Kumiko Asô

The effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks are told from different points of view around the world. [IMDB]

Japanese teens investigate a series of suicides linked to an internet webcam that promises visitors the chance to interact with the dead. (imdb)

Live-action sci-fi movie based on a 1973 Japanese animé of the same name (Shinzo Ningen Casshân). Theme song by Utada Hikaru. (imdb)

In this prequel to Ring, a young Sadako becomes an actress in hopes of escaping her troubled past. But strange visions and terrifying powers begin to manifest... (imdb)

Aka Kage, Aoi Kage and Asuka are trio of ninjas sent to perform dangerous secret missions for their master. Although Aka and Aoi are both in love with Asuka, the friendship built from their years of training together prevents any jealousies from forming. (imdb)

A female warrior (Shibasaki) who was raised as a man joins a young samurai's quest to recover his body parts from demons and restore his dad's natural form. (imdb)

Fumiya Takemura (Jô Odagiri) is over $7000 in debt. A loan shark makes him a deal where the debt will disappear if he accompanies him on a walk throughout Tokyo, at the final destination at Kasumigaseki's Police station. (whatismyname)

Dr. Akagi, a rural physician in Japan during WWII, wages a one-man crusade against hepetitis, earning him a reputation as "Dr. Liver." But his fanatic campaign brings him into disfavor with the Japanese army, and as the war seems more and more hopeless for the Japanese, Dr. Akagi finds himself increasingly a scapegoat. (imdb)

Keisuke, an aspiring samurai-movie actor lands a major role in a new film, but must contend with a director who has nothing but scorn for him, but who continually fawns over the film's obnoxious ham of a star. Meanwhile, Keisuke has been dumped by his girlfriend, Eri, after she becomes heartbroken when he considers working full-time as a bar manager rather than pursuing his dream... (imdb)

The troubled life story of the painter Machisu from childhood, to young adulthood, and culminating in his old age.

Thirty-five years later, old and dying, Mihara turns up for a bit part in a trashy drama, playing a dying patient in a hospital. None of the youngsters recognize him, though a young female props manager, Mio, takes a shine to him and a couple of older set hands renew their acquaintance. Unlike in the old studio days, time is now money and any sense of craftsmanship is secondary to getting the shot in the can. Mihara keeps fluffing a line until Mio and the others take some extraordinary action. (dvdasian.com)

Set on the backdrop of 1979 a group of troublemaking teenagers led by Mamachari (Hayato Ichihara) decide to prank Chuzai-san (Kuranosuke Sasaki) the local police officer who caught Mamachari's friend Saijo (Takuya Ishida) for speeding on his scooter, Chuzai-san gets them suspended from school which only causes the teenagers to retaliate, They discover that Chuzai-san is married to an attractive woman named Kanako (Kumiko Aso) only making their pranks worse. (asianmediawiki.com)

Soetsu, a humble moneylender, is murdered by Shinzaemon, a cruel samurai, and his body is disposed of in a pool of a snaking river. 20 years later, in a chance encounter, Shinkichi, the handsome son of Shinzaemon, meets Toyoshiga, the daughter of Soetsu, and they fall in love... (gomorrahy.com)

A young boy makes a promise to his dying mother to look after his abandoned step-sister at all costs. But the love between them grows so strong and profound, it threatens to tear them apart... (YesAsia)

Sakiko is a typical teenager in many ways. She hates her divorced father, who chases after every skirt he sees. She does not know, if she will ever be loved by the other sex. When her dad suddenly inherits a lot of money and becomes really lazy, she hates him even more. He finally decides to start his own cafe, where Sakiko, of course has to help. From this moment, strange customers and good-looking waitresses form the center of tension between father and daughter. (AsianMediaWiki)

The 25-year-old Yojin (Matsuyama Kenichi, also starring in Kamui) lives with his grandma in a village in Aomori Prefecture. He's training himself to grow vegetables with the help of audio tapes left by his late grandpa and tries to organize his days systematically... but Yojin's head is wired differently. "Not broken," he says, "just different." Yojin's life changes the day he meets Machiko, the primary-school teacher newly arrived from Tokyo. It's love at first sight. (viff.org)

Staff and guests at a hotel endure a heady night of chaotic festivity and scandal.

