It is called “The Musical Koshien”, the All-Japan Wind & Brass Band High School Championship. Regional rounds begin across the country every July, gradually narrowing a field of over 3,000 high school bands to just about a dozen for the finals. Amid the event’s long history, one public school is legendary for having risen from complete anonymity to national champion. In 1983, Kanagawa Prefectural Noba High School was a rough and tumble, low-rated school with a music room littered with cigarette butts and an inactive brass band club made up of hopeless slackers. But in the short span of 2 years, one man turned them around and made them national heroes. Based on a true story about a teacher named Nakazawa who spent 10 years guiding students to glory while battling cancer, this inspiring drama depicts two years in the life of a broken down musician (Koichi Hikuma), searching for meaning after suffering an accident that forced him out of a musical career, and the turnaround he orchestrates for himself and for the lives of his problematic students.

Kokoro Kurosawa is a musclebound judo athlete who upon graduation from university joins a major publishing company and is assigned to the editing desk of a weekly comic magazine called “Vibes”, full or very unique individuals and oddly-named senior editor, Iokibe. She becomes enthralled with the world of comic publishing with all of its meetings with serial cartoon writers, discovery of new talent, negotiating of issue volume, and working to secure second print runs. Despite her enthusiasm, Kokoro comes face to face with the hard realities of publishing as more content goes digital, and the days of the printed page appear numbered. If a comic book series doesn’t catch fire by its 3rd volume, it is doomed. Hoping to resuscitate fading “manga” artists on the cusp of oblivion, Kokoro and her colleagues strike upon a unique plan to produce a big hit, but must contend with their marquee writer being headhunted by a rival magazine, and the constant threat of discontinued publication. It’s one crisis after another for this plucky editing team.

Hitomi Serizawa leads a fulfilling professional and private life. What’s more, she will be getting married in 100 days. Plans are progressing smoothly until the unexpected appearance of her mother after an absence of 25 years. A free-spirited woman who lives impulsively and abandoned Hitomi to her stepfather, the mother, Kanako has suddenly decided to re-enter her daughter’s life in time to bask in the attention and respect given to the mother of a bride. Naturally, Hitomi is incensed and galled by the idea. But Hitomi soon finds out that her mother knows her intimately, for she has been corresponding with her mother all her life, believing her to be a childhood friend who moved away. As a result, Kanako knows all of HItomi’s closest-kept secrets, her innermost thoughts, everything about her upcoming marriage and even… that she was recently diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor that may ruin plans for the wedding. Hitomi makes every effort to resist her mother’s unsolicited intrusion into her life, but blood is thicker than water. And so begins the 100-day battle between a mother and daughter. Can it end well?

37.5 degrees Celsius is the highest temperature permitted for a child to attend daycare. But children do run fevers, and when that happens, what can you do? Parents can’t simply leave their sick children at home while they go off to work. But they also must work. Enter the “sick child” caregiver to lend a helping hand to parents in a fix. Problem solved. But is leaving a sick child in someone else’s care considered “bad parenting”? What truly defines parental affection, family and parenting? Find out through the daily adventures of Momoko, a child caregiver who, though clumsy in work and love, embraces a host of challenges and difficulties with an honest passion. 37.5-degree Tears examines the different forms that love and parenting take, and is sure to tug at the heartstrings of all parents.

Screenwriter Yumiko Inoue and producer Hiroki Ueda join forces to spin a wholly new type of nurse story reminiscent of an ancient inner palace drama. Set in a top-class hospital where nurses cater to a very exclusive and well-heeled class of clientele, a once altruistic nurse, Akari Arimura, lands work in the hospital where the country’s most elite politicians, entertainers and intelligentsia spare no cost for pampered medical care.
Seeking a rich husband after enduring harsh treatment at her former place of employment, Arimura finds herself once again at the bottom of a rigid pecking order controlled by a domineering head nurse who makes life hell for Arimura and her fellow, low-ranking, “generic” nurses as they become embroiled in “palace” politics, infighting and romance. A moving and romantic tale of personal growth proving that nurses are human, too.

