Japanese films about single mothers

Satoru Fujinuma is a struggling manga artist who has the ability to turn back time and prevent deaths. When his mother is killed he turns back time to solve the mystery, but ends up back in elementary school, just before the disappearance of his classmate Kayo.

In a land far away, there is a legend that an Iron Clad Savior shall bestow upon the land and save its people from grief, abuse and evil. An armored suit-wearing woman with amnesia, only known as "Iron Girl", fights against a group of outlaws called "Crazy Dogs" to save a small village in the wasteland. Is she the legendary "Iron Savior" written in the old document of the village?

Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other again... until an older, wiser Shouya, tormented by his past behaviour, decides he must see Shouko once more. He wants to atone for his sins, but is it already too late...?

Suffering from double vision, a single mother (Cocco) tries to take care of her baby in the grip of terrifying hallucinations. Experiencing a nervous breakdown, she is deemed unfit to take care of her child and has it taken away from her. The only respite the mother has from her visions is when she sings. An award-winning novelist (Tsukamoto) overhears her singing whilst riding the bus and the pair subsequently develop a volatile relationship.

A man brutally murders a married couple and leaves the word “ikari” (“rage”) written with their blood. The killer undergoes plastic surgery and flees. At three different locations in Japan, a male stranger appears. People suspect that the stranger might be the murderer.

Sentaro runs a small bakery that serves dorayaki pastries filled with sweet red bean paste (“an”). When an old lady, Tokue, offers to help in the kitchen he reluctantly accepts. She will soon prove to have magic in her hands…

Hideo Suzuki is a 35-year-old mangaka assistant, whose life seem to be stuck around his exhausting but low-paying job, unfulfilled dreams, strange hallucinations and unsatisfying relationships. He sees himself as a supporting character in his own life, has low self-esteem, resulting in frustration. One day, the world as Hideo knows it is shattered by the presence of a disease that turns people into homicidal maniacs, whose first instinct is to attack and devour the nearest human.

Ouran Academy is a prestigious school with most students coming from wealthy families. One of the few students who comes from a modest background is Haruhi Fujioka (Haruna Kawaguchi). Through unexpected circumstances, Haruhi Fujioka ends up joining the male "host club," while hiding her gender. Friendship and love grows between Haruhi Fujioka and the male "host club" members.

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi facility in Japan risk their lives and stay at the nuclear power plant to prevent total destruction after the region is devastated by an earthquake an tsunami in 2011.

Koyomi Araragi was turned into a vampire by the legendary vampire, Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade, and he needs to revive the weakened vampire back to her complete form to return to being human again. The only way for Koyomi to achieve his goal is to fight the three vampire hunters – Dramaturgy, Episode and Guillotinecutter.

A young man Kentaro Saeki (Haruma Miura) keeps failing his bar test and does not know what to do any more. His older sister Keiko is a freelance writer. Kentaro and Keiko begin to search for information on their grandfather Kyuzo Miyabe (Junichi Okada) who dead in the special forces during World War II. Their grandfather Kyuzo Miyabe was terrified of death and obsessed with life. Why did he join the special forces? According to his fellow navy soldiers, Kyuzo Miyabe was a genius and also a coward. Kentaro and Keiko then discovers the shocking truth which has been sealed for 60 years.

Just Because! is a Japanese original anime television series by Hajime Kamoshida, the author of The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, and Kiseki Himura, the author of Getsuyōbi no Tawawa. Pine Jam produced the animation.

Narumi is on bad terms with her husband Shinji when one day, Shinji goes missing. He comes back a couple of days later, but seems like a totally different person, and is now gentle and tender. He goes for a walk every day. Meanwhile, Journalist Sakurai covers the story of a family that was brutally murdered, when an unexplained phenomenon takes place. Shinji Kase tells his wife that he came to Earth to invade.

A Japanophile young Belgian woman in Tokyo falls into a whirlwind romance with a Francophile Japanese student, in this charming and tender tale of young love and cultural discovery.

High school student Ichigo Kurosaki lives an ordinary life, besides being able to see ghosts and the blurry memories of his mother death under strange circumstances when he was a kid. His peaceful world suddenly breaks as he meets Rukia Kuchiki, a God of Death.

