Discoveries from Japan World Cinema

Taira is a disaffected youth from a seaside town reveling in violence. Enamored by his strength, Yuya joins his crusade in attacking strangers. Meanwhile, Taira's brother looks for him.

A tremendous tyrannosaurus—who does not eat meat—and a pterodactyl who cannot fly run into each other and begin their journey to find ‘Paradise’.

College sweethearts Riku and Minami marry. He becomes a novelist while her singing dreams fade. After a fight, she vanishes. Suddenly, he's just an editor, and a singer named Minami Maezono exists-but he's never met her.

Fujiko and Lupin are kidnapped by Malkovich, a notorious criminal escaped from Alcatraz who forces Lupin to steal the "Bull's Eye," a precious stone.

Special female detective Hanyu Asuka, codenamed 348 (Sashiba), receives a secret mission from the police commissioner to solve the blackmail case involving a genius Famicom designer. As Asuka continues her investigation, she discovers that Hayami, a gangster, is the culprit. However, after a gunfight, Hayami escapes, and a few days later, policewomen are killed one after another, as if in retaliation for Asuka...

After serving time for bank fraud, Kiriko now lives a quiet life as a taxi driver working night shifts... but her peace is shattered by a relentless stalker in a Land Cruiser.

Deputy Officer of the United Nations Alliance, Simon Marcus, who aims to conquer the world with the terrorist organization Downfall along with the mad scientist Keiji Uraga, attack the Kamen Riders with overwhelming strength. It is only on Kamen Rider Grease that the enemy's abilities did not work. In order to defeat this new enemy and rescue Misora, Kazumi Sawatari must create a new item ... but it is told that it requires the life of his friends, the Three Crows. The ultimate decision must be made.

Akira Tachibana is a soft-spoken high school student who used to be a part of the track and field club. Working part-time at a restaurant, she finds herself inexplicably falling in love with her manager, a divorced 45-year-old man.

Rei, the deadly but reluctant assassin for the Zero Division of the Tokyo Police Department, befriends a young man after she sees him cruising a gay bar looking for johns. After he gets beaten up by a group of street thugs, she takes him in to live with her. When a series of vicious murders takes place, she begins to suspect that the killer may actually be her friend taking revenge on everyone who has abused him. Will she uphold her duty to the police, or protect her only friend?

Toron, a young tyrannosaurus boy, is carried off downstream and loses his memory. While making his way back home, he discovers new friends and finds out that working together is the only way forward in life.

A boy, after tragically losing his mother in an accident, performs a resurrection spell in the hope of reviving her. However, he ends up awakening something evil.

Golgo 13, Japan's most celebrated and notorious assassin, meets his match in Queen Bee, the leader of a South American liberation army, whom he must kill before she can assassinate a popular presidential candidate. However, once Golgo 13 penetrates the Queen's hive, he realizes that the machinations behind the planned assassination are more complex than he could have imagined.

A young boy named Jiro finds his mother and sister murdered in his home. Falsely accused of the crime, he flees from his village and meets a priest named Tenkai, who has him kill a rogue ninja named Tarouza. After fulfilling that task, Jiro undergoes training to become a master assassin. Many years later, Jiro finds out that he was an orphan and his real father was Tarouza, who had worked for Tenkai until he aborted his mission when he fell in love with an Ainu woman. The young ninja discovers that the Shogunate was to retrieve the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and use it to once again isolate Japan from the rest of the world. Using the clues that Tarouza had kept secret, Jiro - along with the female ninja Oyuki and a slave named Sam - travels to Russia and America to search for the treasure in hopes of using it to extract revenge from Tenkai.

Gan and his girlfriend Ai are mild-mannered toy shop owners by day but, when evil lurks, they transform into superheroes Yatterman 1 & 2. With the help of a dog-shaped robot, Yatterwoof, they take on the Doronbow gang, lead by the sexy Lady Doronjo. Together, they must stop the evil gang from finding the four magical skull pieces that will allow them to control the world!

Kanda, an elderly teacher whose manhood is beginning to fade, loves his young wife Ikuko, but finds himself unable to satisfy her high libido - Until he discovers the world of spoiled cuckolds.

Based on the first novel, Spring Snow, of Mishima Yukio's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, it follows the troubled and illicit affair between two youngsters amongst the aristocracy and rich of early twentieth century Japan.

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

An apparitions of a young schoolgirl in a yellow rain hat, a family massacre, and a law student's suicide after he fails his bar exam are linked by the ominous recordings discovered on an audio cassette.

An illustration of the tragic lives of geishas at a popular geisha house, Shinonomero. Shortly after being sold to a geisha house at age 5, Shizu is befriended by a fellow older geisha, Tsuru. After years of living and working together, Tsuru and Shizu manage to run the operations of Shinonomero as the proprietress and assistant. Despite vows to never to let their lovers come between them or Shinonomero, moments of weakness leave Tsuru and Shizu caught up in a web of betrayal and plunged into debt. With the guilt of losing Shinonomero to Udo, a yakuza who loaned them money, it is now up to young Shizu to redeem Tsuru’s honor and restore Shinonomero as their own.

