Unexpected pasts, hidden intentions and startling facts … The true nature of people become apparent when faced with confined spaces, limited time and constrained circumstances. A moment’s choice will change their lives....
...
Yamihara Kokoro and Asada Toramatsu live in a town that is quite peaceful, until a serial murder case happened where the bodies all had their blood drained out. Five years have passed but the case remains unsolved. Meanwhile, Kokoro and Toramatsu have been in a relationship for a year, but are unable to get married as they are keeping a serious secret from each other. Kokoro is actually a vampire. However, she does not attack humans and live modestly. Toramatsu is a popular resident in the town ...
The Barbaric Machine Clan “Gaiark” was exiled from the Machine World by the Engines, who are huge machines that have their own will. With the exile, the Gaiark switched their target to the world of humans and attacked to pollute the Earth in order to make it more habitable for them. This is when three young individuals with hearts of justice stand up as Go-Ongers....
Sana Kurata has a charmed life. Not only is her mother is a famous, award-winning writer, but she's the star of the hit TV comedy "Child's Toy" while still in the fifth grade. But Sana's biggest concern is Akito Hayama, a pint-sized hellion who's organized the boys in their grade-school class into a mass of unending noise and violence. With the help of Rei, her manager, chauffeur and "pimp," Sana is determined to win back control of the classroom from her new arch-enemy. But as her crusade conti...
Hako was senteced to 7 years in prison on a robbery charge for the host she loved. Ayaka killed her husband to protect their son from domestic violence. These two women became acquainted in prison and forged strong bonds. After they are released from prison, they stay together and begin new lives in the old district of Yanaka in Tokyo while carrying pasts that no one must not know....
Saburo Sugimura works for the PR department of a company which his father-in-law Yoshichika Imada runs. One day, Yoshichika Imada tasks Saburo Sugimura with work regarding a man named Nobuo Kajita. A complicated story unfolds from the request....
This drama portrays the nostalgia of "the good old days" and youthful hopes and dreams. Yuika Satonaka (Ueto) is a freshman in university who came to live in Tokyo to continue her studies. Although she had a brand new start before her eyes, she was somehow at a loss. Nothing seemed to interest her and her hopes and dreams were distant. One day at the school orientation, her eyes are glued to a sudden performance of a group of unsuccessful actors, "Shimokita Sundays". Their unique play made her l...
University student Mizuho Suga (Tsubasa Honda) learns that her former high school classmate Haruka Origuchi (Erina Mizuno) died from an illness. At her funeral, Mizuho meets another former high school classmate Hikaru Narumi (Yuma Nakayama). In their high school days, Hikaru Narumi was famous for being a playboy. Mizuho and Hikaru Narumi were also in a special relationship. Hikaru was outgoing, but Mizuho found it difficult to make new friends. They once kissed in the classroom and went on a one...
Setsuko Koda is a woman who is married to her mother's ex-lover. Events unfold as her husband Kiichiro is involved in a car accident as Setsuko revisits her past while trying to help a little girl facing abuse....
News of "revived people" who should have died humans come back to life was reported all over the world. Meanwhile, Tetsuo Tsuchiya wakes up in the conference room where he works, but his colleague reports that he died of suicide three years ago. However, Tsuchiya, who had a wife and a son and lived a happy life, could not commit suicide, and thought that he was actually killed, lives while pursuing the reason for his death. It depicts how you know the meaning of things, dying, and happiness. 日本...
A monster was created from an incident that took place 100 years ago. He possesses super physical ability and can live forever. He yearns for humans and listens to the radio. He picks up things thrown away by other people. The monster dreams of living as a human. One day, he meets a young woman Tsugaru. He falls in love with her....
Suda Tamio is an ordinary salaryman. He experiences various stress throughout his daily life. His only pleasure is to set out on trips to find "Zetsumeshi." Zetsumeshi refers to endangered meals, that may no longer exist in the future. While his wife Kanae and child go attend concerts by their favourite idol groups, he leaves home on Friday after work and returns home Saturday night....
27-year-old Akiha Ōkado, who vows to stay single, gets a proposal to enter into a fake marriage from 30-year-old Shū Momose, who wants to get the status of a married man for some reason. Through living together as a fake couple, their relationship gradually changes....
Kamiwatari Kotone is a geisha in Kyoto. While she is sleeping after a night of drinking, her fellow geisha is killed. Kotone Kamiwatari is falsely accused of her murder and is sent to prison. There, she is bullied by other prisoners, but Kotone relies on her training from senior geishas to persevere. She also learns why she was framed for murder and sent to prison....
