Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#49011
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Shinobu Otake 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.
Shinobu Otake appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Shinobu. The Boy and the Heron 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 fantasy, drama, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hayao Miyazaki, Shinya Kawatsura, Yoshinori Kobayashi, Shinobu Otake 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 Aiko (voice) · Hell Dogs (2022) as Noriko Kinugasa · Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko (2021) as Nikuko-chan (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #49011 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
2020–2023
Career length
3 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
The Boy and the Heron
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Boy and the Heron
Most frequent director
Hayao Miyazaki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Hayao Miyazaki
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 54m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.4
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
7.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The Boy and the Heron, Hell Dogs, Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.0
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.0
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. The Boy and the Heron, Hell Dogs, Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 7.05 films |
| Action | 7.01 film |
| Thriller | 7.01 film |
| Comedy | 7.02 films |
| Crime | 7.01 film |
| Horror | 7.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2020Tales of the Bizarre: 2020 Fall Special
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Masako Tatemoto.
Career peak
2021Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Aiko (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.
5 of 5 films
as Nikuko-chan (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Masako Tatemoto
Directed by Yoshinori Kobayashi
as Aiko (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Kiwa-san (voice)
Directed by Shinya Kawatsura
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
Nikuko-chan (voice)
Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko (2021)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nikuko-chan (voice) gives Shinobu Otake a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Masako Tatemoto
Tales of the Bizarre: 2020 Fall Special (2020)
Performance score7.4
Tales of the Bizarre: 2020 Fall Special asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Masako Tatemoto is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Aiko (voice)
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Performance score7.2
The Boy and the Heron asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aiko (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Noriko Kinugasa
Hell Dogs (2022)
Performance score7.1
Hell Dogs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Noriko Kinugasa 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 Nikuko-chan (voice)
Start here. Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko is the clearest statement of what Shinobu Otake does — accessible, 97 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Shinobu 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 of the Bizarre: 2020 Fall Special (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko but asks for a colder reading of it.
The House of the Lost on the Cape (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Tales of the Bizarre: 2020 Fall Special but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hell Dogs (2022)
Keeps the drama register of The House of the Lost on the Cape but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Hell Dogs but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao 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 HeronYoshinori Kobayashi
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tales of the Bizarre: 2020 Fall SpecialShinya Kawatsura
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The House of the Lost on the CapeSix 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 Aiko (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 Aiko (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 Aiko (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Boy and the Heron
as Aiko (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko
as Nikuko-chan (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. Shinobu Otake 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
5 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 Boy and the Heron
as Aiko (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Hell Dogs
as Noriko Kinugasa
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 Aiko (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Tales of the Bizarre: 2020 Fall Special
as Masako Tatemoto
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Hell Dogs
as Noriko Kinugasa
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Hell Dogs
as Noriko Kinugasa
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The House of the Lost on the Cape
as Kiwa-san (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Boy and the Heron
as Aiko (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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