Asami Shibuya

Aki and Naoko are childhood friends who are drifting apart as adults. Immersed in her family life, Naoko now has a husband and daughter; Aki, on the other hand, remains single and is on leave from work due to a personal crisis. The plot might sound familiar but it has never been told like this. The director Kusano Natsuka stages the interactions through an actors’ table-read and, as the lines are repeated, the scenes gradually develop into on-location conversations. Moreover, she repositions the dramatic peak of the story to the beginning: Aki has murdered Naoko’s daughter.

Izumi, Yoichi, and their childhood friends had a secret play that no one could tell. In the fall of the third year of junior high school, the two go on a trip to find a cosmos field. Is it possible to grow up "remaining untainted" without losing anything? The story of Izumi, a girl who doesn't want to be a woman.

Ryoko Matsumura is a popular writer in her 50's. She also knows that she has Alzheimer’s. Ryoko Matsumura begins to teach at a university. She meets a young Korean man in his 20's. They become attracted to each other.

Twenty years have passed since the sudden disappearance of Amy, who was the femme fatale in her film studies group. Something that Naoko said triggers emotions that were frozen in time for the group's members, who see each other for the first time after a long absence: Asada Iida,Naoko,Okamoto,Miho,Goto and Kizuka.

Shigemori is a lawyer tasked with defending Misumi in a murder trial. Misumi has previous convictions for murder and has confessed to the crime, but evidence in the case leads to Shigemori having doubts about what really happened.

Ken, an AD at an infomercial company, and their program host, Tada, are both suddenly caught up in pro wrestling started by their company president, Sakaguchi. To save the fate of his company, Sakaguchi decides to start a new program, combining pro wrestling and infomercials as he sees something special in Ken's wrestling... Aoi, a coworker and Ken's girlfriend, become troubled by not being able to accept Ken's excitement over his wrestling.

Antonym is a slow-burning drama about human connection, told through the story of two women who come together to write a radio drama. Vain and self-centred Aya is forced to find a writing partner to work on the radio script she is developing. Heavily reluctant to collaborate, she partners shy co-worker Sachiko, who eagerly embraces the project. Peppered with coincidental occurrences and failed relationships, and powered by the friction and growing friendship between the women as they work on the script, Antonym is as much about the inevitability of human connection as it is about the necessity of it.