Tokyo University of the Arts

A young couple’s announcement of their engagement to their friends is followed by a series of interactions and conflicts that forces everyone to reflect on their lives.

This three-part omnibus spins tales about love featuring surreal characters like ghosts and eccentrics.

I'm the only one who can't live without an oxygen tank in the underwater world. No matter how suffocated I feel, I preserve peace and harmony by pretending the selfish girl and my friends with complicated family backgrounds don't bother me.

Brooding outsider Mikiro catches Sotoko just as she reaches a breaking point in her claustrophobic rural life. Their encounter introduces an eroticism with a violent edge that threatens to slash apart her toxic marriage with the abusive Atsuya and his web of small town corruption.

Korean photographer Bae-hwan and gay japanese hotel employee Ryu work together on a series of photographs. Their relationship crosses uneasily between friendship and love, while they also battle their own internal scars. Their salvation comes by their photographs which helps them find the meaning of their lives.

Sanae is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her mother and six-year-old sister. She has not recently been able to be open with her fisherman grandfather. Sanae is awoken by the sound of hard rain one night. As she dozes, the rain changes into the flow of the river and she finds herself lying in a fishing boat when she opens her eyes. She hears, from far away, the strains of a harmonica which her grandpa loves... Next morning Sanae is informed that her grandfather has passed away. Frictions are revealed between Sanae and those around her. In her confused state, she runs out of the house leaving for the river where her grandpa's boat is moored...

Shimada has been failing auditions one after another and worked as an extra in films. One day, his senior colleague invites him to audition for a company called "Friendship," where actors pretend to be the person the customer wants them to be. Accepting the job, he encounters a customer, Mio, who is planning terrorism.

A mother goat rescues her kids from the belly of a wolf, but where is her eldest son Toruku?

In the evening of a village festival, a young boy named Bunroku goes to the festival with his friend and visits a clog shop on the way. There he learns an old superstition about the fox.

Hasegawa is writing a sequel to his previous novel, based on a true character who murdered 9 people on the street, with the premise that the killer had a brother. The main character in his new novel, Harumi, drops out of high school and leads a quiet life, unable to understand his brother. He is scared that the same blood runs in his veins but is also enraged by the fact that his brother’s life is consumed as material for novels by many writers. A novelist, Hasegawa faces limitations in making being able to make fiction as real and cruel as it is in reality. Hasegawa hears from a witness how a murder happened but he cannot be sure if it is a true event or from her imagination. One day, Hasegawa encounters Harumi… This is an obscure yet attractive film that extends its style from Kurosawa Kiyoshi to David Lynch. The title, A Bao A Qu, comes from a shapeless being that earns its shape as the pilgrim of a true heart near him featured in Indian religion and The Arabian Nights.

Red ribbon of a double helix is the bond to connect the girls; the transmitted touch of. . . soft hands, and the gentle memories only girls can inherit. Those dreamy moments abruptly end and the bodies transform regardless of their intentions. The ‘xx’ gives and takes. It is an inescapable thread of fate. This is a girl’s animation to warn the end of girlfriend to warn the end of girlhood. . .

This piece takes 8 seconds, and creates intervals between the frames, and then makes them bigger. It's about expansion and enlargement, not the passage of time. 8 seconds becomes that much more luxuriant.

Kuroshi Mayama, age 14, lives alone with his mother Namiko. Though he was just under the age of one when he came to this town with his mom, he remembers everything from that day: Gettings on the bus in his mom's arms, an old woman who spoke some words to him, and the encounter with a poet... One night, with Kuroshi's birthday approaching, Father shows up unexpectedly. He insists that he and Kuroshi's mother had made an arrangement – that Kuroshi was to live with his mother until his 15th birthday and then live with his father. As Kuroshi's world gets turned upside down, his family, the people around him and even himself start to change.

A housewife was killed by a falling fire extinguisher, which a boy of seven years dropped from the top floor of an apartment. The offender, however, was not accused because he was too young. Ten years later, a series of murders occur, which target young girls only. It is the boy accused of killing the housewife who comes up in the couse of investigation, while the son of the murdered mother is the witness of a new murder. When the two families of the offender and of the victim meet again, two opposite morals conflict with each other – one is to crack down on the sin beyond the law and another is to disapprove the retaliation.

Fired from his part-time job in a restaurant kitchen for absenteeism, rookie boxer Tamura has a lot to be angry and frustrated about in his life. But things start to change when he’s approached at the gym by the artist Hattori, who wants to use him as the new model for the manga character Yellow Kid. Yellow Kid first appeared in an American comic in the late 19th century, and Hattori revived him as an older character a century later.

Kazuya Naruse, an obedient programer falls for a girl "Rumi", whom he gets to know through chat rooms. Naruse lost himself in this love, as if he lives in another world. Rumi has a mentally ill husband. Spending time with these two, the illusion of love in Naruse gradually changes to uneasiness and insanity.

December 30th, 2017. Two years before the Tokyo Olympics, due to a revision of the Constitution, a National Defense Force is created in Japan and it starts military operations. In an incineration plant, a dog goes lost, but when Tani goes looking for him, she finds nothing. In the plant, Yanais takes down the Christmas decorations and replaces them with the ones for New Year. Gou, addicted to survival games, comes to the plant during the night and starts playing video games with Ken, even if it is his day off. In the meantime, Adachi is just watching their game to kill time. However, all these men share similar problems: pregnancy, adultery, family issues and a friend who died in the war. Meanwhile, Tani, who is troubled with her immoral relationship with Adachi, begins to feel that her father, who was the plant’s manager and is supposed to be dead, seems to be around somehow.

Junichi, a seasoned sound mixer, was trying to look after his dying wife. Shaken by her illness, Junichi goes out to where he and his wife had traveled to 30 years ago. In a different place, Chika and Yukko visit Yukari's home for her birthday. An exciting time for the girls alone in the house. But their friendship begins to crack when an unexpected guest arrives. Two different stories collide in an unexpected way traveling between past and present, imagination and reality.

In a mysterious pet market world, a girl who loves small animals lives alone. Her life is all about her pets, but little does she know that she has lost her sense of self in this world.

Kumosuke walks out on his pregnant lover, Fumiyo, and goes to see his old lover, Kiyoko. Even though Kiyoko's husband, Sachio and her sister, Hikaru think Kumosuke suspect, Kumosuke pretends to be Kiyoko's brother and stays in her house unconcernedly. One day, Kiyoko suffers from constipation and begs Kumosuke to suck out feces from her mouth. As Sachio gets jealous for being stolen his part of sucking his wife out, he does the same thing to Hikaru, which causes a collapse of the family. The meeting and parting of strange and sad people. Where the story heads to...