In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
Samantha Hart is delighted when her online "Chance at Romance" to photographer Heath Madsen eventually results in Heath sending her a first class ticket to visit. Upon arriving for what she expects to be a romantic weekend, however, she learns her online relationship with the widowed photographer was actually manufactured a matchmaking twelve year-old. Sam is anxious to end her trip as quickly as possible, but a nasty bout of weather extends her stay through the end of the week.
Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
Reporter John Klein is plunged into a world of impossible terror and unthinkable chaos when fate draws him to a sleepy West Virginia town whose residents are being visited by a great winged shape that sows hideous nightmares and fevered visions.
Hayley’s a smart, charming teenage girl. Jeff’s a handsome, smooth fashion photographer. An Internet chat, a coffee shop meet-up, an impromptu fashion shoot back at Jeff’s place. Jeff thinks it’s his lucky night. He’s in for a surprise.
The lives of an American expat and a half Japanese construction worker living in rural Japan are forever changed over the course of three days as they engage in an unexpected romance.
Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair.
Stories depicting ordinary people revolving around ceremonial occasions. Without knowing that the funeral is for a yakuza member, an undertaker holds the funeral service. Relatives bicker over the deceased's last will. A son insists on wearing a long jacket normally worn by bousouzoku biker gang to a coming of age ceremony. His parents try to stop him. A husband heads over to his pregnant wife. She got pregnant before they got married and his father-in-law is angry at him. A freeter man challenges a professional baseball player over a woman.
Five years have passed since Japan's Great Zombie Panic. The confusion of those days is gone and people have finally regained their ordinary, peaceful lives. One day, out of nowhere, a zombie appears and becomes trapped in a house. Six people have spotted the zombie, including the home-owner couple, a cheeky high school boy, a boring small-factory owner, a suspicious young intern and a woman who insists she is the zombie's wife.
Senichi was born in 1964, when the entire nation was excited about the Tokyo Olympics. As an elementary student, Senichi won a footrace and got a taste of what winning felt like. Since then, Senichi takes part in various competitions including drawing and usually wins. He keeps struggling to win gold medals at competitions.
An ordinary and somewhat unpopular high school boy joins a surfing club in a nowhere near ocean Tochigi Prefecture, while being oblivious to the fact that him leading a peaceful, ordinary life equals world peace being preserved.
A hero called the legendary third baseman in the former prestigious grass baseball team "Peanuts", will start to rebuild the peanuts that have now turned into weak teams from the outset. Peanuts are going to fight against the team of strong teams, taking advantage of the redevelopment of the city where Captain Sagara lives.
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.
Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.
When American author Nicholas brings in a cosmetologist named Kika to prepare the corpse of his recently deceased son, she inadvertently revives the young man, then falls in love with him. Forces conspire against the couple, though, as Nicholas wants Kika for himself.
A story of three escort girls living in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. They work at the same escort service while feeling lonely in their urban lives.
Andreas Baader starts out as a small-time criminal. In Berlin, he is recruited by a revolutionary cell. They plan to overthrow the state.
A disgruntled former employee hijacks the Seabourn Legend cruise liner. Set on a fixed course, without any means of communication and at the mercy of the hijacker, it's up to the one cop on vacation, and his soon to be fiancé (hopefully) Annie, to regain control of it before it kills the passengers and causes an environmental disaster. Insurmountable and daunting tasks awaits them on their perilous journey throughout the ship trying to fend off the hijacker and save the passengers.
The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.