Where Are They Now?: Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters

TokuNet’s latest article series, Where Are They Now will look back at the cast of our favorite tokusatsu shows and see where their careers have taken after the series’ end. In this opening installment, we will be looking at the actors from 2012-2013 Super Sentai series, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters.

Katsuhiro Suzuki played Hiromu Sakurada AKA Red Buster; the super-fast leader of the team with a fear of chickens. Post Go-Busters Suzuki has taken to playing parts in dramas. Most recently, he had a two episode guest spot in the show The Last Cop; a series based around  Detective Kyogoku Kosuke who fell into a coma in 1985 and woke up in 2015.

He also had a guest role in the series, Age Harassment. The show is based around a woman who wants to work her way up in the business world, but is not treated seriously by her male counterparts.

While Suzuki has yet to have a break out role on the scale as Red Buster, he is getting consistent work in guest roles in various Japanese television dramas.

Ryoma Baba played Ryuji Iwasaki AKA Blue Buster; the super strong eldest member of the team with a heat issue. After Go-Busters, Baba had two more notable roles in tokusatsu. He played Kiroku Ise in Shuriken Sentai Ninninger as well as Ryusuke Otaki/ The Dragonfly Amazon in Kamen Rider Amazons.

Outside of the tokusatsu genre, Baba has had some major roles in film. Most recently he was the starring role in U-31. This film centers around Baba’s character Atsuhiko Kono, a soccer player who is a former member of the Olympic Japanese Soccer team. He is 31 years old and past his prime. He is cut from the best team in the nation and joins the worst. His new team resents his former fame but he continues to work at being the best he can be.

Baba also plays Keisuke Sannan in Hakuohki SSL: Sweet School Life The Movie, a live action adaptation of a light novel video game. The comedic plot focuses on Chizuru Yukimura the only female student at a private school which used to only allow boys in.

Arisa Komiya played Yoko Usami AKA Yellow Buster; the high jumping youngest member of the team. In terms of tokusatsu, Arisa also had a guest appearance in Kamen Rider Ghost as Yuki Shirai; a girl whose deceased father has come back to life and the vessel of Harry Houndi’s ghost when he decided to possess her.

Arisa appeared in various films after her role in Go-Busters, such as Megumi in Kiri: Shokugyo Koroshiya. The film centers around Kiri (Yumiko Shaku) an assassin out for revenge when her mother is murdered and her friend is hurt. Arisa plays alongside her Go-Busters alum, Ayame Misaki, and the film is directed by long time tokusatsu action director Koichi Sakamoto.

Arisa is arguably the Go-Buster alum with the biggest role after the show due to her voice acting role as Kurosawa Dia in the anime, Love Live! Sunshine!!!

Love Live! is a massively popular multimedia project that has gone global. Adaptations includes an anime, manga, books, video games, trading cards, concerts. Love Live! is based on high school girls wanting to become idols and to perform in competitions. Sunshine!!! focuses on nine girls from the seaside high school called Uranohosi Girl’s High School.

Hiroya Matsumoto plays Masato Jin AKA Beet Buster, a brilliant scientist who worked alongside the main Buster’s parents before the accident that took their lives and created Vaglass. Beet Buster is not his first foray into the tokusatsu series, having played Tsubasa Ozu AKA MagiYellow in Mahou Sentai Magiranger. Apart from reprising his role as MagiYellow in Ninninger in 2015, Matsumoto hasn’t been acting outside of tokusatsu much. He had a role in the 2009 series The Dogs of Orthos, a series based around two men, one with the ability to cure sickness with a touch the other to inflict death with a touch. In 2013, he joined the boyband named, Voltage.

He will appear in the stage play We’re a Bounty Hunting Team alongside several other Sentai and Rider alumni as a part of the Toei Hero Next project in 2017.

Yuuchi Nakamura gave his voice for Beet J. Stag AKA Stag Buster AKA the best part of the show. If you had to describe Nakamura in one word, it would be prolific. He is the dub voice for Captain America when the Marvel Cinematic Universe films make their way over to Japan. He is the voice for Annasui in the video game Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle. He voices Ronaldo in 91 Days, Shimazu Toyohisa in Drifters, and License-less (Mumen) Rider in One Punch Man– all barely scratches the surface of his projects since Go-Busters.

Moving from the forces of justice to those of evil, we have Syo Jinnai who played Enter the Francophile 2^nd in command of the Vaglass forces. Sinnai, before and after Go-Busters, was a part of the group D-BOYS, and has continued to perform with them.

Jinnai had a starring role in the movie Gachiban New Generation 1 as Tokio Oomoto. His character is a yankee boy (Japanese hoodlum) who goes to Tokyo to practice in violence and depravity.

Jinnai also stars in Blue Demon (Ao Oni) as Takuro. The movie is based off of the PC survival horror game of the same name. Takuro is one of six high school students locked inside of a haunted house who has to escape before the mysterious blue shadow can reach them.

And finally, a continuous fan favorite, Ayame Misaki, who played Escape, the 2^nd general of the Vaglass forces. Misaki has been in a few major projects since Go-Busters ended.

Misaki played Hiana, an original character for the live action Attack on Titan film, and Attack on Titan: Counter Rockets mini-television special.  They are adaptations of the popular manga of the same name. Giant monsters known as Titans have pushed humanity back into a city protected by massive walls. Humanity is barely holding on, when a Titan called the Colossal Titan breaches the wall, sending humanity further back into their already cramped sanctuary. She stars alongside Kamen Rider OOO alum, Shu Watanabe.

Misaki also stars in Hentai Kamen 2: An Abnormal Crisis. This spoof of the tokusatsu genre centers around Hentai Kamen loses his panties and disappearing, while pantie thefts are being reported around the nation.

Outside of the world of entertainment, Ayame Misaki announced her marriage in July of 2016. Her husband is a man who markets energy saving plans. They are both from the Hyogo prefecture and they met over a game of Mahjong.

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