Discoveries from Japan World Cinema

Three women and one man - with an assortment of weaponry - wage war against giant mutant sandwhales in a barren digital landscape, all to achieve points within the virtual reality video game called Avalon.

The group decides to take a trip to the beach to get a long deserved break, yet Takeru has been forced into intense training to control his Maken. During Takeru’s training an emergency at the beach cuts things short…

A publishing company is working on a book about Umezu’s life. The lead editor, Sakura, knows that Umezu’s late mother Ichie was very influential to his work. As the investigation continues, bizarre incidents begin occurring one after another. Soon, the grudge of a mother who should be dead sparks mounting fear around Umezu.

When teenager Mikan and her eccentric mom switch bodies, the rest of the family tries to adjust while attempting to reverse this peculiar phenomenon.

Hattori-kun received a letter from Iga's father asking him to take his friends and return home for spring break. Hattori-kun leaves for Iga with his younger brothers Shinzo, Kenichi, Yumeko-chan, and others. However, a suspicious shadow stares at the group... He is a subordinate of the scientific ninja Mechamaro, who has replaced the power of ninjutsu with the power of science. Mechamaro was plotting to confront Hattori-kun in order to prove the strength of scientific ninjas. And in order to occupy Iga no Sato, Hattori-kun sends a fake letter...

At some point in the distant future, a massive, catastrophic earthquake strikes Tokyo, causing the temperature of the Pacific Ocean to rise meteorically and the largest typhoon in recorded Japanese history to sweep toward the city and inundate it with water. The Tokyo Fire Department and its team of crack rescuers swing into action, and shortly after they do, a distress call arises from an underground subway station - with repeated indications of the rescue code, 252 252, and the exclamation "We Have Survivors." It soon becomes apparent that the local rescue squad must attempt to save the survivors, doing so at the expense of their own lives and safety. Written by Nathan Southern

Sumikkogurashi debuted in 2012 as slightly negative characters who like to stay in the corner of a room. The characters include "Shirokuma", a polar bear who is sensitive to cold, "Penguin?" (with a question mark in its name), a penguin who is unsure if it is actually a penguin, "Tonkatsu", a piece of pork cutlet that was left uneaten, "Neko", a shy cat, and "Tokage", who hides his nature as one of the last dinosaurs. The franchise has inspired toys, books, stationery material, video games—and now a feature film.

A passionless cellist, stumbling drunk through back alleys in the days before Christmas, meets a wizened hobo who has honed a technique that allows him to create impossible music from the mewing of stray cats. Enthralled, the once-jaded young musician hopes to reignite his creative spark under the mentorship of the old man and his feline friends.

Shin is a professional voyeur who provides live camera feeds of everything from the street corner to the public toilet. He is also afflicted freakish phenomenon known as synesthesia - a glitch in his wiring puts his five senses in a blender and spits out something close to insanity. A high-profile murder propels him into a psychological odyssey in pursuit of Picasso - a serial killer, snuff peddler and fellow synesthete - who leaves deadly hidden messages in his victims' blood that only Shin can decipher. Lulling his victims into a trance with a spellbinding video game, Picasso leads Shin down a mysterious, hypnotic trail of death.

Nobuko works in Nagasaki, Japan as a midwife. Her son died 3 years earlier from the atomic bomb. On August 9, 1948, her son appears in front of her again. Since that time, Koji appears in front of her and they reminiscence about pleasant times. These happy, but bizarre moments seem eternal.

A group of terrorists has taken hold of the largest dam in Japan. They also capture the workers as hostages, and demanded $5 billion yen from the government with a 24 hour deadline in exchange for the lives of the hostages. To make things more complicated, there was a snowstorm and no one can get in or out near the area. Fortunately, the terrorists did not capture Togashi, the dam controller, and he is the only person who can rescue those hostages from the terrorists...

An aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunites with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all.

Screenwriter Goro Kaiba is horrified to learn via Facebook that his wife Ayako is having an affair. Furthermore, her post about the affair has received 108 likes. Absolutely furious, Goro Kaiba contemplates divorcing his wife, but he estimates he will have to pay her half of his assets, about 10,000,000 million yen, in a divorce. To get revenge, Goro Kaiba decides to use that money on a epic one month womanizing streak. His goal is 108, the number of likes his wife received on social media.

Teacher Akira Suzuki breaks away from long-held customs and norms at his school. He tries hard to have the ideal classroom by using his own "Suzuki method". The new semester begins. His homeroom 2-A class is about to have a student council election and preparations for a school festival. A man then takes a female student hostage...

The morning variety show, a staple of television around the world, offers news and entertainment but TV host Shingo didn’t expect to be himself the source of the news and entertainment.

Wishing to find peace, Zatoichi travels to his old village but only finds trouble when he ends up in a love triangle and finds old scores have followed him home.

Noel and Ninny are doing an everyday job for Wing Bind when the chief calls. Since the Sabres are not available, the two need to take care of a Dark Dragon that is causing trouble in Front London. But that is just where the problems begin.