Love begins with sound in Rainbow Song director Kumazawa Naoto's latest film Oto, Na, Ri. V6's Okada Junichi (Hana) and popular actress Aso Kumiko (Instant Swamp) play next-door neighbors who become a part of each other's lives without even realizing it. This charming romantic drama also co-stars Tanimura Mitsuki (God's Puzzle), Okada Yoshinori (Kisarazu Cat's Eye), and Ikeuchi Hiroyuki (Ip Man). (yesasia.com)

With his spiky bleached blond hair, dark shades, and pale complexion, the twentysomething Richi (Arata) is most assuredly an enigmatic individual. Working as a part-time DJ and a record store employee... read more read more..., the man gives off an aura of eternal cool, but this image only serves as a mask to hide a trauma buried deep in Richi's past. (Flixster)

Alcoholic hi-flyer civil servant, his career falling apart, wakes in a Tokyo park aside hostess with whom he's impulsively made a suicide pact. Tho he's secretly now reconsidered, he will go with her to Hokkaido, where she wants to end it all - her birthplace, fled to Tokyo for independence & making a happy family. Hubby died in accident & she too loses it all. Tho similarly crushed by life the 2 are like oil & water on the surface - can they mix to redeem each other?

After being forced to resign from her publishing company job when her magazine goes out of circulation, Haname Jinchoge (Kumiko Aso) is given the name of her real father when her mother (Keiko Matsuzaka) falls into a coma after nearly drowning in a pond. Unsure if Noburo (Morio Kazama) is her father, Haname decides to visit him but tells him that she is a distant relative. He happens to be the shopkeeper at an odd antiquities shop, and working with him is a punk rocker named Gas (Ryo Kase). (asianmediawiki.com)

Upon reaching the train station to death, a dejected soul is informed that he is 'lucky' and will have another chance at life. He is placed in the body of a 14-year-old boy named Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. Watched over by a neutral spirit named Purapura, the soul must figure out what his greatest sin and mistake in his former life was before his time limit in Makoto's body runs out. (Anime News Network)

The Seaside Motel of the title, incidentally surrounded by mountains with no water in sight, hosts the oddest group of guests: a salesman who deals bogus cosmetics and a call girl; a businessman with erectile dysfunction and his bored wife; an indebted gambler, his girlfriend, and his debt collector... They may be strangers with their own bizarre problems staying in different rooms, but their paths intertwine into an unsolvable knot on a somewhat eventful night. (japansociety.org)

Moteki is the story of a 31 year-old virgin Yukiyo Fujimoto, a young fellow with no money, no aspirations and no girlfriend. Leaving his temp job, he decides to finally get a life and lands a job as a writer for an Internet news site. But love continues to elude him. At the nadir of his loneliness and social isolation, comes the arrival of his "Moteki" - a period of sexual magnetism and romantic irreversibility.

Hana falls in love with a mysterious man, but he has a confession to make: he is a descendent of an ancient tribe of wolfmen, who have the ability to alternate between human and wolf form. Hana does not bat an eye, and the two begin a romance that produces two children, Yuki and Ame. A tragedy leaves Hana to care for her two children as best as she can, kids who behave more like pets than people. As Yuki and Ame grow older, they must also grapple with who they are and what they want to be. (LA Eiga Fest)

Mutta Nanba and his younger brother, Hibito, witness what they believe to be a UFO. Hibito decides he will go onto the moon whilst Mutta decides he will aim for Mars. Nineteen years later and Hibito has become a fully fledged JAXA astronaut assigned to go on a mission towards the moon. Mutta has not been so successful in achieving his dreams. The film follows Mutta as he seeks to become an astronaut and join his brother on the moon. (wiki and me)

Mitsuya Majime is an unsuccessful salesman. But his love of reading and dedication, as well as a post-graduate degree in linguistics, catches the eyes of Masashi Nishioka and Kouhei Araki, dictionary editors who are seeking a replacement for Araki himself. With Majime on the editing team, the group plans to produce a new dictionary called The Great Passage which would bridge the gap between people and the sea of words and would take years to complete. (wikipedia)

A quirky and perplexing police thriller centered around two murderess who thrive on slicing up schoolgirls. calculated serial psycho Yasunaga (Toyokawa) and Chinatsu (Aso), his sweet female sidekick, find themselves being questioned as witnesses to a murder (Amazon)

37,000 Peasants perished in the Shimbara Revolt: among them, the leader of that uprising, Shiro Amakusa. Amakusa is resurrected from hell bent on revenging the death of his fellow comrades ... (imdb)

Nearly a shot-by-shot remake of the 1935 film of the same title by director Sadao Yamanaka. (imdb)

Years ago Ryoichi believed he was on the road to rock stardom, but those dreams have faded and now he is a lowly clerk whose fellow employees see him as just a loser. Impulsively, he buys a pet turtle, which he names Pikadon, the Japanese word for atomic explosion. When he takes his new little friend to work, he is once again mocked, leading him to make another impulsive decision that he will instantly regret, but which will in turn lead to a bizarre series of unpredictable consequences.

