Shichinosuke Nakamura

Commemorating the 70th anniversary of TV broadcasting in Japan, and the 60th anniversary of the Taiga drama, this special depicts the struggles of creating the first Taiga drama.

For his first film in fourteen years animation director Isao Takahata embarked on a visually sumptuous adaptation of "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya". A dream project for the director that would hopefully establish the recently formed Ghibli Studio 7, created to meet the demands of a new type of modern animation process. But almost immediately the epic production is faced with difficulties and falls dramatically behind schedule. In this compelling and insightful documentary we follow Isao Takahata and his dedicated team of artists as they frantically strive against adversity to make their vision a reality and bring Studio Ghibli into a new Era.

Found inside a shining stalk of bamboo by an old bamboo cutter and his wife, a tiny girl grows rapidly into an exquisite young lady. The mysterious young princess enthrals all who encounter her. But, ultimately, she must confront her fate.

Yaji and Kita are two men who live in Edo. They are deeply in love. Yaji is married to a woman, while Kita is an actor addicted to various drugs.

Asako is your typical seventeen-year-old, high school truant. She has no goals for the future and doesn’t know what direction her life is taking. Then she meets Aoki Kazuyoshi, a ten-year-old boy living nearby. Although still a precocious child, Kazuyoshi poses as a twenty-six-year-old housewife on an erotic internet chat site. Kazuyoshi invites Asako into the erotic business world, and she immediately becomes immersed in an adult world that she had no idea existed. The door is wide open for the curious Asako, who discovers things that she has never dreamed of, but is this truly the right path for her life?

Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.