High school students Itsuki Kamiyama (Kanata Hongo) and Yoru Morino (Rin Takanashi) share an odd fascination with human cruelty and murder. Kamiyama knew they would share a connection as soon as he noticed a cut mark on her wrist. Together they track a brutal serial killer in an attempt to find the latest two victims—not necessarily to help bring the killer to justice, but simply for their own morbid need to inspect his or her handiwork. Based on a novel by Otsuichi and directed by Gen Takahashi. “Goth” is slated for release in December, 2008. For the first teaser, see this link.

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Get out your hankies, folks. It’s yet another tearjerker from Japan. But this time there’s a puppy on the cover! Frankly, that’s about the only thing that could draw me into one of these things, as I usually resent the inherent manipulative nature of the tear-jerking genre.

Katsuhide Motoki’s 10 Promises to My Dog is actually an adaptation of a Hare Kawaguchi novel which was inspired by the anonymously-authored “The Ten Commandments of Dog Ownership”, a list of specific rules of dog ownership as explained from a dog’s perspective. The film gives examples of each of these rules via a girl’s relationship with her dog as the two grow up together and lean on each other for support. While this may not be the pinnacle of innovation as far as setups go, it is a genuinely sweet movie with the power to reduce even the most modest of dog lovers to a blubbering mess.

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Director Keita Amemiya has a long history of making sci-fi flicks in which fun and excitement take priority over everything else, including the story or any sort of emotional depth. 1991’s Zeiram is no exception, and basically amounts to nothing more than a beautiful female bounty hunter with lots of fancy gadgets and armor whooping up on a gruesome monster within the confines of a computer-constructed alternate dimension. Throw in a couple of hapless power company employees for comic relief and you have the recipe for a movie that may not completely capture one’s imagination with its use of simplistic sci-fi conventions, but still qualifies as a guilty pleasure for those that are into this sort of thing.

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Fumiki Kaneko’s Kisarazu Cat’s Eye: The Movie is a theatrical continuation of the 9-episode TV drama which aired from January to March of 2002 on TBS. As is always the case with movies like this, it sort of begs the question: do you need to watch the show to understand the movie? Not really, but it couldn’t hurt. Comedy guru Kankuro Kudo wrote the storyline of both the show and movie, and his frenetic pacing can be extremely confusing to the uninitiated—mixing in bits of Japanese pop culture and funny speech patterns that may go over the heads of most western viewers. However, if you can endure the incredibly spastic first 30 minutes—that seemingly presumes everyone watching has seen the original TV show and knows about each character’s quirks and personal relationships—everything will eventually make sense.

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Based on a 2004 novel by Kenichi Yamamoto, “Katen no Shiro” is a 2009 period drama about the construction of Azuchi Castle on the shores of Lake Biwa, as ordered by the powerful daimyo Oda Nobunaga (Kippei Shiina). Azuchi is widely considered to be the greatest castle in the history of Japan. Unlike previous castles, it was built with lavishness and beauty in mind—not just utilitarian needs and defensive capabilities. Toshiyuki Nishida stars as a genius carpenter and Shinobu Otake plays his wife. Saki Fukuda also stars as their daughter and this role will mark her first appearance in a samurai-era drama.

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