Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#38865
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Wataru Ichinose 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.
Wataru Ichinose appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Wataru. Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls 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 drama, war, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Makoto Nagahisa, Shinsuke Sato, Hideki Takeuchi and others, Wataru Ichinose 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.
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls (2026) · Cells at Work! (2024) as External Anal Sphincter · Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning (2021) as Sumita
Career snapshot
Ranked #38865 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
Average Nutevio score
5.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
Most frequent director
Makoto Nagahisa
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Makoto Nagahisa
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
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
6.2 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. BURN, Unchained, Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.2
Across 7 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.2
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. Not in Textbooks 5, My Girlfriend Is a Serial Killer.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 0.01 film | 5.55 films |
| Action | — | 7.44 films |
| Thriller | 6.51 film | — |
| Comedy | 0.01 film | 7.71 film |
| Crime | 6.51 film | — |
| Romance | 3.32 films | 7.71 film |
| Horror | 6.51 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Okubo.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
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. 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.
9 of 9 films
Directed by Shinsuke Sato
as External Anal Sphincter
Directed by Hideki Takeuchi
as Sumita
Directed by Unknown
as Toru Ohashi
Directed by Michihito Fujii
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
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls (2026)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Wataru Ichinose a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
External Anal Sphincter
Cells at Work! (2024)
Performance score7.5
Cells at Work! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. External Anal Sphincter is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sumita
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning (2021)
Performance score7.5
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sumita is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Toru Ohashi
The Village (2023)
Performance score7.0
The Village asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Toru Ohashi 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
Start here. Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls is the clearest statement of what Wataru Ichinose does — accessible, 133 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Wataru 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.
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning (2021)
Keeps the action register of Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Village (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cells at Work! (2024)
A deliberate change of key after The Village — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
BURN (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Cells at Work! — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Yugo Sakamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably A Janitor
Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together
Notably The Village
Hideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Cells at Work!
Shinsuke Sato
Director
1 film together
Notably Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
Makoto Nagahisa
Director
1 film together
Notably BURN
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shinsuke Sato
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kingdom 5: The Clash of SoulsHideki Takeuchi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cells at Work!Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The VillageMakoto Nagahisa
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BURNYugo Sakamoto
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A JanitorSix 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
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning
as Sumita
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cells at Work!
as External Anal Sphincter
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
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. Wataru Ichinose 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
6 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
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cells at Work!
as External Anal Sphincter
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning
as Sumita
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Cells at Work!
as External Anal Sphincter
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cells at Work!
as External Anal Sphincter
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cells at Work!
as External Anal Sphincter
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning
as Sumita
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cells at Work!
as External Anal Sphincter
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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