The best Takashi Yamanaka’s comedy movies

A rock band writes a song called "Fish Story" based on a sentence from a badly translated novel by a quack translator. The song exceeds the boundaries of space and time and ties people and their stories together. Thirty-seven years go by, and the song strikes a comet and saves the Earth from total destruction.

High school student Kasumi Ogino is a member of the school choir and after years of praise for her singing voice thinks she is the absolute bee’s knees. When the object of her desires, classmate and photographer Junichi Makimura, asks Kasumi is he can photograph her singing she accepts, thinking this means she is beautiful as well. However the end result is a comical shot of Kasumi with her mouth wide open, which Makimura likes to a hungry salmon! Distraught by the ensuing humiliation, Kasumi quits the choir, until she is encouraged to return by an unlikely counsel - the brutish leader of thuggish rival all male choir, Hiroshi Gondo.

Toho university hospital has established an outstanding coronary surgery team under the leadership of a up and coming, star, U.S. trained surgeon that specializes in the highly risky "Batista" procedure to shrink the size of enlarged hearts. Normally this procedure has only a 60% success rate, but "Team Batista" has achieved a run of 26 straight successes....when suddenly 3 patients in a row die on the operating table. Very disturbed, the lead surgeon requests an independent investigation. The hospital turns to Dr. Taguchi who is a specialist in psychosomatic disorders who is shocked to at the assignment because she knows nothing in particular about surgery. Assured, however, that this very lack of insider specialized knowledge is in fact the "objectivity" required, she diligently begins to investigate in her own polite, but persistent manner.

In 1964, Momoko came by herself to Tokyo from her hometown. She met Shūzō and married him. They raised two children together, but Shūzō suddenly passes away. Momoko is dumbfounded by being alone again. She begins to go to the library and borrows books. This changes her life.

When a gold ingot and a severed human head are discovered in a small provincial town, the rush to solve the curious case wavers between tragic and darkly humorous.