Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13791
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Masaki Suda 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.
Masaki Suda appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Masaki. The Samurai and the Prisoner is the clearest case: a film rated 8.4 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 animation, drama, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Fumitoshi Oizaki, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and others, Masaki Suda 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 Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) as Kuroda Kanbei · Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024) as Self · We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021) as Mugi Yamane
Career snapshot
Ranked #13791 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2015–2026
Career length
11 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
The Samurai and the Prisoner
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
The Samurai and the Prisoner
Most frequent director
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
5.8 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Sgt. Frog, Look Back, The Samurai and the Prisoner — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
5.8
Across 10 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
5.8
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. Taro the Fool, The Great War of Archimedes, I'm still here.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 4.33 films | 6.36 films |
| Action | 6.73 films | 6.71 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.53 films |
| Comedy | 4.43 films | 7.31 film |
| Crime | — | 7.12 films |
| Romance | — | 7.71 film |
| Horror | — | 6.12 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Karuma Akabane.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026The Samurai and the Prisoner
8.4 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. The current state of the argument, as Kuroda Kanbei.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Kuroda Kanbei
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
as Gray Heron (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
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
Kuroda Kanbei
The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kuroda Kanbei gives Masaki Suda a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mugi Yamane
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021)
Performance score8.2
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mugi Yamane is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Keigo Yamashiro
Character (2021)
Performance score8.0
Character asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Keigo Yamashiro is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024)
Performance score7.8
Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Kuroda Kanbei
Start here. The Samurai and the Prisoner is the clearest statement of what Masaki Suda does — accessible, 147 minutes, and rated 8.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Masaki 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.
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021)
Keeps the drama register of The Samurai and the Prisoner but asks for a colder reading of it.
Character (2021)
A deliberate change of key after We Made a Beautiful Bouquet — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Character — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024)
A deliberate change of key after The Boy and the Heron — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
2 films together
Notably The Samurai and the Prisoner
Eiichiro Hasumi
Director
1 film together
Notably Assassination Classroom
Kyouhei Yamaguchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever
Shota Sometani
Director
1 film together
Notably I'm still here
Yasuhiko Shimizu
Director
1 film together
Notably Cube
Nobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together
Notably We Made a Beautiful Bouquet
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boy and the Heron
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together
Notably Look Back
Fumitoshi Oizaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Sgt. Frog
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
2 films together · 7.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Samurai and the PrisonerNobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Made a Beautiful BouquetHayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Boy and the HeronEiichiro Hasumi
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 ClassroomShota Sometani
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I'm still hereKyouhei Yamaguchi
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations ForeverYasuhiko Shimizu
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CubeFumitoshi Oizaki
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sgt. FrogHirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Look BackSix 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 Samurai and the Prisoner
as Kuroda Kanbei
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet
as Mugi Yamane
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 Samurai and the Prisoner
as Kuroda Kanbei
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever
as Kamen Rider Double (archive voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Samurai and the Prisoner
as Kuroda Kanbei
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. Masaki Suda 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
9 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 Samurai and the Prisoner
as Kuroda Kanbei
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Samurai and the Prisoner
as Kuroda Kanbei
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Boy and the Heron
as Gray Heron (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Character
as Keigo Yamashiro
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Samurai and the Prisoner
as Kuroda Kanbei
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever
as Kamen Rider Double (archive voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Boy and the Heron
as Gray Heron (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Boy and the Heron
as Gray Heron (voice)
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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