Asako I & IIMovies like Asako I & II
- Key Features:
- Doppelganger, Lost love, Identity, Relationships, Disappearance, Emotional complexity, Romance, Tokyo, Tokyo, Free spirit, Character study
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Art house enthusiasts, Romance viewers, Introspective drama fans, International cinema lovers
- Emotional Arc:
- Longing → Confusion → Acceptance
Asako I & II

Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality.
Asako I & II
Hiroko attends the memorial service of her fiancé, Itsuki Fujii, who died in a mountain-climbing incident. Although Itsuki's mother says that their old house is gone, Hiroko records the address listed under his name in his yearbook and sends him a letter. Surprisingly, she receives a reply, and discovers it came from his old classmate, a girl who also happens to be called Itsuki Fujii.

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

Taeko and her husband, Jirō, are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.

Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.

One hot summer day a little girl gets lost in an enchanted forest of the mountain god where spirits reside. A young boy appears before her, but she cannot touch him for fear of making him disappear. And so a wondrous adventure awaits...

A Japanophile young Belgian woman in Tokyo falls into a whirlwind romance with a Francophile Japanese student, in this charming and tender tale of young love and cultural discovery.

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity.

Akira works as a lawyer. One day, he meets with his former client Rie, who asks Akira to perform a background check on her late husband Daisuke.

In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lures some of its inhabitants who are desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

Young art student Hideo paints an unnerving portrait of Tomie, who whispers that she loves him. Inexplicably, he reacts by stabbing her to death with a painting trowel. Two friends, Takumi and Shunichi, arrive on the scene and help him dispose of the body. To cheer him up, the boys take the unwitting murderer to the nearest bar for a party... but a mysterious girl named Tomie shows up, bearing a few odd physical resemblances to the dead girl in the ground.

Takumi and his six-year-old son, Yuji, haven't come to terms with their wife and mother's death. One day, they meet a woman with an uncanny resemblance to her sheltering from the rain near their home.

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.

Seven years after the death of his wife, widower Shigeharu seeks advice on how to find a new wife from a colleague. Taking advantage of their position as a film company, they stage an audition. Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu is enchanted by the quiet Asami. But soon things take a twisted turn as Asami isn’t what she seems to be.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

A shy high schooler in Kyoto meets a man claiming to be his future self, who tells him he’s hacked into the past to save their first love.

Koichi takes care of his sister, who has recently returned from a trip abroad in the United States as she is not well. While caring for her, he records evidence of ghosts in their home.

An American journalist travels through 19th-century Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.

While a South Korean man wanders the city in search of the woman he just broke up with, she successively meets and flirts with two men who claim to have met her before.

A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.

While searching for his fiancee Ritsuko, Sakutarou rediscovers through flashbacks the void deep within him caused by the events from his high school days.

An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.

Searching for escape in Tokyo's back alleys, a haunted English teacher explores love and lust with a dashing Yakuza, as their tumultuous affair takes her on a journey through the city's dive bars and three-hour love hotels.

Kwon returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori, who has come back from Japan to propose to her. Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology.

One night in Tokyo, Leo, a young boxer, meets his first love, Monica, an imprisoned sex worker. Caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme, they find themselves pursued by a corrupt cop, a yakuza, his nemesis, and a female assassin.

A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.

While investigating the horrifying death of her boyfriend, Mai Takano learns about a videotape haunted by the spirit of a disturbing girl named Sadako, which kills anyone who watches it exactly one week later. When her boyfriend’s son, Yoichi, starts to develop the same psychic abilities as Sadako, Takano must find a way to keep the boy and herself from becoming the next victims.

Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.

Arata Kaizaki, a jobless adult, undergoes an experiment that makes him 10 years younger. He goes back to high school and falls in love with Chizuru Hishiro, who is more than she seems.

Devoted to her family’s rice-cake–making business and the high school baton club, Tamako is a little slow when it comes to love. She’s oblivious to her childhood friend Mochizo’s affections, even though all their friends know. With graduation closing in and Mochizo leaving for Tokyo, will Tamako realise her feelings and tell him in time?