Suzuki is a former middle school teacher. His girlfriend was killed, which led him to quit his job and attempt to take revenge on her murderer. To do so, Suzuki has to infiltrate the underground world of criminals. Kujira is a contract killer for hire. He makes his targets fall into confusion and eventually commit suicide. Semi is a contract killer who uses a knife to take out his targets. (AsianWiki)

Set in 1814, Miss Hokusai focuses on O-Ei, the daughter of famed artist Tetsuzo, better known by his pen name Hokusai, as she tries to navigate the various aspects of her life. O-Ei spends the bulk of her time assisting her divorced father who cares about his art and not much else. (Jake Duke)

Aikawa Sho finally made a directorial debut! Based on the original Naoki Ozawa writer Naoki Azuma who is familiar with the "Shinjuku shark" series, she draws a break with young private detonator Youth (amazon)

Yoshi, aged 24, awakes after 10 years in a coma, goes on to start a new life and rebuild his family. (imdb)

Shing is a rock star. He has an amazingly loud voice with a range of four octaves. His secret is that he has created his voice through a method of vocal cord doping. His voice is now teetering on the edge, due to side effects from the vocal cord doping. Around this time, Shing meets Fuuka who is a street musician. When Fuuka sings, her voice is so small. Due to Fuuka, Shing looks back upon his past. (imdb)

During the Edo period, a gifted swordsman was exiled from his clan when he questioned the misconduct of his leader. Years after, his dying wife wish was for him to go back to his clan. (themoviedb)

In a world where people are discriminated based on their birthplace, a resident of the much-reviled Saitama Prefecture embarks on a revolutionary campaign to improve things for his home. (imdb)

The story follows Akane, a girl with no self-confidence. On the day before her birthday, she meets a mysterious alchemist Hippocrates and their student Pipo, who both tell her they're on a mission to save the world. Together, they set out from the basement for "Wonderland," and Akane finds herself labelled Wonderland's savior. (imdb)

A color-blind man decides to have an operation to cure his vision. (imdb)

Echizen, who is a modest woman, works at a fish cake plant. Instead of keeping a diary, she draws cartoons of "Nakuna, Harachan" in her notebook and bases plots around her daily life. The main character in her comic, Hara (Tomoya Nagase) then appears in the real world. (Asianwiki & me)

Seven teens discover their bedroom mirrors are portals, and they're pulled from their lonely lives to a wondrous castle filled with winding stairways and watchful portraits. A girl in a wolf mask invites them to play a game.

Yu Miri is a writer who's just become pregnant by her married lover. When she decides to keep the baby without his help, her ex-boyfriend Yutaka, decides to help raise him.

Tatsuo and his daughter Haru run Takano Tofu Store in Onomichi. When Tatsuo discovers he is ill, he worries his daughter will be left on her own and, unbeknownst to her, sets out to find Haru a match. (imdb)

A new detective in the Mobile Investigative Unit (known as "MIU") of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department who does not trust other people works with an inexperienced detective and attempts to solve cases within 24 hours. (imdb)

Freelance programmer Sakagami Keishi is paralyzed in the lower half of his body because of an unknown illness and confined to a wheelchair. (imdb)

Yuji Takanashi is a university philosophy professor who can’t swim. Making awkward justifications to himself about the relationship between water and people, he still decides on the spur of the moment to enroll in a swimming class. There, he encounters the teacher Shizuka Usuhara, who ignores his last-minute hesitation and enrolls him.

Kiriyama Shuichiro works as an information management officer in the prefectural police station. He is very observant and has interest in the unresolved cases which have gone past the legal time frame, he investigates the cases without permission with the aim of "confirming" the culprit only. Some characteristics of this character would be his dark green spectacles, his wallet containing 20,000 yen at all times and he likes udon and nyuumen. (imdb)