Sequel to 'Gokudo Apocalypse'.

Namba Hiryu was captured by Kisaragi-kai, a group of villainous sparrows who are opening dark gambling venues at hot spring inns nationwide! Mashiro, a daughter who learned mahjong from Hiryu when she was young, challenges the Kisaragikai with Chiko, who was the leader of Hiryu, in order to protect the public bath at her parents' house! Mashiro and his friends struggle with the sneaky mahjong of the Kisaragikai, but when they enter the hot springs and their bodies get hot, the mahjong becomes stronger! ?? Can Mashiro and Chiko rescue Hiryu without losing the peeping of Ishiwa's toothed turtle and the strip mahjong confrontation with Ito's black panther? ??

Under the influence of his delinquent friend, a former model student eschews schoolwork and joins a gang of school kids who do nothing but fight.

In Edo-period Japan, Shingo is born the son of an assassin who was executed for murdering her lord’s concubine. Decades later, his adoptive family is massacred for keeping the secret. Armed with an unbeatable swordfighting technique, Shingo embarks on the path of the masterless samurai in search of vengeance and a path beyond his own ignominious origins.

Keinosuke (Masakazu Tamura) is a ronin (wandering samurai) who lives on the streets although he is a nobleman. There’s just one woman in this world that he loves, Shiho (Emi Wakui) but when he meets her again, she is already someone else’s wife. Her husband is a key person in the Chushingura incident. Love reignites between Keinosuke and Shiho but they get caught up in the spiral of fate of the Chushingura incident...

An erotic bizarre action in which the three sisters of the Ijuin family, descendants of Kunoichi, fight against the hostile Mao Noichi clan.

Shuji Tokita (Eiji Okuda) is a film director and a professor at a university. He goes through a difficult time trying to film his new movie. He believes his movies reflect his own personal expriences. A female high school student, Ritsuko (Yukino Murakami), appears in front of Shuji.

A playboy-gambler friend of Tora-san’s dies and, abandoned by his mother, his little boy suddenly turns up in Shibamata. Searching for the boy’s mother, Tora-san meets a cosmetics saleslady and the three become a surrogate family, with Tora-san as “daddy”.

As the great military commander Nobunaga Oda was consolidating his power across Japan, one of his actions was to wipe out a clan of assassins, killing every man, woman and child he found in the village. Years later, one of the survivors has hired a young but skilled assassin to avenge the deaths of his friends and family. His mission: to sneak into the most heavily guarded castle in Japan, and kill the supreme ruler of the country.

The renowned Metal Gear Solid comic book series by Ashley Wood and Kris Oprisko comes to life in this motion comic, complete with stylized animation, thrilling music, explosive sound effects and full voice acting. A retelling of Hideo Kojima's video game of the same name.

The third installment in the Shacho Series.

Office worker Takashi shares a drink one night with two women: Ryoko and Sakura. Fate intervenes and he subsequently ends up marrying Sakura. The newlywed couple move into Takashi’s family home (shared with his sister, father and grandfather), but Sakura’s nymphomaniac sex drive soon starts to cause tensions.

Third movie in the Hissatsu (Sure Death!) Series. Chasing the killer of a lawman, a group of assassins fall foul of a group of blackmarket financiers who dispatch their own hitmen to dispose of them.

A 7 years girl is found dead in the local park’s toilet. Kaga Kyouichiro, who was asked to find the girl, and his cousin Matsumiya Shuhei who’s assigned to investigate the murder case, have to work together to crack the case. Their evidence lead them to Maehara’s, a family with parents, a son and a senile grandmother.

Oedipus, a prince of Corinth, was prophesied to "kill his father and marry his mother." To avoid the fulfillment of this prophecy, he went on a wandering journey, drove off the monstrous Sphinx in the kingdom of Thebai, and became the king of Thebai. Oedipus takes the former king's wife, Iocaste, as his wife and lives happily ever after, but a few years later, a plague of evil strikes the kingdom of Thebai. In order to save his kingdom, Oedipus asks for an oracle and follows its oracle to find the cause of the death of the former king Laius, but in the course of his investigation, the tragic truth is revealed...

Reconstruction, in the form of episodes, of the most bizarre crimes that occurred in Japan after World War II.

A samurai kills a blind man who tells him to repay his debts. Because of the samurai's actions his entire family is to bear a terrible curse.

Boobs and blood, you get the gist.

A shady music mogul brings together two wannabe stars—punk rock rebel Kan and new-wave crooner Shingo—and transforms them into the Stardust Brothers, a girl-friendly, silver-jumpsuited, synth-pop sensation. Along with their #1 fan, who herself dreams of a music career, the duo rockets to stardom.

Lovers separated during the apocalypse are swept up in a vicious grudge match between the Slum King, ruler of the wasteland, and the immortal warrior Violence Jack.

Hissatsu Shigotonin 2022 is a continuation of the Hissatsu Shigotonin series. This was the SP released in 2022.

