Yutaro

Yutaro (Japanese: ゆうたろう; born June 3, 1998) is a Japanese model and actor signed to ASOBISYSTEM, best known to BL audiences as Wataya Minato (綿矢湊), the blond delivery driver and aspiring dancer who falls for the novelist Tsuge, in TV Tokyo’s Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (2020) and its sequel film Cherry Magic! THE MOVIE (2022).

He was born in Naka-ku, Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and worked as a shop assistant at the vintage clothing store Santonibunnoichi before entering the industry. He was approached on Takeshita Street in Harajuku by staff from the NTV variety programme Matsuko Kaigi and appeared on the broadcast of January 23, 2016, where his androgynous look drew immediate attention. He signed with ASOBISYSTEM shortly afterwards and made his formal entertainment debut on Gyoretsu no Dekiru Horitsu Sodanjo the following month.

Yutaro spent his first years as a magazine and street-fashion model, winning the New Blogger prize at the LINE Blog of the Year awards in 2016 and a Shibuya Street Best Dresser Award in the Harajuku street category the same year. He is credited mononymously as ゆうたろう in essentially all professional contexts, including on his agency’s own roster.

He turned to acting from 2017, making his film debut in Real Girl (3D彼女 リアルガール, 2018) as Yuto Ito, and followed it with the Kaguya-sama: Love Is War films, Fuji TV’s Sherlock (2019), Netflix’s Followers, and TV Tokyo’s Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu. He has spoken in interviews about deliberately taking transformative roles, including cross-dressing parts, saying the work convinced him that an actor has to be able to turn a hand to anything.

For Cherry Magic! he bleached his hair blond for the first time in order to play Minato. The character carries the series’ second romance opposite Kodai Asaka’s Tsuge, and Yutaro returned for the 2022 film. He is credited as supporting cast on both the twelve-episode TV Tokyo series and the film sequel. He has continued to combine acting with stage work and modelling, and has said he still occasionally works shifts at the shop where he was discovered.

Cherry Magic! aired in TV Tokyo’s MokuDra 25 slot from 9 October to 24 December 2020, twelve episodes with Eiji Akaso as Kiyoshi Adachi, Keita Machida as Yuichi Kurosawa and Kodai Asaka as Masato Tsuge. Suzunosuke plays the office colleague Urabe alongside Yutaro’s Minato. The film sequel opened on 8 April 2022 and entered the box office chart at number six.