Discoveries from Japan World Cinema

The story of two girls bound in friendship, as well as Black Rock Star's struggle unfolding in another world. But when the two worlds come together... what will happen?

Kumokiri Nizaemon, a former samurai warrior, has abandoned his class to become the leader of a gang of thieves. He leads his outlaws in an attempt to rob the castle of his former clan.

Shiori is a typical high school student who dreams of online stardom, but struggles to capture attention. After an embarrassing video of her goes viral, she gets trapped in her smartphone and replaced by a charismatic alter ego. As the doppelganger charms the internet and devises a nefarious plot to replace mankind with brainrot, Shiori must partner with other online outcasts to stop her digital counterpart and reclaim her life in the real world.

In 2024, the computer network prevails throughout the daily life. Arishiro Sora is a 14 year old girl. One day, she is invited to an online game "The World". After an accident in the game, the real world begins to deform.

The seventh annual stage show and concert for both the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai series, featuring cast members from both shows and popular singers of recent seasons.

A woman endures the life of a prostitute for a yakuza pimp.

Six-year-old Ataru steps on Elle's shadow during an impromptu game of shadow-tag; in Elle's culture, this is viewed as a marriage proposal. Eleven years later, Elle returns to Earth in order to marry Ataru — by which time not only had he forgotten the events of his childhood, but he was also going out with Lum. The rest of the plot focuses on Lum's attempts to prevent the marriage.

A four-part anthology in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, this film starts off with a group of commuters stranded at a train station in the rain, listening to stories told by one of the group. These include tales of a group stranded in the mountains and haunted by guilt over a death they inadvertantly caused, an emotionally broken chessmaster pressed into playing a real-life game for an eccentric millionaire, a wandering medieval samurai who finds a modern-day cell phone on the ground and a person on the other end asking questions about the past, and a young couple who agree to try a computer simulation of what their future as husband and wife would be like.

Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Miyamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior.

Three decades after the great war between the humans and the Zentradi, the U.N. government is developing new technologies to use in their transforming fighter aircraft by running tests on the colony planet Eden. Military test pilots and former childhood friends, loose cannon Isamu Alva Dyson and the Zentradi mixed race Guld Goa Bowman, are selected to each pilot a new aircraft (Shinsei Industries' YF-19 & General Galaxy's YF-21) for Project Super Nova, to choose the newest successor to the VF-11 Thunderbolt variable fighter which is currently still in use by the U.N. Spacy military forces. Their own personal grudges end up disrupting the tests, and begin to wreak havoc on the program.

In the land of the pyramids, the Rainbow Prince turns everyone into pyramids! Can Anpanman find snow and water, the weakness of the Rainbow Prince, and stop him before it's too late?

A lower-middle-class policeman lives decadently, chasing cheap beer and girls at the same time he's running from loan sharks and his personal expectations.

A man is found dead in a office of Takayanagi Ballet Company. The suspect is a female dancer at the ballet company. The Takayanagi Ballet Company insists that the incident is a self defense case, but after an investigation there's doubts in that claim. Then, the director of the Takayanagi Ballet Company is poisoned to death. Are the cases related?

Tsubomi Hanasaki is woken by her best friend Erika Kurumi only to find out that their two fairies, Coffret and Shypre, have left just leaving a note explaining where to find them. Fairy Park is not only the destination of both girls, it is also the meeting point of all other Precures who planned to spend this special day together. This magical theme park holds the Rainbow Jewel, a special gem that represents all of the hopes and dreams of the world. Such a powerful stone is the object of desire of a malefic entity named Bottom who has waited one thousand years for the opportunity to possess it.

Sawako enjoys taking photos of older men and making scrapbooks with them. Although the men she has dated have always been older than her, she has been unable to speak well with her father and they have grown apart.

When Saikawa rips off Keigo’s mask, he sparks unexpected feelings—and a deal: tutoring in exchange for learning to love what’s behind the mask.

Yatora is the perfect high school student, with good grades and lots of friends. It's an effortless performance, and, ultimately… a dull one. But he wanders into the art room one day, and a lone painting captures his eye, awakening him to a kind of beauty he never knew. Compelled and consumed, he dives in headfirst—and he's about to learn how savage and unforgiving art can be!

March 1999: Mikiya Kokutou meets Shiki Ryougi again at the same place where he met her for the first time four years ago...

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.

A Japanese restaurant cook/owner dies after answering his daughter's cellphone. Other people are getting strange, same ringtone calls as well and dying painfully. It happened in Taiwan as well. Can the police stop it if it's a ghost?

A Japanese restaurant cook/owner dies after answering his daughter's cellphone. Other people are getting strange, same ringtone calls as well and dying painfully. It happened in Taiwan as well. Can the police stop it if it's a ghost?

When a young yakuza torments the customers in a rival crime family's nightclub, it is not long before his dead body is found. Soon, inter-family retaliation follows, resulting in the death for a prominent crime boss. Devastated by this turn of events, the temperamental Kenzaki vows to avenge his boss's death and, as bloody violence ensues, the body count reaches excessive proportions.