Using her stage name, Oka Erika works as an entertainer and a program reporter. She is in her 30's and her real name is Okabayashi Eriko. Erika loves to travel. Her program "Chobit Tabi" is also about traveling, but the show is stopped due to a mistake by Erika. At that time, a letter is delivered to her management company. The letter asks if Erika can go on a trip instead of their sick daughter....
National Theatre celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2006. In January 2007, the theatre begins its 51st year with “Asakusa Fukumaru Inn,” a new drama where every episode is self-inclusive, set in an old-line inn in Asakusa. Fukumaru Daikichi, the owner of Fukumaru Inn is played by Nishida Toshiyuki. The inn has been in business for over 60 years, and Daikichi is its third owner. Known as “nosy Dai-san” from people of Asakusa, Daikichi pries into the affairs of others and ends up making matters wo...
18-year-old Urano Suzu marries Hojo Shusaku and moves from Eba City to Kure City in Hiroshima Prefecture in the middle of the Pacific War. As Japan slides into a war it cannot get out of, the townspeople go on with their “ordinary” lives. Supplies are short, and family and friends get sent to the battlefield. Suzu and the Hojo family battle such anxieties as they try to live positively....
Higurashi Tabito has lost four out of his five senses--his sense of sound, smell, taste, and touch. The only sense he has is sight, which he relies on for his job as a detective who has to investigate and find various missing objects. He works at the detective agency with Yukiji, his buddy and manager, and Tei, his adopted daughter. No matter what it is, Tabito always finds the missing object. His investigative methods, however, are a little bizarre. His eyes seem to be able to see everything, i...
A story revolves around a 26-year-old single woman Sachi who lives in Tokyo working for a pub. She frequents a show house alone as she plans to buy a home of her own. She looks around the room seriously and asks incisive questions to the attendants. Through her house hunt, we can catch a glimpse of what the modern Japanese women truly want....
He was the pride of his police department as the number one armed robbery buster... until he had his heart broken by the sudden flight of a fiancee from his life. Now "Detective Lovesick" finds his crime-fighting mojo and his chance at rising through the police hierarchy slipping away. Spending his days in a desperate search for the love of his life, Detective Lovesick is a man in love with himself and idolizes his drinking buddy, who is a romance psychologist. He loses himself to love easily, e...
A home drama about the clash between a former career woman and the madam of a distinguished Japanese inn....
All of the Ultraman and monsters have been turned into figures known as Spark Dolls and become scattered throughout the universe. A young man named Hikaru Raido finds an item called the Ginga Spark which not only allows him to become Ultraman Ginga but also allows him to go UltLive with the figures to revert them to their rightful size and become one with them. Hikaru fights with his friends to uncover the darkness behind the Spark Dolls. Alien Nackie drops a clue that the wielder of darkness re...
Undercover cop Sakura Mizusawa assumes many faces as she teams up with a hot-blooded detective, Masato Takeuchi, to form a crime-solving tag team with an ear for the truth. With an uncanny ability to connect all the disparate voices she hears undercover, Sakura goes in complete pursuit of criminals, giving her undivided attention to incidents that could happen to anyone and alleviating the suffering of the weak and disadvantaged....
Centered around typical Japanese food, a solitary salesman travelling through the country for business purposes, eats at its various establishments and experiences the various delicacies of Japanese cuisine....
This seven-episode anthology features a cast of leading actors and depicts various forms of "love," such as love almost forgotten, love between sons and mothers, and love that transcends borders....
Amachan is the 88th 2013 NHK asadora written by Kankuro Kudo (Tiger and Dragon, Unobore Deka). It's about Amano Aki (Nounen Rena), a 16 year old girl from Tokyo who goes to her mother's former home in Sodegahama, a fishing village in Kitasanriku, Iwate prefecture for the summer break. She falls in love with the sea and its people, and decides to stay on to become an Ama (women divers who fetch clams and sea urchins for tourists) just like her grandmother, Natsu (Miyamoto Nobuko). Her decision is...
One day all of a sudden, a trouble befalls one man. That trouble snowballs into bigger troubles, one by one, pulling everyone around him in. A yakuza being chased by another yakuza, a mysterious woman who is being attacked, an otaku man with some sort of "power", a hit man who has lost his memory, and an old landlord. You can't miss even a second of the shocking confessions made by the residents of the apartment. A mystery upon another mystery, this is an intricately woven story. When all the pi...
Izumi Sakuragi is a new police sergeant with the Special Investigations Office, which was set up within the Metropolitan Police in November last year. The new investigation team uses DNA analysis and the latest in forensics science to investigate cold cases as well as cases suspected to involve missing persons....
...
