2020s
11 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|
| Drama | 3.74 films |
| Action | 3.62 films |
| Thriller | 4.93 films |
| Comedy | 6.84 films |
| Romance | 6.52 films |
| Horror | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2020Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sakamoto Shinji.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
7.4 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
2026Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - Capital Crisis
The current state of the argument, as Nao Otowa.
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 Luca (voice)
Directed by Takashi Katagiri
as Naranbayar (voice)
Directed by Kotono Watanabe
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
Nao Otowa
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie (2023)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nao Otowa gives Kento Kaku a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Nao Otowa
Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission (2023)
Performance score7.6
Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nao Otowa is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Satoshi Nishimura
AI Amok (2020)
Performance score7.5
AI Amok asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Satoshi Nishimura is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Luca (voice)
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White (2023)
Performance score7.3
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Luca (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 Nao Otowa
Start here. Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie is the clearest statement of what Kento Kaku does — accessible, 128 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kento 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.
AI Amok (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission (2023)
A deliberate change of key after AI Amok — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom (2023)
Keeps the animation register of SPY x FAMILY CODE: White but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Aya Matsuki
Director
4 films together
Notably Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
Yū Irie
Director
1 film together
Notably AI Amok
Kotono Watanabe
Director
1 film together
Notably Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom
Takashi Katagiri
Director
1 film together
Notably SPY x FAMILY CODE: White
Masakazu Hashimoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers
Dave Boyle
Director
1 film together
Notably Never After Dark
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Aya Matsuki
Director
4 films together · 3.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The MovieTakashi Katagiri
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SPY x FAMILY CODE: WhiteYū Irie
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AI AmokMasakazu 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 DancersKotono Watanabe
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gold Kingdom and Water KingdomDave Boyle
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Never After DarkSix 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
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
as Nao Otowa
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom
as Naranbayar (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
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
as Nao Otowa
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers
as Urufu (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
as Nao Otowa
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. Kento Kaku 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
4 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
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
as Nao Otowa
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission
as Nao Otowa
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom
as Naranbayar (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom
as Naranbayar (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White
as Luca (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White
as Luca (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White
as Luca (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Never After Dark
as Gunji
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 comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Have your say
Community
Which Kento Kaku 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
