Kentaro Sakaguchi, face to face, is a cheery, affable, sometimes goofy persona—a marked contrast from the sad, serious characters this famous Japanese actor has portrayed in films and drama series. This much, his select fans found out as the filled the SkyDome of SM North Edsa for his fan meet last Saturday, May 17, 2025.
“If you see a blonde guy eating halo-halo, that would be me,” through an interpreter, he told his fans with a laugh. Yes, this 33-year-old actor has dyed blonde his mop of a hair for his fan meet. He was talking about the Filipino fare he had tried, going around, and picked out halo halo, the world-famous Filipino concoction which, coincidentally, BTS j-hope himself tried during his March concert in Manila. Coincidentally again, Kentaro and j-hope must be good friends, as Kentaro’s IG post shows.
Kentaro said he had been to Manila before—stayed for a week, in fact, as he filmed a scene in a poor community. But he didn’t get to go around much.
Kentaro was thrilled—and he didn’t hide it—to know that his Filipino fans knew all his drama series and movies streamed in the Philippines. Very outgoing, he worked the SkyDome, hopping down the stage and moving around among his fans—a very sociable guy, again so different from the ponderous, reflective, even tragic roles he has played.
We were incredulous at first, then happily surprised upon learning that Japanese actor and model Kentaro Sakaguchi would have a fan meet in Manila on Saturday May 17, 2025 at the SkyDome of SM North Edsa.
Why incredulous? Because in a scene overrun by idols and pop bands, Kentaro is a deviation—only 33, he’s a very versatile actor who’s apparently more into film making than fan servicing or social media engagements. Judging from a rare IG livestream recently, he’s not into livestreaming either. And if you watch his dramas and films, you’ll conclude that he’s not into guarding his looks either—those full unruly bangs perennially shroud that face.
So what brought us to this Japanese actor and model, who included Manila in his ongoing tour (after Seoul)? His TV series and films. They’re no clickbaits, instead they grow on you. Like an acquired taste.
Kentaro Sakaguchi with BTS j-hope (Official IG sakaguchi kentaro)
In fact, we first came across that name through Uniqlo and Prada, of which he is brand ambassador. That led us to his Japanese dramas and films worth a binge-watch on Netflix and Viu.
Kentaro Sakaguchi interacts with Filipino fans
In the series, Innocence: Fight Against False Charges (Netflix), he plays an eccentric young lawyer obsessed with defending the accused—cases deemed impossible to win. His hair uncombed, his appearance scruffy, Kentaro in this role (and in other roles, we’d find out) is no glamour boy or heatthrob. Instead, in a 10-episode series, he defines the character of a legal mind with a troubled past. With excessive attention to detail and almost paranormal intuition, he defends all kinds of suspects: arsonist, thief, a woman executive accused of drowning her colleague, a surgeon accused of botching a procedure that killed a young girl, a fencing instructor of a top school out to groom the country’s Olympians but whose sparring dealt a student an almost fatal blow.
The cases get more and more riveting towards the final episode, until the penultimate episode reveals a past crime that made Kentaro decide to take up law and sometimes be at odds with his dad, the chief prosecutor. Kentaro’s lawyer has all empathy, but no romance. Before we knew it, we’ve finished the 10 episodes, carried along in the suspense (think a non-cliché Law And Order), the intense human drama—and the humor. You laugh sometimes through the cliff-hangers.
There’s something I like about the Japanese TV series and films—their actors/actresses are never fully made up…. I simply get distracted by reddish lip gloss on men
This series became our introduction to a young prolific actor, not your typical romantic lead or glam celebrity. Kentaro’s characters are the anti-thesis of glamour. There’s something I like about the Japanese TV series and films we see on streaming sites—their actors/actresses are never fully made up. They look bare and natural, even in unforgiving close-ups: freckles, wrinkles, age spots and all. The men are not over-lip-glossed, unlike in Korean dramas. I simply get distracted by reddish lip gloss on men, even if they’re of idol-age. And Kentaro is “un-made-up” in his roles, just like other Japanese actors.
Kentaro is a master of subtle nuances. There’s no actor’s ego to prevent him from subsuming himself in the character—perhaps the reason he’s never typecast. He is what the character is, in intensity, levity or quirkiness. Apparently this young man who started out as a fashion model is now proving himself an actor’s actor. Many of his films and TV series are reflective, almost languid, so be warned in case you’re expecting a stereotypical romcom.
What Comes After Love official poster
Check out his drama series or movies:
What Comes After Love (Viu)
This South Korean drama series pairs him with our favorite Korean actress Lee Se Young (loved her in The Red Sleeve), who plays a Japanese-speaking Korean who, not knowing what to do in her young life, leaves Seoul, guitar in tow, and flies to Tokyo to bunk in with her best friend. The moment she sets foot in the train station, she literally stumbles on Kentaro as she struggles with her luggage. He helps her pick up her load, walks her to meet her friend, even takes a photo for them.
In that huge, impersonal city, she and Kentaro run into each other again, this time while applying for part-time jobs. He’s a student intent on becoming a writer; she has her literary pursuits as well. Theirs becomes a romance built on shared dreams, a shared struggle to make ends meet in Tokyo, and the fun and abandon of youth.
They live together, but in time, the Korean transplant feels more and more alienated in the big city, especially as Kentaro’s character gets preoccupied with the daily grind and has less time for her. One day, he comes home and finds her gone; she goes home to Seoul. Distance and time separate them.
Five years later, he becomes a celebrated novelist. His book tour brings him to Seoul, where the book publisher taps at the last minute a Korean-Japanese interpreter for him. It is Se Young.