Toko (Fukatsu Eri), decides after she turns 30 that she is all but ready to give up on any future career hopes or romance, so she turns to the bottle for comfort. She knows that this isn't the best thing, but can't find the strength right now to do anything except choose the easy way to do things. This causes her to start getting down on herself. Luckily though, she doesn't give up hope completely, and tries to take things as they come. Which proves to help to some degree. Suddenly one day, a g...
Kaoru Mitazono (Masahiro Matsuoka) is a talented housekeeper with an usual secret. Kaoru is actually a guy! Besides cooking, cleaning and babysitting Kaoru Mitazono has the unusual habit of discovering secrets held within the family of her employers....
Kazuo kills his lover by accident. He confesses what he's done to his wife Yuriko. She protects him to keep her beloved family....
...
A young man awakens in the hospital after an accident wipes his memory. Fascinated by a textbook full of drawings of dissections, Hiroshi is drawn to medical school. There he catches the eye of a fellow student, but it's another who becomes his obsession: the dead woman on the cadaver table....
Hazuki and Aoi are classmates but their relationship outside class is fraught, and outside school non-existent. But when both girls are drawn to helping an elderly woman, they're forced to interact, confronting their differences and similarities as well as their deepest secrets....
A talented but troubled Edo Period swordsman, Kanemi Sanzaemon. Three years earlier, Kanemi killed a woman, Renko, the corrupt mistress of the powerful daimyo Tabu Ukyou. Unexpectedly, Kanemi received a lenient sentence for his crime and is allowed to return to his clan after only one year of imprisonment. Following his return, Kanemi is faced with the death of his wife, Mutsue. Thereafter, Kanemi lives with and cares for his wife's niece, Satoo, who has secret affections for Kanemi and expresse...
Two high school girls with supernatural powers fell in love with werewolves created by scientists. Eventually he died because of the scientist, and the two faced off against the scientist....
Teacher Amarida (Ichihara Hayato) has been transferred to a new school and is still crazy about school lunches. He gets the shock of his life when school lunches are made more healthy but less flavorful. Amarida’s student rival Kamino (Sato Taishi) has also transferred to the same school and is outraged at the changes to school lunches....
A hard-working section chief, fast approaching retirement and beset by stress from all directions, joins a jazz band and reignites his youthful passion for the music, giving him a chance to set things right in his life....
Yuko Morimiya is a high school student and she lives with her stepfather Morimiya. Morimiya is her third father. Her mother, Rika, is a free spirited person and has remarried several times. She disappeared from Yuko's life at a certain point. Even though Yuko and her stepfather are not blood related, she is fully loved by him....
After her parents’ divorce, ten-year-old Nagi moves with her mother to a small island in Setouchi. Traumatic visions of her alcoholic father Shimao abusing her mother trigger panic attacks. She slowly regains her ability to smile, while trying to help the islanders with their own burdens. A funny, sweet, and tender coming-of-age drama with a rich range of memorable characters....
Shunzo is a popular greengrocer in a town near Tokyo. His life, and the lives of his wife Michi, and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China....
Five short stories of life's joys and sorrows are brought together in this omnibus drama from Japan....
...
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....
In a once-scenic village now dominated by a vast trash disposal site, a young man yearns to break free from a cruel fate tying him to the very grounds....
Daisuke and his girlfriend have failed at selling a smelly health drink named Akajiru in Tokyo, amassing five million yen in debts. In order to recover financially, they retreat to Daisuke's island hometown....
Aki Amano, a high-school girl from Tokyo moves to the Sanriku Coast in the Tohoku region to become a female diver. She becomes a local idol, then returns to Tokyo to try to become a real idol, and finally returns to Tohoku to help revitalize the area after the Great East Japan earthquake....
Yoriko Sudo believes in a new religious group Midoriinochikai, that worships water. She lives peacefully, devoting herself to the group daily....
Three young men live and work in a nearly-deserted Japanese city. The three wander the streets, ruminating on the pointlessness of life in the modern age, never quite living up to the deeds of a fallen friend, until one of them goes too far and permanently fractures their relationship....
A depressed widower, a bored housewife, and a gay lawyer all intersect in this triptych of love lost....
In an alternate version of 1949 Japan in which World War II never happened, the Japanese capital of Teito is home to both an ultra rich upper class and the dirt poor masses. The city is thrown into a state of panic when a phantom thief called “The Kaijin (Fiend) with 20 Faces” (K-20 for short) begins to use his mysterious abilities to steal from the rich and give to the poor. One day a circus acrobat named Heikichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is framed for K-20’s crimes and becomes determined to cl...