Based on the writings of a true life, vision-impaired lawyer comes a story about a blind man who manages to pass the extremely difficult bar exam and earn his lawyer’s license. Long desiring to help the weak, Kensuke Okochi gets a job at an attorney’s office while he and his wife, also blind, look forward to their first child. When a plaintiff in a divorce case decides to withdraw from litigation, Kensuke worries at first that it has to do with his own perceived inadequacies as a lawyer, but a few days later, he is visited by the female plaintiff, Satomi, showing injuries to her body. While it appears an open and shut case of domestic violence with an audio recording as proof, Kensuke detects a “certain scent” coming from the plaintiff which gives him pause as to her real intentions.

A dramatization based on a true story about a married couple both diagnosed with cancer and given limited time to live. As mother of two young children, Shuko Yoshioka notices a lump in her chest one day and goes to a hospital to have it checked out. When she is diagnosed with breast cancer, her husband Kenichi is fully prepared to battle the disease with her until he finds out that he, too is ill with lung cancer. For the sake of the children, the couple determine to not let this defeat them, but to approach life cheerfully and positively in what is a stirring and unforgettable record of a family driven by the strength of love and who never forgets their sense of humor. Based on a blog called “Husband, 39, and Wife. A Couple Given Limited Time to Live” about family and battling illness.

”The most exciting baseball game score is 8 to 7!”
That’s what former U.S. President Roosevelt once said.
Aoshima Works is a medium-size precision instruments maker. Forced to navigate the rough waves of an unforeseen recession and fierce competition among rival companies scratching for advantage, company men on the brink of bankruptcy strive to survive by orchestrating a miracle reversal called the “Roosevelt Game”. Written by Jun Ikeido, author of a novel by the same name, and following his best-selling “Naoki Hanzawa”. A comeback story for the never-say-die working man.

Overcoming a tragic accident at a young age that confined her to a wheelchair and caused frequent memory loss, Tsukasa has an inspiring lust for life and energy. She plays sports and meets, then falls in love with, a young basketball-playing taxi driver named Masami. Soon, the two find themselves having to face a variety of challenges and difficulties form the world around them on their way to marriage and the dreams of building a blissful life together. This film is based on a miraculous story about an actual couple in Abashiri, Hokkaido. Tsukasa has been paralyzed on her left side since a traffic accident as a young girl, which also caused some brain damage, making her forget things easily.

After migrating from job to job, 38-year-old Sakura Yoruno, finally settles in as a bar hostess at a pub called “Raimu Raito” on the outskirts of town. It seems the perfect job for a woman who has witnessed and experienced just about everything in life. But her life takes another change when a regular customer compels her to take up a teaching position at an evening high school. Here, she’s warned that “if even one student drops out, you’re fired.” But the class assigned to her is a veritable smorgasbord of troubled students. They vary in age and social background, and suffer from problems that make any one of them a potential drop out at any time. But the boundlessly cheerful Sakura is determined to succeed. “No matter what happens,” she promises, “I’m not letting go of your hand.” Here is an inspiration tale about a rookie teacher at a night high school with the ability to turn people’s lives around.

Haruki Mizunuma is a workaholic who runs a design office in Tokyo and has left the rearing of his grade school son, Ren, completely to his wife, Kyoko. But she becomes hospitalized for de-terioration health. Treatment fails to work and suddenly, she has departed from this world. Ha-ruki is not ready to be suddenly raising a son by himself, and Ren himself is devastated by his mother’s death and loses the desire to live. And then on the first anniversary of Kyoko’s death, Haruki and Ren pay a visit to her native home in the mountains where the family business of forestry has been maintained for 500 years. Haruki begins to seek the meaning of the “Tree of Happiness”, which Kyoko had written in her day planner. But first he must confront the cold treatment by his father-in-law, Shigeya, who had never approved of their marriage.

2013. A brilliant physicist, Reizi Matsushima, has been murdered, but nobody knows why. His beloved fiancé, Mayo Ando, soon finds her life in danger as well as she is pursued by the unknown killer. Seemingly out of nowhere - from her desk drawer! - a mysterious "man" appears who calls himself Roid and is the spitting image of Reizi. Roid proceeds to make it his singular mission to protect Mayo from danger while espousing that "justice without power is meaningless." Yet to Roid, words like "love" are unfamiliar as are human anger or grief. Wary at first, Mayo gradually begins to harbor feelings for Roid due to an existential sadness she detects in him amid a world where motives intersect between the present and the future 100 years ahead. What does fate have in store for a woman who has lost love and a man who doesn't understand it?