They come face to face in the airport—the first of the most stirring scenes in the drama: she’s told by the photographer to fix his shirt during a shoot; she acts as translator in his interview. Asked by the interviewer about the real-life inspiration of his novel, he talks about a love that vanishes from his life, and the regret he feels for it—an answer Se Young struggles to translate.
And that’s how a rekindled love unfolds yet again—reviving the young couple’s recriminations, memories of happiness and pain, feelings of abandonment and possession.
Kentaro and Se Young have such a unique take on their roles so that their performance goes beyond chemistry. Both know how to essay the angst and pain of a person who’s never gotten over a loved one, and the subsequent doubt and exhilaration upon meeting that loved one again. This older and more established novelist and the career woman engaged to another man rediscover what comes after love. You stay glued for that.
The Parades official poster
The Parades (Netflix)
This is supposed to be fantasy, yet the stories of the characters are so real because they are common, and that becomes the movie’s charm.
It opens with a devastating earthquake and tsunami. In its wake, a mother is shown wandering the landscape of devastation in search of her boy whom she failed to rescue. Like a lost soul, she walks around in panic but can’t make contact with the people around—because she is dead. She’s a spirit lost in the ruins until a van drives up to give her a ride.
The driver is a young Kentaro who brings her to an isolated camp—a happy camp with a bar, lounge sets and happy denizens. She refuses at first to mingle in this cluster—they’re all dead people with unfinished business—until she gets drawn to the story of each one, and they to hers. A busy journalist, she had no time for her son; now she wants to find him.
Dead people with unfinished business on earth—you can’t get a plot more cliché-ish than that.
Yet somehow you find the story of each one engaging. Each one in the camp has someone to find or something to put an end to—a famous movie director who leaves behind an unfinished work about the ‘70s of tumult and youth activism in Japan, and it turns out, a teen love he abandons in their activist cause; a Yakuza leader’s carefree son who gets fatally shot in the gang war and who likes to revisit a father overcome with guilt and a girlfriend unable to move on; a student who tries to slash her wrist.
These stranded souls from all over gather in a parade (thus the title) or lit procession, walking the earth in unison in the hope of finding the loved ones they left behind. Kentaro, for his part, didn’t live a full life because he was sickly. He feels that his life wasn’t of any use to his family. So in the camp, he devotes his time archiving notes and a diary of life—which he hopes is what he can gift the earth with.
One by one, the camp’s inhabitants get to move on from their earth limbo. The plot isn’t only cohesive, despite the many stories, it is actually told with such poignancy that you forget it is fantasy.
Stick around for the happy ending.
Beyond Goodbye official poster
Beyond goodbye (Netflix)
I think this eight-episode drama series is Kentaro’s latest. It is a most touching drama.
A young couple is in the snow-filled mountain, the guy is about to propose to her—when an avalanche hits their bus. She makes it; he doesn’t. From the hospital is wheeled out a box containing his heart. It will be transplanted in the body of another young man waiting in another hospital.
No communication is allowed between the donor’s family and the recipient except for letters of gratitude. Kentaro, who plays the young married recipient, writes a heartfelt vow to the donor’s girlfriend that in the future, he hopes to be able to do anything for her.
Kentaro and the bereaved girlfriend, Saeko, played by Kasumi Arimura, lead their separate lives until fate brings them to the same train from Hokkaido—every day. Saeko works for a coffee farm in Hokkaido, and she and her late fiancé, Yuusuke (played by the charismatic Toma Ikuta), are coffee lovers and connoisseurs. Inexplicably, Kentaro as Naruse, a university staff married to an owner of an apple farm, develops a taste and love for coffee.
This is the beginning of the unfolding of Yuusuke’s character within Kentaro’s Naruse—and no characters are more different than the two. Yuusuke has the joy of life, a vibrant energy that brings laughter to Saeko’s life; the sickly Naruse is staid, a dutiful husband who goes through life perfunctorily.
When the paths of a grieving Saeko and a clueless Naruse cross, they get drawn to each other, until in a twist, the heart recipient and the fiancée of the dead donor discover each other’s identity—and inextricable link.
In a most touching scene, Kentaro’s Naruse lets Saeko hear his beating heart. Can I hear his heart beat, she asks him as she slowly rests her head on his chest.
This drama could have been mushy, but it’s not. It is not superficially romantic either. Rather, it is touching, its poignancy balanced with raw realism. Kentaro’s Naruse, in a moment of bewilderment, tells Saeko—his heart’s memories live in me, like a brain. Yet it has a separate life.
Kentaro’s Naruse finds himself going to the people who were special in the late Yuusuke’s life, including his best friend, the café owner, who, like Saeko, can’t get over the death of his friend. But Naruse is told off, he shouldn’t make it difficult for them to move on. Problem is, the transplanted heart remembers—including how to breakdance in a train station.
As Naruse gives in to the urgings of Yuusuke’s heart, he finds himself subsequently being drawn away from his wife and his current family life. He tells himself that the love for his wife will not change, yet why does he keep feeling for Saeko—do these feelings belong to him or to his transplanted heart, he tries hard to figure this out.
Will he and Saeko fall in love? Like a simple romance story?
The performances of the leads save it from becoming a stereotypical love story. Their self-doubt, their longing, their trivial joys make the characters so real—such nuanced portrayals. Kasumi Arimura listening to her late fiancé’s beating heart so powerfully blends disbelief with gentle curiosity.
But what’s even just as powerful is the direction of Hiroshi Kurosaki. The shots are so vivid and eloquent that they take the place of words and dialogues, like the closeup of Naruse’s wedding ring as if to remind the viewer of the reality that he is a husband to a self-sacrificing woman.
You wait for the encounter between the wife and the fiancée who’s still in grief, yet is beginning to get drawn to the recipient of the heart. You wonder how far Kentaro’s Naruse will go in life with a borrowed heart. The story has an ending.
