Yutaka Kobayashi on Playing Kamen Rider Baron and His Dislike of Bananas

Yutaka Kobayashi, who plays Kumon Kaito, Kamen Rider Baron, in Kamen Rider Gaim, talked candidly with Hyper Hobby about a personal complication with his casting: he doesn’t much care for bananas, and Baron’s design is built entirely around one.

Kobayashi said producer Naomi Takebe walked him through the design in person and spent roughly twenty minutes checking whether he was comfortable with it. He described treating it since as a running personal challenge, trying to warm up to a fruit he’d avoided since a bad experience eating bananas during a marathon, and joked that he still checks every new script first to see whether an on-camera banana scene is coming.

The interview also surfaced a near-miss: Kobayashi had auditioned for the lead role in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and made it to the final round before turning it down over a scheduling conflict with another job. Ryota Ozawa was cast instead, and Kobayashi said the two are frequently told they resemble each other. He described Kaito as close to his opposite in temperament, a character motivated by a hunger for power who reads as arrogant on the surface, and said part of what drew him to Kamen Rider in general was its reputation as a launching point for young actors’ careers, to the point that he’d gotten a motorcycle license in preparation before landing the role.

On the character’s design itself, Kobayashi said he and suit actor Eitoku had coordinated to keep Baron’s fighting style and transformation pose simple, in keeping with the character’s cocky, understated attitude, something he said helped him look past the banana motif entirely once filming began.