The demonic space criminal Kain has escaped from prison and destroyed the Galaxy Police headquarters. To ensure that the Jurai will not stop him, Kain travels back to 1970 to eliminate Tenchi's mother before he is even born. Now, Tenchi and the gang must travel to the past to stop him before he ceases to exist.

In feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world is strictly prohibited, an idealist appears at an isolated inn, headquarters of smugglers with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one forced to work in a brothel.

Starring Hitomi Kobayashi, the forbidden sex story of mother and son. After breaking up with her husband, the mother and son Yutaka and Junichi live together. Junichi fell in love with the fragrance of his childhood sweetheart, and when he realized that this idea was impossible, he carried out an evil act in the total planning room. Then, the nightmare sex feast kicked off...

A critique of the Japanese family, seen here as militaristic, absurdly incestuous and patriarchal with the father dominating his family sexually and violently. Nihilistic destruction by the young ones seems to be the only way out.

Koizumi Risa an unusually tall high school girl, meets the "vertically challenged" young man Otani Atsushi. They find common ground in height anxieties and interests. Risa, a tall Japanese girl, gets rejected by a boy because she is taller than him. Otani, a short Japanese guy, gets rejected by a girl because he is shorter than her. Obviously these two would make the oddest of couples and would never be a good match for each other right?

The first part of a YuruYuri spin-off duology featuring Sakurako and her sisters.

Arima Kousei won numerous piano competitions while under the strict watch of his mother. He was known as the human metronome during that time. Since the death of his mother, Kousei has been unable to hear the sound of his piano. He then meets Miyazono Kaori through childhood friend Sawabe Tsubaki. Kaori plays the violin and has a free sprit. Since meeting her, Kousei is able to face the piano again. Meanwhile, Kaori holds a secret.

A group of high school students are forced into a game where they are hypnotized to commit suicide on an unknown command. Where no one is safe from a sudden death, how can they avoid their fates?

A female teacher's lesbian desires are reawakened with one of her students.

When her crime boss husband is sent to prison, a woman assumes control of one of the most powerful gangs in Japan.

A recently widowed writer whose wife died in a bus crash comes to terms with his grief—or lack of it—in caring for the children of a working man who also lost his wife in the same accident.

A female highschool teacher must deal with sexual harrassment from her students and being trapped in a love triangle with two men, neither of whom has any interest in marrying her.

A school teacher visits the home of a boy who's been absent from school for a long period of time, unaware of the horrific tragedy which occurred in the boy's household many years ago.

Japan, 250 years ago. Soetsu is a moneylender who is killed by the cruel samurai Shinzaemon. His body is dumped in the Kasenega-Fuchi river. According to legend, all who drown in the river will never surface again. 20 Years later, Shinkichi, the handsome son of Shinzaemon, coincidentally meets Toyoshiga, the daughter of Soetsu. They fall in love. It is a doomed love, as the spirit of Soetsu is far from dead

A mother searches for her missing son after a devastating calamity, only to realize that she has died and is now confined to a realm of restless spirits.

Li Mansei is a martial-arts champion turned undercover agent. When he is captured by a drug lord, his sister Li Koryu turns to his former martial-arts school, including the powerful Sonny Kawasaka, for help in the inevitable battle royale.

Kishi is a 37-year-old personnel officer and fairly happy with work, wife and child. But he turns out to be susceptible to a more exciting life. Through his old schoolfriend Daimon he meets the attractive Yoshie and spends a sensational night of love with her. Kishi doesn't want to leave it at one night. On their second meeting, Daimon is also present and this night turns into a sado-masochistic ritual. A suppressed memory emerges in Kishi: once he raped an elderly woman with Daimon. Kishi again crossed a frontier this night and the relationship with his colleague Yuko also breaks boundaries. He slowly realises that his emotional life is taking a direction that he had never dreamed possible; Kishi moves into a new and dark world.

Yuuji makes the unexpected decision to pursue promotion within the institution he works for. He meets with JB to discuss the documents he submitted for review as a part of the promotion process, documents pertaining to his own past.

Adapted from the popular manga of the same name, director Masahiro Takada's coming of age drama follows five Hama Art College students as they prepare to venture out into the real world on a great voyage of self-discovery.

The amorous adventures of three shellfish divers who live and work in a rural fishing village.

Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, the film takes place over the 5-day period before, during, and after a ferocious, seemingly liberating typhoon, which six of the students endure while marooned in their school.

Yuichi prides himself on the fact that he is a family man but contrary to his conception of an ideal family life, at age 24, his wife has already run out on him. In utter confusion, he tries to reason out where he had gone amiss that such a thing should happen out of the clear blue sky. About this time, Yuichi helps Ayako, a young girl, embroiled in trouble. She returns Yuichi's kindness by making off with his precious camera. Then she returns and since his wife has washed her hands of him, he forces himself on Ayako who acts as if she had been waiting for him to enter her. Suddenly, Yuichi's wife returns...

