Atsuro Watabe

The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while operating for the sake of sin as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing - which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian - dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.

A Westerner finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan's rape of Nanking in 1937. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety.

An unemployed man named Suzuki is taken in by police after breaking a booze vending machine. When he predicts the explosions of two bombs and claims there are more, the police start to investigate him as a terrorist. However, Suzuki first claims to know about the bombs through psychic clairvoyance, and then claims he was hypnotized to forget. He gives hints about the bombs with riddles while riling up his interrogators, especially senior detective Kiyomiya and his junior Ruike. Things seem to be connected to a disgraced cop named Hasebe, who committed suicide after a scandal some years ago. But is Suzuki actually the perpetrator behind the bombs or not?

A widow and her two sons, Seitaro and Koji, live in the small town of Komori, where Buraku people are forced to reside. The two boys are continuously harassed by their teachers and classmates through their childhood as a result of their Buraku heritage. In the midst of the 1918 Great Rice Riots in Osaka, Seitaro meets with Asako, the daughter of a rice shop owner, and falls in love with her. She too is of Buraku descent. At the same period, Hideaki, an old friend of the brothers returns to Komori, and he along with Koji and the townspeople create "Zenkoku Suiheisha", the National Levelers Association, an organization pledged to build a bridge over the river of discrimination, making all people equal in every way.

Features an anthology centred on the experiences of a witch doctor, a film-maker and a disgruntled extra determined to take revenge on him, and a novelist as well as her twin sister.

No synopsis available yet.

The struggles of a group of outcasts living in "Yentown", in an alternate-future Japan.

Ruthless dominatrixes pursue a mild-mannered salesman who wants to get out of his unbreakable contract with a secret bondage club.

Archeologist and avid puzzle solver Professor Layton and his assistant Luke are caught up in an adventure when a masked figure steals an entire opera house and forces those in attendance to play a high-stakes game. The winner will receive eternal life, but it could mean death for the losers.

There is a man who divorced his wife. He moved to rural Hokkaido from Tokyo where he lived with his family without running water or electricity. He has his son and daughter in tow and works hard for them. The folk in the area try to help. A couple of years pass and the older son moves back to Tokyo, attends school and works part-time. The daughter commutes to the city to attend school. She wants to become a nurse. To become a registered nurse she needs to study a further three years. This takes money.

An anonymous letter is delivered to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The letter states that a criminal of a murder case will appear at the countdown party Masquerade Night that will be held at Hotel Cortesia Tokyo. Detective Kosuke Nitta must go undercover and work again at the Hotel Cortesia Tokyo. There, he meets Naomi Yamagishi, who works as a concierge. Without any information about the criminal, except that the person will be in attendance, Detective Kosuke Nitta works feverishly to find the criminal among the 500 attendees.

A friend of the detective has been is murdered. During the investigation, he comes across a source which tells him that his friend was murdered for involvement with the dark side of the political world. On top of that, a woman approaches the detective with a request.

A serial (3) killer leaves a GPS code of his next target with each victim - this time Hotel Cortesia Tokyo. A detective goes undercover as hotel staff - haircut, manners etc.

Akira, a teacher from Tokyo, has just arrived in a small rural town to begin his new job. Soon after arriving, he meets, and begins to fall for, Miki, a papermaker and part of a large and unusual family. When he learns of an ancient legend that the family carries the curse of the Inugami, or Dog God, he brushes it off as silly superstition. After a series of mysterious deaths, however, the townspeople begin to grow restless, and Akira must confront the truth about Miki and her family.

Graduating at the top of her class, elite detective candidate Jun Shibata is transferred to the section that handles cases deemed "unsolvable" by the department. Her partner, though a well-respected and experienced detective, has grown complacent after unsuccesfully pursuing these cases that many consider an exercise in futility. With her upper class breeding, her colleagues don't expect much from her either, but she suprises them all with her motivation and astounding powers of deduction. Well-constructed mysteries and colorful characters abound in this stylish and edgy police drama.