This is the fourth movie starring a tiger boy named Shimajiro.

Shin Kazama, tricked and forced into flying for the remote country of Aslan, can only escape the hell of war by earning money for shooting down enemy planes or die trying. Through the course of the series, Shin must deal with the consequences of killing and friends dying around him as tries to keep his mind on freeing himself from this nightmare.

June 1998: After spending two years in a coma caused by a traffic accident, Shiki Ryougi awakens with amnesia. She is visited by Touko Aozaki, a wizard and proprietor of a studio called Garan no Dou. Shiki has lost not only the memory of her accident, but also any real sense that she's even alive. Strangely, enigmatic beings begin to attack her...

With Shou presumably dead, and the Earth being threatened by a new villain, the remaining 11 Kyurangers must travel across the Cerberus System for the means to stop the mysterious Geth Indaver from destroying the entire planet.

In 2012, Atsuya and his 2 childhood friends do something bad and run into an old general store. They decide to stay there until the morning. Late into the night, Atsuya sees a letter in the mailbox. The letter is addressed to the Namiya General Store and the letter was written by someone to consult about worries. Incredibly, the letter was written 32 years ago. The mailbox is somehow connected to the year 1980. Atsuya and his friends decide to write a reply and place their letter in the mailbox.

High school student Naotatsu travels to live at his uncle's house. In the pouring rain, he is picked up at the nearest station by a strange adult woman named Sakaki who guides him to an unexpected share house where a life together begins.

An evil criminal organisation called Sigma kidnap prominment business leaders to harvest their DNA and only Karate-Robo Zaborgar can save them.

Takuma knows that his life is shorter than the others and he feels that his demise is getting near. He chose to stay away from the girl that he loves so that she can easily move on. What he didn't know is that he is under-estimating her.

46 hours before the events of "EVANGELION:3.0 YOU CAN (NOT) REDO." Midori remembers her life post Near Third Impact and how she is saved by WILLE.

The genin of Konoha are having a sports day filled with races, obstacle courses and of course the relay and the prize is a paid vacation for the winner. Unfortunately Naruto and his stomach are getting him into trouble again.

A warrant’s been issued for an arrest but this time, it’s not for Lupin. Authorities are after Inspector Zenigata as they suspect Pops has been in cahoots with the master thief all along. In an effort to vouch for Zenigata’s innocence, Lupin is challenged to steal the curious Time Crystal. As Lupin and his gang go after the famed diamond he’s confronted with the unexpected betrayal of his most trusted partner.

It is only at their sister's and mother's funeral when a woman meets her niece after many years. The niece is now a grown girl. The sister takes on the task of informing the deceased's friends of the death while the daughter cannot bring herself to symbolically accept the demise of her mother. In the midst of all this an old flame messages the sister to say he is still in love with her, but is he messaging the living sister or the dead one?

In a park on a rainy evening, a 19-year-old university student, Fumi, offers an umbrella to a soaking wet 10-year-old girl, Sarasa. Realizing her reluctance to go home, Fumi lets her stay in his place, where she spends the next two months in peace.

Aoshima, a police detective working in the Bayside Precinct, is continually frustrated by the hierarchy and red tape that plague the system. His friend Muroi is climbing the ladder of the police bureaucracy. Muroi has made a pact with Aoshima that while Aoshima looks after the streets, Muroi would make life easier for the cops on the beat. One day in Bayside, a series of events turns the small station upside down.

A quiet teen's life is shaken up when she's forced to be her arrogant neighbor's slave. He loves her, but they both have a lot to learn about trust.

Sawa Yamagishi worked as a nursing-care helper. The family for an old man asked Sawa to sleep with him, which led her to lose her job. Now, she has nowhere to go. Sawa finds elderly people in trouble and gets involved in their lives. Meeting them, Sawa's own wounds start to heal.

A young biker stumbles onto a prototype motorcycle with a hidden function that has a link to the true nature of his world.

A pioneering roboticist awakens in 2025 after decades in cryosleep. To change the past and reunite with his adopted sister, he seeks a way back to 1995.

During the WGP's Royal Festival Cup, an unknown machine called the "Gun Bluster XTO" and its owner Rion Cusco appears racing without control and causing various riots with fellow racers. This makes Go's Cyclone Magnum reach the goal but a dissatisfied Go and the TRF Victorys decides to pursuit the situation. This was all due to the Gun Bluster's special GP Chip invented by Professor Cusco gone haywire while emitting strange EM waves, making the machine a powerful weapon. To avoid further destruction to the city, Professor Cusco decides to destroy the machine before a rival association acquires it. It's up for the TRF Victorys and Rion race together and safely halt the Gun Bluster before its too late!

When realty TV host Carlos Kurozaki breaks into a mysterious underground pyramid for a television event, he removes a special gem. . . and unwittingly releases a diabolical monster called Zaigorg! The evil creature wants Kurozaki's gem, so it spawns an army of giant kaijus to get it! It's up to the famous superheroes Ultraman X, Ultraman Tiga, and the one and only original Ultraman to stop the worldwide monster war!