Despite being celebrated as a brilliant lawyer, Taro Momose is a poor and lonely bachelor who lives in a run-down apartment and has never had a relationship with a woman in all his 40 years. Softhearted to boot, Momose has also become owner of a gaggle of cats that lost their home in a civil pet suit Momose had taken on. As a result, his Shinjuku office is littered with cats. Es-tranged from his mother at a young age, Momose has long dreamed of having a real family, but repeated use of dating services has yielded nothing. His professional motto is to accept all cases and then work to develop its merits and means for resolution. Once all the pieces have been put together, results nobody could have predicted await in this heartfelt mystery series brimming with tears and laughter.

It is the Showa 30s - the mid-1950s to mid-1960s - and a full decade has passed since Japan’s devastating defeat in World War II. The people are hard at work rebuilding their tattered lives and country seeking to regain their confidence in the process. Meanwhile, and the victor nations from the war are all eager to explore the planet’s last frontier - Antarctica; with teams of scientists from the U.S. Soviet Union and other countries racing to divvy up the vast frozen continent of Antarctica. Japan is the only Asian nation eager to declare a desire to take part, despite global skepticism about what Japan as could possibly contribute in its current state. As a result, Japan is allotted a virtually “inaccessible region” of Antarctica to study, where temperatures plunge to minus 50 degrees centigrade and blizzard winds whip up to 100 meters an hour. Nobody expects them contingent to succeed.
“Now is precisely the time when we must show the world our true mettle and determination,” says the Japanese Antarctic exploration team. “We have to prove that we can stand on our own two feet.”
The mission soon becomes synonymous with Japan’s return to the global community. But the unforgiving continent is not about to yield its pristine, never-before-touched-by-man territory easily. With such seemingly insurmountable challenges, the wintering team draws inspiration, hope and motivation from none other than its 19 Karafuto dogs. This is a story about one young scientist who risks his life in Antarctica for his loved ones, his country’s honor and for his “comrades in arms”, the dogs with whom he forges true bonds of kinship and shared destiny.

Ataru is serving out a prison sentence in Kyushu for having killed a police officer. Though innocent, circumstance forced him to accept the conviction. As the time on his sentence ticks down to its last year, he is informed that his daughter - born between him and his girlfriend, Yuki - has come down with a serious heart disease. Rather than serve out the rest of his sentence, Ataru determines to escape together with three other wrongly-convicted inmates and a young girl, Sakura, who has run away from her abusive parents. Fueled by love and a yearning for justice, the escapees head toward Tokyo in a 1,000 kilometer journey up the Japanese archipelago; a “breakout” in search of hope.

Four grown sisters return to life under one roof in the Hanawa home, headed by their “hunk” of a father and perennially girlish mother (who adores her husband and never doubts for a moment that his feelings are mutual). Although raised under the example of a seemingly model marriage, the “four Hanawa sisters” themselves are either divorced, devoutly single, in the market for a husband or simply unlucky in love. The second eldest daughter, Takemi, is the “black sheep” of the family who returns home after multiple divorces and three kids in tow. Having lived her life as honest to her own feelings as possible, she can’t help but stir trouble - leading to some hilarious predicaments - and always commands the center of attention, earning her such nicknames as “problem child”, “love-starved man-killer” and “she-devil.” “Marriage”, however, is the constant operative word in this domestic drama of women in search of a formula to happiness.

The Hayashidas were a typical happy family of father, mother, two boys and two girls. Until it all changed suddenly with the untimely death of the father, Shinpei. While still mourning his passing, the children are hit by another bit of shocking news from their mother “Truth is… I’m pregnant.” The news of their mother’s pregnancy at 51 sets into motion a new series of challenges for the four children, particularly for the eldest sister, Manami, who now becomes the family patriarch forced to struggle with the pressures and responsibilities of “child rearing” and “family ties”, not to mention greater philosophical questions about the meaning of life. A moving, life-sized human drama.

Rookie investigator Shoko Kazuki has just returned from the U.S. after being trained by the FBI in the art of criminal profiling. Recruited by a newly-formed Crime Profiling Support unit (CPS) within the Metropolitan Police Department, Shoko gets to work cracking the department’s most frustrating cases which offer only scanty clues and no apparent motives. Still, she must apply all the behavioral and analytical tools of her trade to painstakingly build the criminal profiles that will lead her and her team on the right trail. A realistic depiction of the profiling process and forensic analysis, LADY exposes the sinister underbelly of society and sheds light on the murky landscape of the criminal mind.