One afternoon, Shiori, a very sexually active young woman working in a café, is riding her bicycle and cuts off Kosuke, who is pulling a two-wheeled cart. Once a recognized playwright, Kosuke now lives a quiet life in a mountain hut, far away from the city, in the hope of escaping his past. But after their first encounter, he will soon be caught in Shiori’s web of sexual desires…

After failing his university entrance exam, Yuki Hirano sets his eyes on the role of a forestry trainee. Setting off for training he doubts his decision many times, but eventually after passing the training course, he is sent to Kamusari Village for a year of work experience - where he becomes assimilated with the beauty of nature and the warm-hearted people of the village.

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.

Kenshin has settled into his new life with Kaoru and his other friends when he is approached with a request from the Meiji government. Makoto Shishio, a former assassin like Kenshin, was betrayed, set on fire and left for dead. He survived, and is now in Kyoto, plotting with his gathered warriors to overthrow the new government. Against Kaoru's wishes, Kenshin reluctantly agrees to go to Kyoto and help keep his country from falling back into civil war.

Mirai and Haruna are shooting a show streamed on smartphones which introduces different viewer submitted videos. That day the videos were all of paranormal phenomena, carefully selected alleged accurate accounts of haunted occurrences. In the middle of one video, the image gets interrupted, immediately turning back on to show a footage that was not in the script. The video capture an urban legend rumoured at Haruna’s school. A psychic on the show assesses that a certain demonological ritual must be performed in order to rid the school of this phenomena. The director, agents and the two girls go to the school accordingly to find there is more to the video than meets the eye…

When Kanako, a model daughter and a brilliant student, disappears, her mother asks her ex-husband, a violent former policeman, to find her. As his investigation progresses, his idealized image of Kanako cracks: the girl hides a dark life that her father can not even imagine.

Our naïve protagonist proposes to a female character in an online game, only to find out that the player is actually a guy. Traumatized by that, he decides to never trust a girl online, but now, two years later, a female player is proposing to him. What will happen?

In an era where aliens have invaded and taken over feudal Tokyo, a young samurai finds work however he can.

Shuji is an uncompromising young filmmaker at odds with Japanese society. One day he learns that his loan shark brother, who had helped to finance his films, has been executed by his own yakuza gang for failing to repay his debts. Described as a love poem to Japanese films of the past, as well as a protest at the present, CUT is an exploration of one man’s obsessive relationship with cinema.

First year high school student Sakamoto isn't just cool, he's the coolest! Almost immediately after starting school, he began attracting everyone's attention. The girls love him, and most of the boys resent him. There's even a boy in the class who works as a model, but who is constantly upstaged by Sakamoto! No matter what tricks the other boys try to play on him, Sakamoto always manages to foil them with ease and grace. Though Sakamoto may seem cool and aloof, he helps others when asked, such as in the case of the boy in his class who was being constantly bullied. No matter what difficulties Sakamoto encounters, he moves through his high school life with confidence and class.

The anime's setting is a fictional Japanese city named Sugomori City. One day, Noriko Sonosaki tells her classmate Katsuhira Agata, "You have been selected to be a Kiznaiver." The Kizuna System, which allows Katsuhira to share his wounds, connects him to the classmates whose lives and personalities completely differ from his. The Kizuna System is an incomplete system for the implementation of world peace that connects people through wounds. All those who are connected to this system are called Kiznaivers. When one Kiznaiver is wounded, the system divides and transmits the wound among the other Kiznaivers. Sugomori City is built on reclaimed land, but as the years go by, the city's population is decreasing. The story is set in this town where Katsuhira and the others live.

Fable is a legendary yakuza hitman equal to none—but his boss orders him and his sultry associate to lay low and learn how to live a "normal life" in Osaka.

After her werewolf lover unexpectedly dies in an accident, a woman must find a way to raise the son and daughter that she had with him. However, their inheritance of their father's traits prove to be a challenge for her.

The film centers on Asuna, a young girl who spends her solitary days listening to the mysterious music emanating from the crystal radio she received from her late father as a memento. One day while walking home she is attacked by a fearsome monster and saved mysterious boy named Shun. However, Shun disappears and Asuna embarks on a journey of adventure to the land of Agartha with her teacher Mr. Morisaki to meet a Shun again. Through her journey she comes to know the cruelty and beauty of the world, as well as loss.

Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. After the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, returns to his birthplace, Singapore.

Seigi, a martial arts trained middle schooler, often feels driven to protect the weaker people around him. One day, he defends a homeless man against some punks, and the man gives him a strange tattoo on his palm in return. The tattoo is a secret weapon produced in the arms race between America and the Serinistan Kingdom. Seigi finds himself in over his head when a powerful girl, using the same secret weapon, violently pursues him in order to retrieve it. His skill at martial arts may not be enough to keep him alive, but will he be able to learn how to trigger the power of his tattoo in time?

Satou Ichirou once called himself 'Maryuuin Kouga' and behaved as if he were a hero in a fantasy world. His strange behavior caused his classmates to bully him and he left the school. At his new school, he tries to behave like a normal boy, but one day he meets a girl who cosplays with a blue cape. She calls herself "a researcher traveling from the outer world to search for the 'Dragon Terminal'". At first, Ichirou rejects the girl, Satou Ryouko, because her behavior reminds him of his embarrassing past, but he changes his mind after seeing her getting bullied. In order to bring Ryouko back to real life, Ichirou accepts her and his past and begins the final battle as Maryuuin Kouga.

A high-school student Yoshiro has never got a spotlight in his life and spends his days aimlessly. What only shines in his life is a girl Sae at his school. Even if being completely disregarded by her, he still dreams of becoming her true love in the future. One day, he finds himself having a mind-reading psychic power. As he looks around, there seem more psychics born in the city, and somehow they are all virgins! One uses his psychokinetic power to fulfill his sexual desire or turns into a flasher using teleportation ability... On the arrival of the psychics like Yoshiro, the city gets gradually infested with the erotic terrorism evoked by a mysterious group. Knowing he has never got any attention from the girl of his dreams, Yoshiro determines to use his power to save the world from this steamy chaos and show off what he has got to the love of his life!

Eri (Matsubara) is a high school student who is anonymous unlike her friend Mitsuko (Yokoyama) who is the target of amorous advances from their teacher, Ichida (Tsubouchi). Eri comes across a novel way to protect Mitsuko: find a cursed funerary urn that contains ashes reputed to cause death and give said ashes to teacher.

It is mid-december, and SOS Brigade chief Haruhi Suzumiya announces that the Brigade is going to hold a Christmas party in their clubroom, with Japanese hotpot for dinner. The brigade members Kyon, Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina and Itsuki Koizumi start preparing everything for the party, such as costumes and decorations. But a couple of days later, Kyon arrives at school only to find that Haruhi is missing. Not only that, but Mikuru claims she has never known Kyon before, Koizumi is also missing, and Yuki has become the sole member of the literature club. The SOS Brigade seems to have never existed, nor has Haruhi Suzumiya. No one in the school has ever heard about her… except for Kyon.

Luca follows in his father's footsteps to rescue his mother from evil Ladja. Finding the heavenly hero who wields the Zenithian sword is his only hope.

Daikichi learns that his recently deceased grandfather has an illegitimate daughter with an unknown mother. The girl's name is Rin and she is just 6 years old. Everybody in Daikichi's family looks at the girl as an embarrassment and wants no part of her. Daikichi, annoyed by his family's attitude, decides to raise Rin by himself. Even though Daikichi himself has no experience raising a child and is still single. The movie is based on Yumi Unita's popular manga series "Usagi Drop".

Dr. Ichito Kuriharai (Sho Sakurai) works at a clinic in Nagano Prefecture. He rarely has any free time due to the clinic's shortage of doctors and the constant influx of patients. Ichito even sometimes diagnoses patients out of his area of speciality and sometimes goes days without sleeping. He hopes to work at a major hospital where he can get more free time to spend with his wife Haruna (Aoi Miyazaki) and also specialize in his field of study. However, Ichito is also reluctant to add to shortage of doctors at the clinic and break his relationships with the patients. One day, Dr. Ichito Kuriharai clears out the belongings of a terminal cancer patient who passed away. During this time, he discovers a letter made out to him thanking him for the care he provided to her, even though he could not cure her sickness. Dr. Ichito Kuriharai then has a revelation about the medical chart he keeps in his hand - filled with personal observations and concerns ...

