Takashi Shinohara

A blind girl of around ten years old is not having a pleasant upbringing. She is poor, neglected, shunned and even loses a friend. Yet, she does not give up hope. That is the adaptation of the actual story of Kiyo Awazu who grows up to educate blind children. The young Fumiko becomes an apprentice to a masseuse and works hard to learn a skill. She also studies to learn braille.

Following the 2009 financial crash, Waseda University graduate Takeshi lost his job in Tokyo and retreated to his family home in Sendai. While he resumed his role as heir to the family construction company with a diligent attitude, his hidebound father resents that his son left and that at the age of 35 Takeshi is still single. However, wider events will force father and son to overcome their differences as the Otsunahiki, a great tug-of-war featuring thousands of participants, will pull them together in a family tradition just as Takeshi meets Jiheyun, a beautiful Korean doctor on an exchange programme... The ties of family bind people tightly as characters struggle with the push of their own ambitious urges and the pull of family commitments but the Otsunahiki ropes things together in a family drama rich with events and the culture of Sendai, that will tug and the heartstrings of viewers whilst providing to the desire to visit the beautiful and storied region.

Drama depicting two men and a woman, each with their own issues, who head for Fukui, and their maturity and rejuvenation through travel. Recently retired Nishina Kosuke goes to meet his first love, who he got to know as a pen pal 42 years ago. For Kagawa Yuika, raised by a single mother, Fukui is a place seeped with memories of her father. And, violinist Kuga Hikari is trying to break through a slump.

This film is about a train departing Osaka Station at midnight to an unknown destination. The people on this train all have some difficulties in their lives, and they end up on this train. Hanoko is suicidal, Yuka has caught her boyfriend with another woman, Michiru is aimless, Mr. Wakabayashi has just been fired, and one other man just lost his wife. They take the train to Kazumachi, a small village. They decide to stay and enter a small world of discovery about themselves, courtesy of the inhabitants of the village, all of whom are engaging.

Ultra Q: Dark Fantasy is a 2004 production, and the 19th installment in the Ultra Series that was broadcast in Japan in 2004. It is a sequel to Ultra Q, the first of the Ultra Series. It retains the same swirling effect for the titlecard, but with the words "Dark Fantasy" added underneath, the title also remains black and white.