Directing
Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.
In a Japan of the near future, the government program Plan 75 encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized to remedy a super-aged society. An elderly woman whose means of survival are vanishing, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman, and a young Filipino laborer face choices of life and death.
The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.
The master of a dorayaki pastry store hires a 76-year-old woman whose talents attract customers from all over. But she's hiding a troubling secret. Life's joys are found in the little details, and no matter what may be weighing you down, everyone loves a good pastry.
On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.
In a not so distant future where lifespan extension has become a priority following the spread of a mysterious virus, a privileged man looks back upon his life as he is facing a dilemma: should he live if it means taking someone else's life?
A young woman working at a retirement home takes an elderly man living there on an excursion into the countryside, but the two wind up stranded in the titular forest.
In 2023, over 80,000 people went missing in Japan, with 30,000 dying alone. Ten percent remained unidentified, known as “muenbotoke” (buddhas without connections). Satsuki works part-time at an NGO near Ueno Park, indifferent to her job and the faces of those seeking help, until she stumbles upon the diary of a deceased homeless man. Toshi, a fellow drifter in the park, tells her that her encounter with the man’s ghost is no accident. Guided by the diary, they embark on a journey into the past to uncover the man’s identity, which is deeply intertwined with Ueno’s post-war history. Along the way, they meet those whose lives the ghost touched, each revealing a story of a man who willingly cut ties with his family. Satsuki’s dreams and memories lead her astray, uncovering a bitter truth. Her search for answers about the vanished finds resolution in Toshi, who waits for the third reincarnation of his late wife.
Kako, a 16-year-old high school girl, goes to a mixer pretending to be 22. While there, she meets Kouta who at first has a very intimidating aura. But once he saves her from an awkward situation, she wants to know more about him as does he. That is until he finds out she isn't 22. The next day Kako runs into him again, but this time he's working as a police officer. Kako still wants to get closer to Kouta, but he isn't interested or is he?
A teacher is sexually involved with an underage student. She visits her father's home and discovers a boy who's been kept as a sex slave. The teacher continues harboring the boy out of fear and begins to feel sexually attracted to him.
When Mikio Natsuno obtains a residency certificate, he is stunned to find the name of a woman he has never met listed as his wife. Apparently, he has been "married" for six months without knowing it. Who on earth is the stranger who decided to become his wife? After a frantic search, Mikio finally discovers her—an eccentric young woman with a striking personality who simply says, "I thought I could keep myself together if I were at least married," offering no further explanation. And so, their uneven, unpredictable relationship slowly begins to take shape.
A salaryman debates selling his grandfather's land to pay off his father's debt.
16-year-old Haruka lost the people she loved the most in a fire. Haruka is also physically and emotionally wounded from the fire, but she still dreams of becoming a pianist. She takes part in an upcoming competition. Inauspicious incidents then occur around her. Musical student Yosuke, who teaches piano to Haruka, tries to solve the case.
When a widower falls for a blind young woman, their passionate small town romance takes a startling turn. Naoto is a middle-aged man left lonely by tragedy, but when he meets Saki, her life is reignited. However, when Saki receives a shocking call from prison, their relationship is put to the test.
After 5 years in Tokyo, 5 part-time jobs, 5 boyfriends, Sawako's life is going nowhere. When her father gets seriously ill, she has to take over his struggling factory. Gradually she becomes the decider of her own life.
Rina is living a nomadic existence when at age 19 she meets her mentor Ema and gets a job doing "BodyWerks," which preserves dead bodies just as they were while alive. Ema's brother Amane uses the technology to make immortality a reality. Rina gets the treatment and will live forever with her 30-year-old body.
Hiroko is a young, alienated woman "in love" with a blow-up male torso. Tension rises when her sister discovers her secret desire.
A young bioarchaeologist Yukisuke is attracted to a girl Koyomi, who runs a small stand of taiyaki pastry that he often buys. Koyomi is hospitalized, however, by a car accident on a rainy day after they go out together, and wakes up with short term memory loss, where she cannot remember anything beyond the present day. Yukisuke tries to live close to her as before but the lack of collective memory starts to stagger him.
Fischer’s member Silk Road is taken by a film crew to a notorious abandoned building. As he explores the ruins, he recounts the terrifying paranormal experiences he endured during his school days. Before long, inexplicable phenomena begin occurring around the crew.
An old Chinese woman visits Japan to find her missing daughter whom she adopted in post-WWII China. Her granddaughter and a retired Japanese policeman join her search.