meta: Drama

Ryū Murakami's adaptation of his own story about a Tokyo sex worker is noisome social commentary that won't reach anyone who hasn't already gotten the message

This labyrinthine noir about a third shift cabbie grows in unexpected directions, becoming one of the best anime offerings in a long time

Not some genteel life-lessons story, but the quiet plea of a man resisting the growing militarism and reactionary violence of his world

One of the smash hit shows of the year that's both fun to watch and touches on deeper things without getting lost in the weeds

Kei Kumai's chilling film version of Shūsaku Endō's equally grim novel remains all but unseen outside of Japan, but deserves a wider audience despite its queasy subject of wartime culpability

Now that we're all wired, whether we like it or not, this cyberpunk urban legend and vaporwave precursor is even creepier and more prescient

Mamoru Hosoda's weakest film yet, a cloying and sentimental misfire

Half adult OVA of the 90s/00s home-video era, half experimental stop-motion art film, and while not entirely successful it's still worth a look for its low-fi digital aesthetic

Shinya Tsukamoto's dark drama about a medical student obsessed with the cadaver of a lost love becomes a moving meditation on how life and death inform each other

Shinya Tsukamoto's eros-and-thanatos story doesn't always work, but gets an A+ for dazzling effort anyway

Satoshi Kon's most "conventional" movie was also his funniest, a coincidence-driven romp through Tokyo's lower depths

Easily the weakest 'Ghost In The Shell' project thus far, but with a tease of hope at the end of its first half

Unknown to English-speaking audiences until now, Shōson Nagahara wrote for fellow Japanese-Americans of their own displaced world and their own broken hearts

That very rarest of breeds: a truly adult show

This grand and glorious epic returns to home video for English speaking audiences in a spectacular new Blu-ray Disc edition; it is as essential as it gets

A manga horror icon takes on a classic of modern Japanese literature, and makes it his own in ways both fascinating and baleful

Satoshi Kon's mini-epic of one woman's journey in film across Japan's turbulent century starts with narrative games, but delves into the ultimate meaning of a person's life

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's story, and Akira Kurosawa's movie, have endured to tell us something about the nature of truth in a time when we can hardly trust the words we hear in our own heads

Shinichiro Watanabe's new series, about two young women trying to make their music their way, either needed more SF or less of it to really work

A sly treatise on gender roles and presentation, wrapped in a screwball romantic farce and delivered with great affection