Yagami comes to Maison Ikkoku, not knowing of Godai's and Kyoko's wedding, stating that she is now an adult, which she is, not knowing how to tell her, they panic, but she finds out in the end, and is heart broken.

After robbing a Moscow casino right under Zenigata's nose, Lupin is given a job to return 6 treasures to their original areas for an old friend of his, so Lupin can receive an even better treasure to gain.

It's Nozomi's birthday, but it is disturbed by Bunbee chasing after a girl from another world, Chocola. When Pretty Cure rescue her, she thanks them by taking them to her country, Dessert Kingdom. In this cockaigne with rivers of juice and candy growing on trees, they feel very comfortable. But then they meet the evil Mushiban and his two subordinates Dry and Bitter. They want to take over the kingdom and change Pretty Cure into sweets. In order to save not only Nozomi's Birthday but also the whole Dessert Kingdom, Pretty Cure have to fight their way against Dry and Bitter and also against their own friend: Coco, who is being brainwashed by Mushiban.

Kasane Fuchi is the daughter of a beautiful, legendary actress. Kasane has excellent acting skills as well, but she is not attractive. She has a hard time due to her unattractiveness. Kasane has a lipstick left behind by her late mother. The lipstick holds a strange power. Whenever Kasane applies the lipstick and kisses someone, she takes that person's face. Meanwhile, Nina Tanzawa is a beautiful actress with poor acting skills. She meets Kasane Fuchi and their fates change.

In the 21st century, a nuclear war turned most of the Earth's surface into a desert wasteland, which also resulted in the contamination of the Earth's water supply. A man named Sanga has built the fortified haven of the "Last Land", where he rules as its dictator by monopolizing the city's uncontaminated water supply. When he learns that the neighboring residents of Freedom Village are trying to dig up a well for their own, Sanga sends his underlings to sabotage their effort. Kenshiro, master of Hokuto Shinken, gets involved in the conflict between the two regions after saving Tobi, an informant hired by Freedom Village.

40-years ago, there was a prophecy claiming that in the year of “20” and “23”, two emitting lights would come to the Earth from outer space. And the dark light with strong power will bring out a huge disaster. In the summer of 2023, as predicted, two mysterious lights approach Japan and descend on Kasukabe. The white light hits Shin-chan, which makes him get a superpower. Meanwhile, a man called Mitsuru Hiriya, has been bathed in dark light and has acquired psychic powers begins to run amok. A man who wants the destruction of the world, Hiriya VS A happy-go-lucky kindergarten child, Shinnosuke. A superpower battle is going to begin!

When dead people starts returning to the small Japanese town of Aso, government official Kawada is dispatched to uncover the “truth”.

Ginshiro, threatened by poor repute and upcoming star Tachibana, forces his friend Yasu to marry Konatsu, Ginshiro's pregnant mistress; Yasu becomes a stuntman to make ends meet.

Mizuki, a female doctor working at a certain hospital, is immersed in the treatment of Aimi, a high school girl infected with SDX (Viral and Sexually Sensitive Disease). During the treatment, Mizuki realizes that SDX is artificially made. However, at that moment, Dr. Nakamatsu appears and begins a desperate game of survival.

When a private detective is murdered, a former colleague and a trainee detective are sent to investigate. Along the way, they uncover a tragic truth that triggers memories from their own haunted pasts.

Umiemon is a naniwa-bushi singer who travels with his wife to the United States in hopes of achieving fame and fortune.

Lt. Koji Kitami is a navigator-bombardier in Japan's Naval Air Force. He participates in the Japanese raid on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and is welcomed with pride in his hometown on his return. As Japan racks up victory after victory in the Pacific War, Kitami is caught up in the emotion of the time and fights courageously for the standard of Japanese honor. But his assuredness of his government's righteousness is shaken after the Japanese navy is defeated in the debacle of Midway.

Hairstylist Misa meets S&M enthusiast Ippei and is convinced to give it a try. Then later, Ippei's ex-wife, who happens to be one of Misa's beauty shop clients, begins a sexual relationship with her. The lesbian affair is also accentuated by some more S&M.

A youngster, Wil had a dissatisfaction to the society which the computer controls the total life of a person. One day he catches a strange telepathy from outer space.

Under a full moon near a highway bridge a woman has sex with her boyfriend during her period. Unfortunately the boyfriend is accidentally killed by a flying pop bottle from a passing delivery truck. This triggers a story of bloody revenge.

Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.

Tetsuo is a young man living in Tokyo, who falls in love with a deaf-mute factory girl. He has always felt jealous of his college-educated brother, but ultimately wins both the girl and his father's acceptance and support in a touching and refreshing way.