Saito Syuusuke

Saito Syuusuke plays Ian Yorkland, Kyoryu Black, in Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, a character built around emotional guardedness that the show slowly works to dismantle over its opening arc. In a joint interview with co-star Ryuusei Ryo for Hero Vision magazine, conducted when both actors were twenty years old in a cast whose remaining members were otherwise more than a decade older, Syuusuke traced Ian’s turning point back to the show’s fourth episode, the moment Ian’s backstory is revealed to team leader Daigo Kiryuu. He described Daigo’s directness in that episode as the right match for a character who, underneath the guardedness, actually wanted someone willing to push past his defenses rather than wait for him to open up on his own terms.

Syuusuke drew a direct line between that in-story dynamic and his real relationship with Ryuusei off camera, calling him a “stoic” performer who leads by pushing forward rather than by explaining himself, the same quality he had just described driving Daigo’s approach to Ian. Where Ryuusei’s own account of the friendship emphasized Syuusuke’s bluntness and reliability, Syuusuke’s account leaned into how that directness from Ryuusei actually operated in practice: not through discussion, but by simply moving ahead and trusting Syuusuke to follow, which is close to how Daigo’s persistence, rather than any persuasion, ends up earning Ian’s trust on screen.

The interview also caught a lighter, more self-deprecating side of Syuusuke. Ryuusei needled him over a specific habit: dropping an argument only to circle back and reopen a slightly different version of it later. Syuusuke didn’t dispute the description so much as let it stand as evidence of how comfortable the two of them had become bickering with each other by that point. That comfort extended well past the set, the pair said, describing regular visits to each other’s homes and shared games of darts as an ordinary, ongoing friendship rather than something produced for a magazine feature.

Asked whether the closeness audiences saw between Daigo and Ian had been built for the show or had simply carried over from how the two actors already got along, Syuusuke agreed with Ryuusei: the on-screen bond followed the real one, not the reverse. For a character introduced as difficult to reach, that account lines up closely with Syuusuke’s own read on Ian’s arc from guarded outsider to trusted second-in-command. By his description, that trust came from being drawn out by a scene partner who leads, on set as much as in character, by doing rather than by saying.