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Kentaro Randa is a character created by Legendary Pictures who made his first appearance within the 2023 MonsterVerse series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Personality[]

Kentaro is smart, quick-witted, and fiercely protective over his family.

Relationships[]

Hiroshi Randa[]

Emiko Randa[]

Cate Randa[]

Kentaro initially rejects his paternal half-sister Cate, accusing her of being a fraud. Even after her identity was proven, he had no desire to know her or be her sibling. But during the search for their father Hiroshi, Kentaro grew to care about Cate as a person, and later, as a sibling. They realized they had more in common then they thought. They came to regard one another as siblings. Kentaro was determined to bring Cate home from Axis Mundi, and partnered with their estranged father and Brenda Holland to do just that.

May Olowe-Hewitt[]

May is Kentaro's ex-girlfriend of two-years. They met outside of his art gallery and their relationship escalated quickly, though they had an obvious bond. They shared deep thoughts and beliefs about life with one another. They were in love until 2014, when Kentaro's father Hiroshi went missing after the attack on San Francisco. Kentaro ghosted May and they didn't talk for over a year. He came back into her life because he needed her help to find Hiroshi. She reluctantly helped him and his newly discovered half-sister Cate. The trio were forced to go on the run from Monarch and faced impossible adventures together. May's annoyance and disdain for Kentaro thawed with time, but she has yet to fully forgive him.

History[]

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters[]

2015[]

Kentaro was shocked to find a young American woman in his and mom's apartment in Tokyo, Japan. The girl, Cate, claimed to be Hiroshi Randa's daughter. Kentaro didn't believe that Cate was his half-sister and part of a secret family that Hiroshi had. Kentaro and his mom heard the early warning system for a Godzilla sighting. Kentaro and Emiko led Cate underground where they waited for the all-clear sound. After the all-clear was given, Kentaro convinced Cate to follow him back to their father's office where he hoped to show her a different side of Hiroshi. She found a safe hidden behind a satellite map. Inside was a bag of data that belonged to Monarch employee Randa, W.J. Kentaro recruited the help of a coder and his ex-girlfriend May Olowe-Hewitt to decrypt the information. They unknowingly alerted Monarch to their efforts. Cate recognized a photograph her and Kentaro's grandmother Keiko standing in a giant monster print.^[2]

The next day, Kentaro went back to Hiroshi's office and destroyed the desk out of anger. He found a locked file cabinet with a folder inside about Lee Shaw marked with a Monarch logo. In the file were films from the Philippines in 1952. He took the films to May for help, but she refused. He went home where he spoke to his mother about their shared anger over Hiroshi's affair. They got brief happiness when they ripped up photographs. He found a picture of Lee within them. Moments later, they were visited by Tim and Michelle Duvall, two Monarch operatives. They demanded that Kentaro give William Randa's files back. Emiko secretly told Kentaro to flee and he did. He met up with May and Cate who were also on the run from Monarch. Kentaro insisted he knew where to go. He took them to a retirement home where Lee Shaw was a resident. After a conversation, Lee revealed the facility was Monarch's version of secure asset management. He didn't believe Hiroshi disappeared without a trace. He offered to help them get out of there and learn what happened to their father.^[3]

Shaw led Cate, Kenatro, and May out of the Monarch retirement home where he drove Kentaro's rental van through the front gate to escape. They boarded a ship to Korea where they planned to meet Shaw's friend who could get them to Alaska, where Hiroshi might be. While on a ship, Kentaro eavesdropped on May's phone call, and wanted to know what was going on with her. She didn't want to talk about it with him. She blamed him for dragging her into this mess. She wanted him to get back what she lost. Meanwhile, Lee convinced Kentaro to throw the files overboard. The group arrived in Pohang, South Korea where Shaw got them detained by two guards. One of the guards, Du-Ho, was a friend of Shaw's who helped the group get to an aircraft. Unbeknownst to them, their tryst was spotted by Monarch. May used the digitized files to deduce that Hiroshi was headed to Barrow when his plane crashed. Kentaro asked Shaw about Hiroshi, though Shaw last saw him twenty years ago. He didn't know Hiroshi had two families. Du-Ho and Shaw flew everyoneto Alaska. They hit turbulence and the meters inside went crazy. Shaw managed to land the plane, though not gracefully. Once landed, Kentaro found the wreckage of Hiroshi's plane, though only one body was inside. Several feet from the crash was a tent. Cate found a map with handwriting that she and Kentaro recognized as their fathers. They realized he survived and hugged. Meanwhile, Du-Ho investigated the wreckage and realized the plane landed safely but was destroyed after the crash. He screamed for everyone to get back to the plane, though moments before they could reach it, a Frost Vark erupted from the ground. It murdered Du-Ho when it used its freezing breath to turn the whole plane into ice.^[4]