"Hammer Session": a Mexican slang term for beating rules and norms into a person's brain. A paddy wagon plummets into the sea allowing the escape of brilliant con artist, Otowa No.4. While on the run, he meets Goro Hachisuka, a rookie school teacher who had tried to burn down the elite prep school where he worked in an attempt to combat some evildoing students. "Human psychology is a surprisingly easy thing to understand," No 4 preaches before deciding to vicariously assume the identity of Goro Hachisuka, and take up the teacher's challenge for himself. No4 sets about putting the problem students straight by turning to his wide arsenal of Draconian con man techniques - "hammer sessions."

They mix like oil and water. Katsuhiro Tamura is a legal aide with a burning sense of justice and a sentimental bleeding heart. Misuzu is a prim-looking but strong-willed, man-hating, workaholic administrative scrivener. Always at each other’s throats and in each other’s hair, the two still somehow manage to grow and get things right in this seriously passionate yet equally comical legal drama. Armed with their strong convictions and skills as “legal technicians”, this odd couple fight to promote true justice and protect the weak. And the law be damned!

“If you can turn my niece, Sunako, into a real lady, you can live rent free.” The perennially broke Kyohei and his pretty-faced roommates have just been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and they’re not going to squander it. But they’re in for a surprise when they meet Sunako, a horror film freak who hides behind her bad hair, in an uncontrollable romantic comedy that will chill your spine, tickle your funny bone and tug at your heartstrings.

A modern retelling of the classic 1887 Francis Burnett story, The Little Princess, about a precocious young girl of wealthy upbringing who one day finds her life turned upside down and all her privileges taken away when the family goes bankrupt. Cast into the role of a penniless servant, Seira fights on, never losing her pride, cheer nor compassion come whatever adverse circumstances. An inspirational and timeless story sure to be the purest and most heroic told this year.

On April 5, 2007, a couple was married in a church.
At first glance, it was a typical wedding, with the happy couple, their families and their friends. The bride, however, was suffering from late-stage breast cancer, and had been given only a month to live. : “April Bride” is the true story of Chie Nagashima who died at the age of 24. The film is a last message from Chie, who loved and was loved, who supported and was supported right up to the very end. This record of love, of life, and of tears, comes to the screen.
‘It is a miracle that tomorrow comes to everyone. Just knowing that fills each day with happiness.’ by Chie Nagashima

Bito may hide a complex about his mixed blood heritage (Filipino father, Japanese mother), but he can light up a room with his infectious grin. Hana may have lost the ability to speak, but she possesses a smile as radiant as the Sun. Kazuma longs to be the center of attention, but when he flashes his teeth, the effect is like a fresh spring breeze. Fate has brought these three together to prove how the power of a smile… can slay dragons.

The Perfect Path for Two returns to the humble, day-to-day struggles of a married couple striving to raise a family and run a small tea plantation, evocatively describing the many trials and tribulations between a husband and a wife, parents and their children, siblings, and neighbors. The series picks up two years after three of the daughters had left in quick succession to get married. And now they’ve returned home with a host of marital issues to resolve.

1944, in the depths of World War II. Toyomatsu Shimizu is a completely typical barber from a remote seaside town who lives frugally but happily with his wife Fusae and their 5 year-old son. Eventually, though, the army beckons and he is drafted. One day an officer on the battlefield orders him to kill a captured American soldier. Although Toyomatsu lacks the spirit to kill the man, and only wounds him in the arm, the victorious Americans will not accept this, and Toyomatsu is arrested and tried as a war criminal. And he receives the cruelest sentence possible...

“When we grow up… We’ll kill him together”. Koichi, Taisuke, and Shizuna are three siblings whose parents had been brutally murdered when they were just elementary school children, and they vowed to avenge the death of their parents. Fourteen years later, their vengeful plan unravels countless new facts. A shocking revelation leads to an overwhelmingly emotional ending. What will become of the siblings who have lived their lives solely in reliance of their bond alone?

Natsu Ando, a pastry chef wanna-be, accidentally encounters a long-established Japanese confectionery shop founded in the Edo era called Mangetsu-do. To Natsu, who only knows Western confectionery techniques, the world of Japanese confectionery seems completely fresh and new. She witnesses the hard work of Japanese confectioners and somehow becomes attracted to the delicate taste of Japanese confectionery and the profoundness of the Japanese confectionery world, starting to set herself on the path of becoming a Japanese confectionery chef.