Tokyo is a dark technopolis, a city of faceless chrome and cold marble. It is ruled by Nogi, a yakuza boss specializing in drugs and murder. He gained absolute power by executing the former boss and marrying his daughter, Chiaki. Only the mysterious Ikko, Chiaki's half-sister threatens him. Inspired by a legendary hit-woman, Ikko calls herself the Black Angel and plans to wash away her father's murderer with a deluge of blood.

A young boy learns he is part of a powerful race of psionic humans who must fight the normal humans determined to keep them from Earth.

A nuclear explosion in the far north unleashes Gamera, the legendary flying turtle, from his sleep under the ice. In his search for energy, Gamera wreaks havoc over the entire world, and it's up to the scientists, assisted by a young boy with a strange sympathic link to the monster, to put a stop to Gamera's rampage.

Takumi Fujiawara has garnered the attention of the street racer Ryousuke Takahashi, leader of the RedSuns. As he prepares for the biggest race in his life, Takumi finds himself trying to juggle his passion for racing with his personal life.

Believing that the world will end that very day, three mental patients Coco, Tsumuji, and Satoru set out upon a journey. Walking upon the tops of the walls of the city, they seek to find a picnic spot with the best vantage point to view the final event.

Rikka is a ninja descendant. Her grandfather Hyoe is the last chief of their ninja clan and her father is a cyborg researcher. Both are killed when a weapons' company raids his lab to use his research. Rikka sets out to avenge their deaths.

The purportedly true story of a 23-year-old otaku (Japanese geek) who intervened when a drunk man was harassing a woman on a train. The otaku ultimately started dating with her and chronicled his event and his dates with the woman (who became known as "Hermès") on the Japanese mega-BBS 2channel.

The time of the New Generation Heroes is drawing to a close. Hiroyuki is being targeted by a dark power, forcing the other Ultra Heroes, from Ginga to R/B to appear and help the Tri-Squad battle these evil forces. But among them is Taiga's father? What has happened to Ultraman Taro?!

A woman ends up in prison because of her lying, manipulative and exploitative lover. There she discovers that she is not alone.

The film follows the Safari Ressha who run the Galaxy Line, their conductor named Lady, and the Shadow Line member pursuing them.

Universal Century 0087. As the civil war between the AEUG and the Titans continues, Kamille meets a mysterious girl named Four. But his encounter with Four, one of the Titans' "cyber-Newtypes," fills his heart with anguish. The grief-stricken Kamille fights his way back to space to find the new mobile suit Zeta Gundam waiting for him. Meanwhile, Paptimus Scirocco, the man from Jupiter, has added his strength to that of the Titans. And a third power is finally making its move, in the form of the Zeon remnants of Axis... With enhanced animation and a theme song by GACKT, the tragic romance of Kamille and Four unfolds in this second part of the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam feature trilogy.

A detective living a happy married life learns that a man he once arrested has escaped from prison. The fugitive commits a string of robberies and rapes, and ultimately takes his former lover as hostage - the same woman who is now the detective's wife. The criminal continues his exploits while evading capture, all while weilding the detective's gun and repeatedly assaulting the detective's wife.

When a UFO arrives from space and attacks the Getter Institute, Getter Robo is launched to stop it; but the might of the UFO and its giant space monsters prove to be too much for the Getter team. Not only is Getter Robo defeated, but Ouishan is killed in action! With Getter Robo out of commission, the world's only hope appears to be Great Mazinger, but the aliens' power might also be too much for even him. Can Dr. Saotome build a new Getter Robo in time to help save Great Mazinger, Japan, and the entire world?

Years after the events of Megazone 23 II, the only city on Earth is the supposedly idyllic Eden. There lives Eiji Takanaka, a B Level hacker who has just been accepted into EX, the organization that controls Eden. However, before his first day on the job, he becomes embroiled in a network war, a legendary figure named EVE, and a plot to re-inhabit the Earth.

On a warm summer day, a boy heard the sound of bells ringing, as if in celebration, in the mountain near his home. Several years later in that same mountain, the mushishi Ginko stumbles upon a young girl in a mountain with branches and leaves growing out of her body. He later realises that she is the lord of that mountain but finds it strange that a human like her was chosen as the lord. He meets her older brother who has continued to search for her ever since she disappeared while accompanying him on a stormy day. The story is about Ginko’s peculiar journey amidst the occult to unravel the mystery behind the enigmatic girl called Kaya and the mountain that has become her home.

A housewife is brutally assaulted by a masked man nearby her apartment complex. From there, a web of suspicion, burning violence and repressed desires rapidly unfolds.

Kazu attacks a bar in Kabukicho, a Tokyo red-light district, and flees to his hometown with abducts Machiko, a pole dancer he's been stuck on. They begin living together, but their happiness is short lived as their pasts torment them both.