Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7873
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Yuki Yamada 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.
Yuki Yamada appears in 22 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yuki. We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 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, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shinsuke Sato, Yuzuru Tachikawa, Tsutomu Hanabusa and others, Yuki Yamada 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.
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous (2020) as Keita Makino · Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls (2026) as Man Goku (Wan Ji) · Kaizoku Sentai: Ten Gokaiger (2021) as Joe Gibken / Gokai Blue
Career snapshot
Ranked #7873 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
22
2018–2026
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
Most frequent director
Shinsuke Sato
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Shinsuke Sato
Most common genre
Action
13 titles
Average runtime
1h 59m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
2010s
7.6 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Shoplifters — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.8
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. Shoplifters.
Most productive era
2020s
21 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 | 7.61 film | 7.110 films |
| Action | — | 6.613 films |
| Thriller | 7.61 film | 7.51 film |
| Comedy | — | 7.42 films |
| Crime | 7.61 film | 7.55 films |
| Romance | — | 6.82 films |
| Horror | — | 3.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2018Shoplifters
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Yasu Hojo.
Highest rated performance
2020We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
8.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2023Blue Giant
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
The current state of the argument, as Man Goku (Wan Ji).
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.
22 of 22 films
as Dai Miyamoto (voice)
Directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa
as Joe Gibken / Gokai Blue
Directed by Shojiro Nakazawa
as Ruike
Directed by Unknown
as Ken Ryuguji
Directed by Tsutomu Hanabusa
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
Dai Miyamoto (voice)
Blue Giant (2023)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Dai Miyamoto (voice) gives Yuki Yamada a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Joe Gibken / Gokai Blue
Kaizoku Sentai: Ten Gokaiger (2021)
Performance score8.2
Kaizoku Sentai: Ten Gokaiger asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joe Gibken / Gokai Blue is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ruike
Suzuki=Bakudan (2025)
Performance score8.1
Suzuki=Bakudan asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ruike is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Shinichi
Nighttime Warbles (2022)
Performance score8.1
Nighttime Warbles asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shinichi 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 Dai Miyamoto (voice)
Start here. Blue Giant is the clearest statement of what Yuki Yamada does — accessible, 120 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yuki 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.
Kaizoku Sentai: Ten Gokaiger (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Blue Giant — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Tokyo Revengers (2021)
Keeps the action register of Kaizoku Sentai: Ten Gokaiger but asks for a colder reading of it.
Nighttime Warbles (2022)
Keeps the drama register of Tokyo Revengers but asks for a colder reading of it.
Suzuki=Bakudan (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Nighttime Warbles — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tsutomu Hanabusa
Director
3 films together
Notably Tokyo Revengers
Shinsuke Sato
Director
3 films together
Notably Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together
Notably Shoplifters
Masaharu Take
Director
1 film together
Notably We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
Shojiro Nakazawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Kaizoku Sentai: Ten Gokaiger
Shinya Watada
Director
1 film together
Notably Hula Fulla Dance
Hideo Jojo
Director
1 film together
Notably Nighttime Warbles
Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last 10 Years
Yuzuru Tachikawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Blue Giant
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shinsuke Sato
Director
3 films together · 7.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kingdom 5: The Clash of SoulsTsutomu Hanabusa
Director
3 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Tokyo RevengersMasaharu Take
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Make Antiques! Kyoto RendezvousShojiro Nakazawa
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kaizoku Sentai: Ten GokaigerYuzuru Tachikawa
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blue GiantHideo Jojo
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nighttime WarblesHirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShopliftersMichihito Fujii
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Last 10 YearsShinya Watada
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hula Fulla DanceSix 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
as Man Goku (Wan Ji)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Blue Giant
as Dai Miyamoto (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
We Make Antiques! Kyoto Rendezvous
as Keita Makino
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hula Fulla Dance
as Kazuto Taira (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Blue Giant
as Dai Miyamoto (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. Yuki Yamada 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
13 catalogue titles in action, 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
Suzuki=Bakudan
as Ruike
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Tokyo Revengers
as Ken Ryuguji
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Blue Giant
as Dai Miyamoto (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Suzuki=Bakudan
as Ruike
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kingdom 5: The Clash of Souls
as Man Goku (Wan Ji)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kingdom: Return of the Great General
as Man Goku (Wan Ji)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hula Fulla Dance
as Kazuto Taira (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Kaizoku Sentai: Ten Gokaiger
as Joe Gibken / Gokai Blue
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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