They hid from the Titan in an ice cave. May's leg went through the ice and her risk of hypothermia rose. The group tried to find a civilization. Kentaro insisted he saw a building in the distance. Lee wanted to continue to the bright light in the distance, which he thought could be a town or oil rig. Cate and May agreed with Lee's ideas. Kentaro believed May only sided with the others because she was mad at him. Ultimately, Kentaro left the group to find the building. His journey was fraught as he faced rigid temperatures and hallucinations of Cate, Lee, May, and Hiroshi. He revisited the memory of the last time he saw his father - at the opening of Kentaro's art show. Despite the hardships, Kentaro found the abandoned building and a static-ridden communications system. Under the system were pencil shavings, an indication that Hiroshi had been there before. Kentaro called for help and got a helicopter to Cate, Shaw, and May just as they defeated the Frost Vark. The plane landed safely at a Monarch outpost, where Tim greeted them.^[5]

Now apprehended by Monarch, Kentaro and his friends were split-up and put in cells. Their stay was brief and Tim drove them to the airport with a warning that he couldn't protect them again. Cate and Kentaro wanted to continue their search for Hiroshi. May initially refused, but Cate insisted they stick together as they needed each other. They flew to San Francisco to search Hiroshi's office. Kentaro met Caroline, who was Cate's mother and Hiroshi's second wife. The woman was heartbroken to learn the truth about her husband. Cate convinced her to drive the trio to the Red Zone so they could investigate Hiroshi's office. The journey through the wreckage of San Francisco proved to be a trigger for Cate. May and Kentaro did their best to support her as they hid from police, navigated rubble, and counted cats. Kentaro and Cate sang cheesy Korean commercials that their father used to know. They bonded more over their shared memories. When Cate's panic attack in the tunnels made her mistake Kentaro for Hiroshi, the younger Randa left to find an escape route. Once they reached Hiroshi's office, things seemed pointless until Kentaro figured out the wall map could only be completed with a projected image - similar to the art work he created a year ago. He put a piece of paper, that he holed using a map file from May's tablet, on the window. It shined points on the wall map. They realized each point was the path Hiroshi took - San Francisco to Alaska to Africa. Cate, Kentaro, and May got out of the Red Zone with Caroline's help. Kentaro told May that he felt better for the first time since his father disappeared.^[6]

Cate, Kentaro, and May plan to follow Hiroshi's trail to the desert. They are shocked when Lee and Duvall arrived at Cate's house with news that Duvall was no longer loyal to Monarch. Lee convinced Cate to let Duvall help them find Hiroshi, who knew of an impending emergence. The group traveled to the Algerian desert where they connected with a group of ex-Monarch operatives who believe in Duvall and Lee's cause. Cate, Kentaro, May, Lee, Duvall, and another operative followed Hiroshi's map to a ridge. They spotted Hiroshi several yards away with a truck and a gamma ray device. Cate was thrilled to see her father and shouted to him with Kentaro and Lee. When Lee looked through the binoculars, he noticed Hiroshi wasn't waving back, but waved them away. Lee insisted they all run, but it was too late. A Monarch helicopter arrived with Tim inside. They planned to land until the ground shattered beneath them. A shrill roar ripped through the air as Kentaro, Lee, Cate, Duvall, and May tumbled down a cliff. Cate recognized the shrill sound of Godzilla. He knocked the helicopter out of the way. He then turned and marched away. Lee wanted to follow Godzilla, while Cate wanted to follow her father. Lee refused to give her back and the map. He wasn't trying to stop Godzilla like Cate thought, he wanted to help the Titan. Cate, Kentaro, and May left Duvall and Lee so they could pursue Hiroshi. On the way back to civilization, May revealed her secret alliance with Duvall and Monarch. She had led Monarch to them after Alaska because she wanted to go back to her real life, not the one she made up in Japan. Kentaro was shocked at the betrayal. May insisted she could get them all home with money she hadn't used since her old life.^[7]

While in the airport with plans to go home, Cate realized May hadn't come back from the bathroom and went to look for her. She found May's belongings and believed she was kidnapped, though Kentaro didn't fully believe that. She told him to help her as she was the older sibling, after all. She spotted Tim, who survived the plane crash, and after a confrontation, discussion, and bargain, the trio decided to work together. Cate promised that she and Kentaro would help Tim find Godzilla if Tim and Monarch helped them rescue May. Tim revealed that May's real name was Corah Mateo. Their search for May brought them to her childhood home in Tacoma, Washington, where they met her sister Lyra and mother. Lyra knew more than she originally let on, and tricked the trio into a parking garage, where she forced them to reveal who their true identities and relation to Corah. Kentaro got Lyra to trust him as he knew personality traits and hobbies about May that only someone close to her would know. Lyra revealed that Corah worked for Advanced Experimental Technologies three years ago. She burned the company and had to go on the run. Tim, Cate, and Kentaro used Monarch's M.U.T.O. alert system to put everyone in a panic so they could infiltrate AET seemingly undetected. May, who didn't want to betray her friends again, forced them to leave her so she could face the consequences of her actions alone. They left the building but were apprehended by Verdugo, who planned to put them all on a plane to find Shaw, who had broken into a Monarch outpost in Alaska. Cate reminded Verdugo that she and Kentaro found their father's map, their father, and Godzilla without the help of Monarch. She leveraged their abilities to once again make a deal - if Verdugo helped them free May from her troubles with AET, then she and Kentaro would help Verdugo find Shaw. Verdugo made a call and got May released from AET's custody. Cate and Kentaro planned to leave Washington to hold up their end of the deal. May waited for them outside their hotel and asked to come along on their latest mission. Cate hugged May while she and Kentaro agreed to her joining them.^[8]

