The best Joe Odagiri’s drama movies

Two tiny, aquatic humanoids search for their missing father, a boy battles a lethal allergy to eggs, and an invisible salaryman tries to become a hero.

Jun-shik, who works for Tatsuo’s grandfather’s farm while Korea is colonized by Japan, dreams about participating in the Tokyo Olympics as a marathon runner. Tatsuo also aims to become a marathon runner, so the two become rivals. But the war breaks out and they both are forced to enlist in the army. Tatsuo becomes the head of defense in Jun-shik’s unit and he devises a scheme but fails. Jun-shik and Tatsuo are held captive by the Soviets. They run away but soon are captured by the Germans and forced to separate. In 1944, they meet again on the shores of Normandy.

A life-size, inflatable sex doll suddenly comes to life one day. Without her owner knowing, she goes for a walk around town and falls in love with Junichi. She starts to date Junichi and gets a job at the same store where he works. Everything seems to be going perfect for her until something unexpected happens.

In war-torn Japan, the Tokugawa Shogun, desperate to restore peace to his people, orders the assassination of the hostile warlords. A beautiful young woman is raised from birth with nine other orphans, to become an assassin. Her name is Azumi, the ultimate assassin.

A group of very different people set sail on an old warship. The passengers include a senator with his son, a newly-wed couple, a mysterious old man, a group of sex workers and a gang of violent criminals. At first the aggressive behaviour of the thugs and their leader is directed at the first class passengers, but then more and more indiscriminately against the rest of those on board. Rape is followed by murder and it’s not long before the first of numerous and increasingly brutal mutinies takes place.

When Kanako, a model daughter and a brilliant student, disappears, her mother asks her ex-husband, a violent former policeman, to find her. As his investigation progresses, his idealized image of Kanako cracks: the girl hides a dark life that her father can not even imagine.

Majime, an eccentric man in publishing company, who has unique ability of words, joins the team that will compile a new dictionary, ‘The Great Passage.’ In the eclectic team, he becomes immersed in the world of dictionaries. But the team is overwhelmed with problems. Will ‘The Great Passage’ ever be completed?

Adapted from the bestselling Japanese autobiography of the same title, this gentle coming-of-age drama concerns an adolescent boy, Boku - Masaya, torn between the inherited recklessness of his father Oton and the inherited responsibility, wisdom and emotional strength of his mother Okan. Following a period of intensely rebellious behavior, Boku learns that his mom has contracted cancer; suddenly, his mother comes to live with him in Tokyo the entire emotional landscape of his life is altered.

Mushi are beings in touch with the essence of life, far more basic and pure than normal living things. Most humans are incapable of perceiving Mushi and are oblivious to their existence, but there are a few who possess the ability to see and interact with Mushi. One such person is Ginko who travels from place to place to research Mushi and aid people suffering from problems caused by them.

In 1923, the young Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island (South Korea), to Osaka (Japan). Through the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko (processed seafood products) in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees. He makes a fortune, abuses and destroys the lives of his wife and family, has many mistresses and children and shows no respect to anyone. Later he closes the factory, lending out the money with high interest and becomes a loan shark. His hateful behavior remains unchanged to his last breath, alone in North Korea. The film is told from the perspective of Masao, his legitimate son by his abused and degraded wife, who knows nothing about his father other than to fear him.

Twelve-year-old Koichi, who has been separated from his brother Ryunosuke due to his parents' divorce, hears a rumor that the new bullet trains will precipitate a wish-granting miracle when they pass each other at top speed.

When people finish their day and hurry home, his day starts. His diner is open from midnight to seven in the morning. Pork, miso soup combo, beer, sake and shochu is all that he has on his menu. Nevertheless, he makes whatever his customers request as long as he has the ingredients for it.

A 15-year-old circus ringmaster Wei-wei is left all alone with gorilla Ling-ling after grandfather passes away. Thanks to her grandfather's love for baseball, Ling-ling was trained to play baseball and has developed remarkable hitting skills. The materialistic sports agent Sung Chung-Su hears of this remarkable gorilla, and signs Ling-ling to play in the professional South Korean baseball league. Dreaming of success, World's first gorilla pinch hitter and his 15-year old trainer begin on their run in the Korean Baseball League.

When Aoi is gang-raped by her classmates and kicked out of her home by her own parents she sees no reason to continue living. Before she commits suicide, however, she receives an email on her cellphone from a man named Toshi addressed to a girl named Ai. The message simply thanks the girl for being alive, but this specific message has an effect on Aoi and she decides to keep on living. Without many options, Aoi resorts to everything from paid dating to porn to earn money and meets a lot of less than reputable characters. Throughout it all though she looks toward Toshi as her hope for happiness and the two form a relationship.

In the aftermath of a car crash, a man discovers his dreams are tied to a stranger's sleepwalking.

Poongsan has the unenviable - and death-defying - job of delivering messages across the North and South Korean border to separated families. When South Korean government agents ask him to smuggle in In-ok, the lover of a high-ranking North Korean defector, into the South, the damsel and rescuer fall in love instead.

Every night, Master (Kaoru Kobayashi) is busy with customers at the restaurant he runs. He has a worried face, looking at the funerary urn which someone left at his restaurant. His customers also talk about the funerary urn.

Shin is a Japanese university student living a boring and meaningless life. One day, he spots a book titled Dangerous Ways to Walk the World, in which he finds a page written about hazards in New-York. Eager to get out, he jets off to New-York to find this inspiration.

Set in a five star Tokyo hotel on New Year's Eve, the film follows the misadventures of various hotel staff and guests in the run-up to midnight. The plot involves numerous characters, the different problems or situations they face in the run-up to midnight, and the ways that these different storylines interact and are resolved. The film is reminiscent of the Hollywood screwball comedies of 1930s and 1940s, and explicitly references the 1932 film Grand Hotel, whose plot also followed the interlinked lives of various characters in a fictional hotel over a short period.

Romeo, A.K.A. Kosuke Matsuyama, is a second-year high school student. A nice, normal, nonviolent type, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a rampaging crowd of Korean boys, outraged by insults perpetrated by several of his idiotic class-mates on two Korean girls. He makes a narrow escape, but soon after, he and his best bud Yoshio are sent by their home-room teacher to invite the Korean students to a friendly soccer game as a way of restoring the peace.