In the year 1868, three young men join the elite Shogitai division of the Shogunate. The Shogitai fights to the end and opposes the dismantling of the feudal military dictatorship known as the Bakufu system.
Majime, an eccentric man in publishing company, who has unique ability of words, joins the team that will compile a new dictionary, The Great Passage. In the eclectic team, he becomes immersed in the world of dictionaries. But the team is overwhelmed with problems.
Toichi is a boatman who ferries the villagers to a town on the other side of the river. Besides rowing a boat for the villagers all day long, he barely communicates with anyone except Genzo, a young neighbour. Upstream, a large bridge is being constructed. Everyone is excited, but Toichi has mixed...
Freddy Maemura Hurtado, a second-generation Japanese-Bolivian, heads to Cuba to study medicine. He meets revolutionist Che Guevara. When civil war breaks out in Bolivia, he decides to join Guevara’s revolutionary army under the name of “Ernesto Medico”.
Kenji, abandoned by his mother, scrapes out a meager existence doing odd jobs including driving bar hostesses and their customers home. Besides this he takes care of the sister of an old friend in jail and a young illegal immigrant. Eventually his life reaches a turning point.
A recently divorced and traumatized man moves to Hakodate, Hokkaido and attends a vocational college to learn carpentry along with several other students who are in the same boat as he. When a couple of the guys go to a hostess club the man meets an unconventional girl who likes him and a...
Iconic actress Jean Yu returns to Japanese-occupied China to star in a play directed by her former lover. However, her undercover work for the Allies soon places her life in grave danger.
Saki's father is an alcoholic and her mother is a follower of a new religion. She sees her father's strange behavior and her mother's loneliness. Her family is collapsing, but Saki struggles to look for her future.
Aoki is a failing novelist, and Sol is a failing pop singer. Encountering each other in South Korea, speaking different languages, they and their families somehow end up in a truck heading off into the Korean countryside.
On January 2nd, Yusuke Godai prepares the Pole Pole cafe for opening, reflecting on the events of the prior year's battles he's had as Kamen Rider Kuuga against the Grongi. This special serves as a clip show and is also referred to as episode 46.5
Yuta lives in an orphanage while waiting for her mother to pick her up. One day, Yuta, who happened to know his mother's whereabouts, escaped from the facility with all his heart. However, there was a mother who depended on her cohabiting man and lived a self-deprecating life. Despaired, Yuta meets...
Five young musicians, each harboring painful memories, are assembled to entertain American soldiers at an Enlisted Men's Club. Tensions emerge between the tenor saxophonist, a disillusioned ex-soldier, and a bitter GI whose brother was killed in the war. And when the band plays the prohibited...
7 years ago, Yoichi died in a traffic accident. His wife Ryoko did not receive compensation from her husband's death. She has since raised her son Junpei by herself. Junpei is now a middle school student. Ryoko also cares for her father-in-law, who lives in a nursing home and she also runs a cafe....
A group of archaeologists open a tomb that awakens horrible monsters, while journeyman Yusuke Godai is compelled to access a strange belt from the tomb to fight back against them. Also, a drunkard witnesses a murder by an unidentified lifeform near a church. Meanwhile, Yusuke is bothered by the...
Initially, Ambivalent Future was intended as a film about the production of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Bright Future". But director Fujii has taken the "behind the scenes"-concept to unprecedented heights with this unique documentary offering a close look into the world of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the auteur....
A noir fairytale revolving around three outsiders: a mysterious artist on the run from the real world, a street kid who dreams of getting rich and a girl who is allergic to the sun.
A biopic of seminal 20th century artist Leonard Foujita, a contemporary of Picasso and Modigliani, who was famous for mixing up European and Japanese styles.