Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#916
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kikuko Inoue represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 37 years in, and Kikuko is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kikuko Inoue appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kikuko. Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames 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, transformation, quiet 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, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Naoya Ando, Masaki Kitamura, Yuzuru Tachikawa and others, Kikuko Inoue 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.
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames (2026) as Hinowa (voice) · Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take On Me (2018) as Nanase Tsukumo (voice) · Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) as Maki (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #916 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1989–2026
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames
Most frequent director
Naoya Ando
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Naoya Ando
Most common genre
Animation
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 17m
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
6.5
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
7.8 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Kiki's Delivery Service — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.8
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.
Most productive era
2020s
7 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 5.51 film | 7.22 films |
| Action | — | 5.51 film | 7.34 films |
| Comedy | — | 3.92 films | 7.03 films |
| Crime | — | — | 7.01 film |
| Romance | — | — | 7.22 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Maki (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2026Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames
8.0 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
2026Assassination Classroom the Movie: Our Time
The current state of the argument, as Azusa (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.
12 of 12 films
as Hinowa (voice)
Directed by Naoya Ando
as Nanase Tsukumo (voice)
Directed by Tatsuya Ishihara
as Maki (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Tsubaki (voice)
Directed by Kyohei Ishiguro
as Azusa (voice)
Directed by Masaki Kitamura
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
Hinowa (voice)
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames (2026)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Hinowa (voice) gives Kikuko Inoue a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Nanase Tsukumo (voice)
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take On Me (2018)
Performance score7.6
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take On Me asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nanase Tsukumo (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Maki (voice)
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Performance score7.6
Kiki's Delivery Service asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Maki (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tsubaki (voice)
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)
Performance score7.2
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tsubaki (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 Hinowa (voice)
Start here. Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames is the clearest statement of what Kikuko Inoue does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kikuko 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.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Keeps the animation register of Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames but asks for a colder reading of it.
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take On Me (2018)
Keeps the fantasy register of Kiki's Delivery Service but asks for a colder reading of it.
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)
Keeps the animation register of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take On Me but asks for a colder reading of it.
Assassination Classroom the Movie: Our Time (2026)
Keeps the animation register of Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Kiki's Delivery Service
Tatsuya Ishihara
Director
1 film together
Notably Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take On Me
Kobun Shizuno
Director
1 film together
Notably My Tyrano: Together, Forever
Gen Urobuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Thunderbolt Fantasy: Bewitching Melody of the West
Rika Ota
Director
1 film together
Notably Genji Fantasy: The Cat Fell in Love With Hikaru Genji
Hirofumi Ogura
Director
1 film together
Notably Cells at Work!! The Return of the Strongest Enemy: A Huge Uproar in the Body’s Bowels!
Toshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together
Notably Love Me, Love Me Not
Kyohei Ishiguro
Director
1 film together
Notably Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
Yuzuru Tachikawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine
Masaki Kitamura
Director
1 film together
Notably Assassination Classroom the Movie: Our Time
Naoya Ando
Director
1 film together
Notably Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Naoya Ando
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in FlamesTatsuya Ishihara
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Take On MeHayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kiki's Delivery ServiceKyohei Ishiguro
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Words Bubble Up Like Soda PopMasaki Kitamura
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Assassination Classroom the Movie: Our TimeYuzuru Tachikawa
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detective Conan: Black Iron SubmarineToshimasa Kuroyanagi
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love Me, Love Me NotHirofumi Ogura
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Kobun Shizuno
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Tyrano: Together, ForeverGen Urobuchi
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thunderbolt Fantasy: Bewitching Melody of the WestRika Ota
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Genji Fantasy: The Cat Fell in Love With Hikaru GenjiSix 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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Maki (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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Maki (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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Maki (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Assassination Classroom the Movie: Our Time
as Azusa (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames
as Hinowa (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. Kikuko Inoue 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
37 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
12 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
Kiki's Delivery Service
as Maki (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames
as Hinowa (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
as Tsubaki (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine
as Chianti (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Gintama the Movie 2026: Yoshiwara in Flames
as Hinowa (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Thunderbolt Fantasy: Bewitching Melody of the West
as Zhòu Xún Yīn (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Love Me, Love Me Not
as Akari's mother (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Love Me, Love Me Not
as Akari's mother (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Rumi Hiiragi
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Miyu Irino
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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