Tsugumi Dozono works at a large electronics company in Tokyo. She likes to spend long vacations at her grandmother’s house in the countryside. When her grandmother dies, Tsugumi Dozono decides to live in the house full-time, and to work from there as well. However, one day she encounters a middle-aged man in the house, who tells Tsugumi that her grandmother gave him a key to the annex house when he was her student. The two share the property, although Tsugumi still does not know the exact relati...
Honto ni Atta Kowai Hanashi Summer Special 2013 features five chilling reenacted tales: 1. Terror on the Second Floor: Ryu (Suzuki Fuku) sees a spooky woman at home, but his warnings are ignored until a terrifying encounter changes everything. 2. X Hospital: Intern Naoki (Fujigaya Taisuke) faces eerie events at a hospital rebuilt in a cross shape, where horrors lurk at its ends. 3. Hint of a Shadow: Miwa (Fukada Kyoko) sees black shadows that signal tragedy, including her grandfather's death,...
Sanae, who went to prison after failing to kill her ex-boyfriend six years ago, meets Kenta, a forest ranger, and gets married. Sanae and Kenta's married life takes a new turn when the wife of Sanae's ex-boyfriend appears. Sanae still can't forget her ex-boyfriend, and Kenta is having a hard time dealing with her....
A young man named Teru, mentally altered by a childhood injury, runs a laundry and falls for Mizue, a lonely young woman with internal scars....
A failed actor switches identities with a stranger at a bath house thinking it is his way out of his life of misery but only to find himself filling the shoes of an elite assassin....
There's a young couple, Haruka and Kenji. One day, Haruka gets disappointed in Kenji, and runs away with their son, Takuya. They forward to Kenji's friend, Mitsuru's house. Yet, Haruka asks her mother, Kiyoko to take care of Takuya, and starts her job hunting, since she can't get along with Mitsuru. On the other hand, there is another young couple, Takuma and Kana. Even though, they look happily married for two years, Takuma hides a secret from Kana. One day, Takuma's co-worker, Akita comes to T...
Taiji has been estranged from his mother Mitsuko for years. Due to a meeting with his friend, he looks back at his past with his mother. After not seeing her for years, Taiji sees Mitsuko again. He tries to regain his mother's love....
Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own....
A group of high school girls learn to play the game of curling....
A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the school's brass band....
Three patients of different backgrounds, illnesses and stages are being treated at a psychiatric clinic in Nagano Prefecture. Their cases range from the criminal to merely asocial. That should be that, but soon matters take a darker turn when a corpse turns up and a murder has occurred. The culprit fingered is one of the patients....
Iwao Shishido has found a wife. After paying three million yen for a bridal tour to the Philippines, he comes home with Irene, who is promptly confronted by Tsuru—Iwao’s freshly widowed mother, who’s infuriated her loser son has married a woman she’s never met....
The arrival of an intimate letter prompts a young woman to bring her mother on vacation to a small Japanese town, where someone special resides....
Suzuki Sora is a cheerful country girl from the small town of Bie. She made a promise to her father, and following this promise applies and is accepted for a magic intership in Tokyo, where she will face the life in a big city. While training to get better with her magic, she meets a mysterious boy also practicing to become a mage. While he can not use magic that well and he seems distant and cold at first, Sora’s fate intertwines with his and the two are thrown together, learning a lot of new t...
Five short stories from five different directors set ten years in Japan's future....
Kenta Kurihara (Tasuku Nagaoka) is sent to prison for battery. In his cell he is referred to as the "newcomer." Meanwhile, Kenta is bummed out with simple meal offerred in prison. The four other prisoners in his jail cell have no problems eating his food. On lunar new year's day the prison offers the traditional Osechi-Ryori dish. The inmates in the cell gather to play a game that has become an annual ritual. They compete for items from each other's dishes by boating about the most delicious th...
Kiyosumi’s affection for his schoolmate Hari grows after he saves her from bullying, but a dark secret she’s unwilling to share threatens their bond....
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....
A variety of aviation professionals such as pilots, flight attendants, the ground crew, mechanics, dispatchers, controllers, and the bird patrol crew all support a single flight. They have only one mission: to secure the safety of the passengers....
Ogura Akane is twenty six years old and wants to become a designer. However, things go awry when in a double whammy she loses her job and finds her boyfriend cheating on her....
The Edo period. Once a famous swordsman, Kyutaro Madarame, aka “Madara the Devil,” is now a masterless samurai. When a white cat called Tamanojo appears before Kyutaro, the encounter changes him forever. Starring Kazuki Kitamura. This offbeat tale of samurai spirit and adorable animal antics returns to the screen on a breathtaking scale!...