The end of the Tokugawa shogunate, a turbulent era that shook Japan. Were the men who created the new era really heroes?

Futakotamagawa High School had a Baseball Club, but because of a fight during one of their games, they were suspended for a year from all games. Composed of student delinquents, Futakotamagawa High's new Literature teacher Kawato Koichi inspires the Baseball Club to believe in a dream goal once again. For them, it is to play at the Koshien - Japan's National High School Baseball Championship. But, Kawato Koichi and the newly reformed baseball team run into plenty of obstacles along the way...

In a small town of Hokkaido, Yunni, Fusako Kurokawa (Saki Takaoka), lives a quiet life with her father. Life here is very simple, but it is good enough and she is happy enough. Days go on as usual. with some coincidence, she meets this man one day, Wataru Kadokura (Atsuro Watabe) a man who cannot speak. A very peaceful "time" now becomes part of her daily life as this strong emotion suddenly takes place in her simple quiet life.

Adapted from the successful play, the film takes place in 19th-century Japan, where a war between demons and their slayers is fought. Izumo, a kabuki actor with a demon-slaying past, meets and falls in love with Tsubaki. However, something is not right, as mysterious marks appear on her body as time progresses. At the same time, it is announced that Ashura, the queen of all demons, will be resurrected and bring destruction to the universe.

Heat After Dark is director Ryuhei Kitamura's first theatrical release. This 50 minute film is predominantly a character study within an intense action drama. Those familiar with Kitamura's later works, perhaps especially Versus will realize this is the beginning of his characetristic modus operandi. Here, the well defined characters consist of the innocent (the cop), the relatively good (Atsuro Watabe), the relatively bad (Shinichi Suzuki), and the absolutely bad (Shigeru Izumiya ), and a few other Yakuza hoodlums thrown in for entertainment.

Writer-director Gu Su-yeon's new film draws on his own semiautobiographical account of growing up as a delinquent zainichi Korean (Japanese-born, but of Korean ancestry) in the seaside city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture, a working-class hellhole overflowing with sex and fury. Day after day, (fictional) Gu finds fresh foes and makes the local hoodlums want to kick his ass. While working multiple dead-end part-time jobs, he cruises around town on his scooter in search of gangland trouble: leaping across rooftops with irate hordes of punks in hot pursuit, running off with a fetching belle in a sailor suit, rescuing a schoolgirl from being gang-raped at a glue-sniffing orgy…

The ST team at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department consists of eccentric members. Some members do not cooperate with others and others do not reveal themselves in front of others. With Samon as the leader of the ST team and young Inspector Tomohisa tasked with managing the team, the ST (Scientific Task Force) attempt to solve the most difficult of cases.

A melodrama about the life of a mentally disabled young man and his devoted sister after their famous novelist father and housewife mother go to Australia on a business trip.

Shimazaki Sanpo is an experienced mountain climber and rescue team volunteer. Sanpo loves the mountains and wants as many people as possible to experience everything they have to offer so much so that he never holds a grudge against anyone for causing an accident due to their own negligence. Even if a fellow rescuer dies, he's the kind of man who can look toward the corpse and say "You did your best." One spring, newcomer Shiina Kumi is assigned to the Nagano prefecture mountain rescue team where she experiences growth thanks to Sanpo's guidance and the seemingly harsh training methods of the team's captain, Noda. However, she becomes depressed when she's unable to translate her skills to a real-life situation. As her confidence wanes, multiple accidents occur simultaneously due to a mountain blizzard, forcing the entire team into action.

In a small town of Hokkaido, Yunni, Fusako Kurokawa (Saki Takaoka), lives a quiet life with her father. Life here is very simple, but it is good enough and she is happy enough. Days go on as usual. with some coincidence, she meets this man one day, Wataru Kadokura (Atsuro Watabe) a man who cannot speak. A very peaceful "time" now becomes part of her daily life as this strong emotion suddenly takes place in her simple quiet life.