Their journey took them to Monarch's headquarters, where they poured over Tim's paperwork. Cate found the file about Keiko's death and Tim remembered that Kazakhstan was on Hiroshi's map. The group convinced Verdugo to let them go after Shaw instead of armed operatives. Cate thought they could get through to Shaw because he loved their grandmother. Kentaro believed Shaw wanted them to take over the "family business". As they left Monarch, Kentaro told Cate that he wasn't in this journey for their father anymore, which made her smile. Once at the power plant, Shaw agreed to speak only to Cate. Meanwhile, Kentaro and the others tried to reason with Duvall, who held them at gunpoint. Tim and Konaté found explosive charges around the perimeter. The charges detonated and Kentaro tried to run. May went to get Cate, but tripped over the broken building. She hit her and head and fell into the portal. Kentaro shouted in shock and watched as Cate was attacked by Endopedes who dragged her to the portal. Lee tried to save her, but the building was too unstable. Lee and Cate fell into the portal. Kentaro tried to escape the Endopedes as the building crumbled around him.^[9]

He woke up at a hospital in Tokyo. Tim and Verdugo explained how things went terribly wrong at the power plant after Shaw detonated the charges. Kentaro was heartbroken at the news that May, Cate, and Shaw fell through the portal during the blast. Emiko visited Kentaro and sobbed over him. She brought him back home where, after he snapped over her fussing, she encouraged him to pursue the answers he needed. But she wanted him to feel the loss too. Once out of his cast, Kentaro went to his fathers office and looked through the files. Hiroshi arrived and the two men had a tense exchange. Kentaro finally told Hiroshi that Cate had died. Hiroshi didn't believe him at first, then collapsed on the floor in grief. Kentaro blamed Hiroshi for her death, because if hadn't kept running from Cate, none of this would have happened.^[10]

Kentaro tried to get answers out of Hiroshi for why he was in Alaska. Hiroshi wanted to prove his parents network theory. He believed that G-Day could have been avoided had Monarch listened to his parents. He blamed Monarch for Cate's death, but Kentaro instead blamed Hiroshi for only ever being interested in work. As they argued, Hiroshi offered Kentaro the chance to save the human species by working together to solve the secret of co-existence. Kentaro wanted an answer to why Hiroshi had two families, but the man only provided justifications, so Kentaro went home. He was with his mother when Hiroshi packed up the rest of his belongings to leave. Emiko was done with her marriage to Hiroshi, but insisted he tell Kentaro when he found a place to stay.

Some time later, Kentaro went to a bar and was found by Tim. He believed that Cate, Lee, and May were alive inside the rift because of gamma ray signals. Kentaro didn't understand any of the science, which was why Tim hoped they could ask Hiroshi for help. The duo headed to Hiroshi's new apartment, though the father refused to believe Cate might be alive. He called it cruel and highly improbable. Kentaro snapped that he would help Hiroshi in his quest, but first, they had to save his sister. The trio eventually found allies in Apex Cybernetics, who agreed to help fund their expedition through the rift.^[11]

2017[]

Kentaro, now part of Apex Cybernetics, was at the research center on Skull Island when a pod emerged from the rift. Kentaro was reunited with Cate and May, whom he was happy to see again. Cate hugged her father too. She revealed the third passenger of their ship as being Keiko Randa. Cate introduced Kentaro to their grandmother. The reunions were cut short by Brenda Holland, who funded the expedition. Kentaro explained to a confused Cate and May that a lot had changed in the past two years. Alarms blared so everyone ran inside the research center as King Kong stomped through the island. He pounded his chest and let out an angry roar.^[11]

List of appearances[]

Television[]

• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
  • "Aftermath" (First appearance)
  • "Departure"
  • "Secrets and Lies"
  • "Parallels and Interiors"
  • "The Way Out"
  • "Terrifying Miracles"
  • "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?"
  • "Birthright"
  • "Axis Mundi"
  • "Beyond Logic"

Trivia[]

References[]