Nakatsu was laid off at his company and now works part-time at a convenience store. One day, Nakatsu forms a vigilante group to protect his town with Toshida, who has a mysterious physical ability, Kanari, who is a female high school student with excellent information gathering abilities, and Kusaki, who wields hammers under his sleeves. As they punish evil doers, the group gains popular support and flourish.

The Grinch hatches a scheme to ruin Christmas when the residents of Whoville plan their annual holiday celebration.

A smart high school student falls in love with her English teacher after she receives one-on-one tutoring from him.

Three American tourists follow a mysterious map deep into the jungles of Japan searching for an ancient temple. When spirits entrap them, their adventure quickly becomes a horrific nightmare.

Shun is a transfer student who can't seem to adjust to his new class and falls into mild depression. However, one day he meets some fellow students by chance in front of a creepy Western-style mansion called the "Jailhouse" which is rumored to be home to a hideous blue monster. Soon, the group of six students, led by Shun and Anna, become trapped inside and desperately attempt to escape before the monster finds them.

Ashiya has spent the first seven days of high school stuck in the infirmary because of a youkai attaching itself to him. He ends up asking the owner of a small tea room called the "Mononokean" for help. This is a tale involving the very morose owner of Mononokean guiding the youkai that happened to wander into this world go to the next world.

Moritaka Mashiro, a junior high school student, content to live out a relatively normal life as any other does, is persuaded by his classmate, Akito Takagi, to become an aspiring mangaka when the latter realizes his natural talent as an artist. However, Moritaka is reluctant to pursue his dream as his uncle, once a mangaka with his own serializations, died from overwork trying to regain his lost status. With Akito's help, Takagi gets another classmate and his school crush, Azuki Miho, who is an aspiring voice actress, to voice in the anime adaptation of their future manga once it is completed. However, Mashiro also proposes to Azuki, who surprisingly accepts only on the condition she will marry him when both of them have achieved their dreams. With a goal set before him, Mashiro begins a long and struggling path to become a famous mangaka.Source: AnimeNewsNetwork

Raised suckling poison arrows among the sparring Iga ninja factions, Mumon (Satoshi Ohno, of idol group Arashi) is a carefree 16th-century mercenary. When the ninja council makes a power play to defeat the young Nobukatsu Oda struggling to step into his father’s warlord shoes as they expand rule across the country, Mumon jumps into the fray to satisfy his new bride Okuni’s (Satomi Ishihara of Shin Godzilla, Attack on Titan) demand that he make good on his promises of wealth. Yet Mumon soon finds what is worth fighting for beyond money or nation. A longtime JAPAN CUTS favorite known for his offbeat dramas, Yoshihiro Nakamura (Fish Story, Golden Slumber) takes on the jidaigeki epic with his signature sense of play featuring a jazzy soundtrack and fantastical ninja tricks. -JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film

"Hundred"—that is the only weapon that can oppose the mysterious life form "Savage" from visiting the earth. The protagonist, Kisaragi Hayato, aims to become a Martial Arts Master using this Hundred. He managed to get into the battleship university Little Garden. However— "I wanted to see you, Hayato!!!" "H-How do you know my name?" Around the roommate, Emil Crossford, who somehow knows him well (?), Hayato gets an uneasy feeling. What's more, just after the entrance ceremony, he gets asked for a duel by the campus' strongest martial arts master "Queen" Claire Harvey...!? The ultimate academy battle begins here!

100 years ago, titans suddenly appeared on Earth. Soon, human civilization veered on collapse due to the titans. Humans then built a giant wall to defend themselves. Within the giant walls, humans lived in peace, but, 100 years later, the giant wall is broken.

A young girl had her voice magically taken away so that she would never hurt people with it, but her outlook changes when she encounters music and friendship. Will Naruse be able to convey the anthem of her heart?

Ninagawa is a powerful man in Japanese politics and with top economic connections.His granddaughter is then murdered. The suspect is Kunihide Kiyomaru (Tatsuya Fujiwara). Kunihide Kiyomaru has a prior conviction for assaulting and killing a girl 8 years ago. The police could never apprehend the suspect in the prior killing.