Hiroyuki Ohashi

In this realistic view into the manga industry, selling copies is the only thing that matters. So what if your first series just ended and you have no idea how to start the next one, your marriage is breaking up, your pure love of manga has been destroyed by the cruel reality of the industry and nothing seems to fill the sucking void inside you… Find the secret combo for a new hit manga series and everything will be okay. Right?

Five loosely connected storylines concerning the secrets and lies, the fears and tears, and the puerile potty jokes that punctuate the characters' daily (and in one eerie case, nightly) encounters.

When you're a bored teenager looking for thrills, sometimes the only thing you can turn to is rock 'n roll. Having no skill, money, or even a full set of drums, a feared trio of high school delinquents nevertheless decide they are destined for musical glory in a quest to impress their only friend Aya, avoid a rival gang, and – most importantly – jam out.

Arakawa Ao lives happily on his own and hardly ever leaves Shimokitazawa, where he works at a vintage clothing shop, goes to occasional concerts and hangs out at his favorite bar. Then, he gets an unusual request to appear in an independent film.

Nobuhiro Yamashita shoots the adaption of the City Lights manga by Hiroyuki Ohashi with three members of the Nogizaka46 idol pop band. The story is told on three levels: Documentary-style on-set where we see the film being made and the idols struggling with their roles, the resulting movie which revolves around three girls in a psychic research club discovering a classmate with super powers who turns out to be an alien and a stage adaptation of the film with the same characters.