Makoto Hasegawa

Makoto Hasegawa trained at EXPG, the performing arts school of the EXILE family, in Tokyo, and became an official member of THE RAMPAGE from EXILE TRIBE on September 12, 2014. Dance is the foundation of his career, and for several years audiences knew him mainly through the group’s stage and television work. His move into acting began in autumn 2018, when he joined the cast of the NTV series Prince of Legend as Odajima Riku, one of the young men in a story built around a large ensemble. He repeated the role in the March 2019 theatrical film Prince of Legend and again in the 2020 follow-up film Kizoku Korin, and in 2019 he took the lead as Ikeda Yujiro in the web drama Shujinko, released on YouTube.

In January 2021 he played Takeo in the NTV special App de Koi Suru 20 no Joken, and from October to December 2021 he appeared as Morito Tomoya in Kao Dake Sensei, a series shown on Fuji TV and Tokai TV. His next film credit came in September 2022 with HiGH&LOW THE WORST X, in which he played Sameoka Shoji. On stage he took the part of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. In spring 2023 he was cast as Taniwaki in the TV Tokyo drama Ciguatera, and in December of the same year he played Nyan in the special drama Spinning Around My Whirl.

The role that placed him at the centre of a series came in March 2024 with Love Is Better the Second Time Around, broadcast in the Dramaism block on MBS and TBS. Hasegawa played Miyata Akihiro, a business magazine editor who asks a university associate professor, Iwanaga Takashi, played by Robin Furuya, to write a column and then realises that the professor was his first love in high school. The six episodes were adapted from the manga by Kinoshita Keiko and directed by Yasukawa Yuka and Nomura Nao, with Takamatsu Aloha as the professor’s assistant Shiraishi Yuto and Shiraishi Shunya as Sugimoto Kyosuke. At the announcement he said he was full of happiness at leading a series for the first time, and that viewers would find the pair’s scenes warm and a little heart fluttering.

He stayed busy through the end of 2024. In October he began Rikon Koya on ABC TV and TV Asahi as Kanaori Shinya, and in December he joined Red Blue, a series carried by MBS, TBS and Netflix, as Iwase Sannosuke. The same month brought the theatrical release of Love Is Better the Second Time Around special edition, a film that kept him and Furuya in the joint lead roles.

The partnership returned in September 2026 with Season 2, which started on September 1 on MBS and TBS and is also carried by CBC, RKB and HBC. The seven episodes are set two years after the first story and find Miyata and Iwanaga living together, until the professor’s former partners come back into view after a magazine interview. Yasukawa Yuka returns as director and Funabiki Shinju writes the scripts, while Takamatsu Aloha and Shiraishi Shunya both return in their original roles.

One observation connects these credits. In Prince of Legend, Odajima Riku is one of many young men sharing the screen, and Taniwaki and Morito Tomoya are supporting characters inside larger casts. Miyata Akihiro is different, because the story asks him to carry half of a two person drama from the first scene to the last, and Season 2 extends that responsibility across a second run. Seen next to his work as a dancer in a large group, the move from ensemble parts to a central partnership looks like a deliberate step from sharing the stage to anchoring it.