A message dial that exposes everything to a complete stranger. Not only the body, but also the mind... A melancholy and sensual erotic film by Takahisa Zeze, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Pink Films.

The Fencing Master tells the story of a man trying to survive as the only world he knows is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Danpei Ichikawa lives for swordfighting – he was once a renowned kabuki swordfight choreographer, and as the Chairman of the New National Theatre Company, he wants nothing more than to choreograph the swordfights for the modern plays put on by the company.

Based on the horror game Ao Oni by noprops. Five members of the cultural anthropology club at an old western-style school are trying to come up with ideas for their presentation at the school's culture festival, when they find a collection of folk tales gathered by a student in their club 40 years ago. They realize that the mysterious Bellflower Oni that appears in the folk tales may be the basis for the popular free game Ao Oni, and decide to make that their theme. They manage to make contact with the author of the Ao Oni game, but he dies mysteriously soon afterward. The club members become suspicious at the author's death and began to investigate on their own, but encounter a secret they never should have touched: a secret underground prison in the school. For some reason all the fire doors at the school are locked, and they are trapped in the school. The sound of the strange footsteps they hear soon turn to their screams...A new tragedy of the Ao Oni is about to begin.

The second part of Sound! Euphonium: The Final Movie.

Bokutachi no Densetsu is a summary of the TV series with an alternate ending. 'Kickers' is a weak soccer team that hardly wins a game. It has recorded 22 consecutive losses up till now, neither a star player nor a sign of a victory can be found in the team, that's why they begin to lose hope. But everything quickly changes when Kakeru Daichi, a newcomer to Kitahara Primary School, joins the team!

A TV reporter investigates an organization that is dedicated to the traffic of human organs. The investigation will lead her to a waste disposal company where she will be tortured to death.

In this adaptation of the popular eponymous mystery novel by Keisuke Matsuoka, Paris provides the gorgeous backdrop for a grand intrigue involving the world’s most iconic artistic treasure: the Mona Lisa. Minds will be blown, puzzles will be solved, but will a 500-year-old curse be removed?

A Hyper Battle DVD movie based on Kamen Rider Revice.

Set towards the end of World War II, Kaede Itakura, who leads kindergartners, and Mitsue Nonomiya, who enjoys music, persuades the parents at the school to take their children out of Tokyo. They seek shelter at an abandoned temple in Saitama while Tokyo is bombed.

The film is set in Karafuto after the radio broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War. On August 15, 1945, Soviet forces invaded Karafuto. On August 20, the postal telegraph office in Maoka suspended operations and nine of the twelve telephone operators committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide while the city was being invaded.

Bunta Sugawara replaces Koji Tsuruta as the leading man for this sequel of Okoma, the Orphan Gambler.

Shunsuke Honma is a detective from the #1 investigation team at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Shunsuke takes a leave from work due to an injury. One day, his relative comes to see him and asks him if he can find his missing fiance Akiko Sekine. Shunsuke takes on the job and enlists the help of Detective Sadao Ikari. The detectives soon uncover the shocking truth behind the missing woman.

Step right up, everybody, the Space Circus Troupe is in town! Their ringleader, Domidoll, wants to turn all Zyumen evil and have them join his circus. However, the Zyuohgers won’t let him! Can the Zyuohgers protect everyone?

A little girl who is tortured by her parents follow the footstep of a serilal killer to run away from her reality.

The emotional journey of a four-member family that fails to recognize that it is rapidly growing apart until the mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

In order to murder Tokugawa Ieyasu to overthrow his reign, Sarutobi Sasuke put a group of young men under a cruel and deadly form of trainment to become ninjas. At the same time, two brothers hired by Tokugawa try to find the localization of their hideout, and a spy hides among the students. Part 1 of a 4 part series about Sarutobi Sasuke.

The famed leader Oda Nobunaga had two right-hand men who contributed to unifying the nation. One was Akechi Mitsuhide and the other Kinoshita Tokichiro, both rivals of each other for higher promotions. Eventually Mitsuhide was recognized for his work and was given a castle. However, Nobunaga's ambition to conquer the nation did not allow Mitsuhide to live happily in his territory. That is when an idea flashed across Mitsuhide's mind… Akechi Mitsuhide, the man who was considered to be the most intelligent general of the warring states era. What was the truth about him, Oda Nobunaga's best general and murderer?

Zatoichi is sworn to protect the life of a young girl and without any real allies finds himself in the middle of a bloody turf war.

Momo, 24, was recently dumped by Kentaro. Spotting his new girlfriend Riko on Instagram, Momo tracks her down and confronts her, proposing a secret alliance.

Two killers revenge a wirepuller of the underworld in Yokohama.

A.D. 2015: A virus has been spreading in many cities worldwide. It is a suicidal disease and the virus is infected by pictures. People, once infected, come down with the disease, which leads to death. They have no way of fighting against this infection filled with fear and despair. The media calls the disease the "Lemming Syndrome".

Keita discovers a missing boy in the woods and soon receives a mysterious videotape from his estranged mother.