Late one evening Alex suddenly abandons his girlfriend, Simone, to pursue the beautiful Aimee. In his encounter with Aimee time and place dissolve for him and he becomes a stranger to Simone, to whom he cannot return.

The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.

A man brutally murders a married couple and leaves the word “ikari” (“rage”) written with their blood. The killer undergoes plastic surgery and flees. At three different locations in Japan, a male stranger appears. People suspect that the stranger might be the murderer.

With the Tendos, the Saotomes, Ryoga, Shampoo and Ukyo misinterpreting Tatewake Kuno's invitation to his two loves, Akane and 'The Pig Tailed Girl', to try his new yacht, a whole new episode of chaos begins in the already unstable lives of the Saotome/Tendo clan. A mysterious shadow kidnaps first Akane's sister Kasumi, then continues on until all the girls disappear. All except everyone's favorite hydrotranssexual.

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.

After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.

A wealthy young man pursues a young woman of modest means, but circumstances often separate them as the years pass.

A lonely university student develops a romance with a beautiful interesting woman, who turns out to be a cyborg from the future.

Narumi is on bad terms with her husband, Shinji, when, one day, Shinji goes missing. He comes back a couple of days later, but he seems like a totally different person, and he is now gentle and tender. He goes for a walk every day. Meanwhile, journalist Sakurai covers the story of a family that was brutally murdered, when an unexplained phenomenon takes place. Shinji Kase tells his wife that he came to Earth to invade.

Aoi Nishimori's parents moved to another city for work, but Aoi didn't want to transfer to a new high school. She stays behind and lives in an apartment by herself. Shūsei Kugayama moves in next to Aoi's apartment. Shūsei is a very popular student at their high school. Due to a mistake, Aoi makes the sprinkler go off in his room. Until Shūsei's room is fixed, he stays with Aoi.

On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.

As a couple goes on a trip to find their way back to each other, a sideshow artist and his shady entourage emerge from the woods, terrorizing them, luring them deeper into a maelstrom of psychological terror and humiliating slapstick.

Marco encounters his ex-girlfriend Consueloand starts seeing her without telling that he has just married. Antonio is an MP and during his European trip he has a love affair with elegant Olga who has a big secret to hide. Recently-jilted Fabio is mistaken for psychiatrist by a beautiful girl Valentina with whom he falls in love. A divorce lawyer Sandra is romantically attracted to her client's husband Massimo.

A peculiar girl transforms into a cat to catch her crush's attention. But before she realizes it, the line between human and animal starts to blur.

On a cold Monday morning, a group of counselors clock in at an old-fashioned social services office. Their task is to interview the recently deceased, record their personal details, then, over the course of the week, assist them in choosing a single memory to keep for eternity.

It tells the story of Marcos and Ana, who have been married for more than 25 years, but enter into an existential crisis that leads them to separate. The life of singles seems fascinating and exciting at first, but soon it also becomes monotonous for her and nightmarish for him.

Kurumi’s heart was broken by the sudden death of her boyfriend in a tragic airplane accident. By melding futuristic technology with the binary equivalent of human emotion, a brilliant scientist created an ultra-lifelike robotic surrogate to take Hal’s place – and lure Kurumi from her shroud of solitude.

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.

A Japanese girl struggling to fit in at her new school teams up with a reclusive neighbor to find out what happened to an upperclassman who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

When his mother's untimely death quickly follows his father's, a doctor begins to believe a killer may be targeting him and his amnesiac wife.

A reclusive illustrator falls in love with a young woman who addictively shops for clothing.

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.

After suffering through a long and unsuccessful series of fertility treatments, Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu make the decision to adopt a child. Six years after adopting a boy they named Asato, Satoko has quit her job to concentrate fully on her husband and son. The family lives a peaceful existence until the arrival of a stranger.

After having narrowly escaped an attempt on his life at the hands of a psychopath, detective inspector Takakura quits active service in the police force and takes up a position as a university lecturer in criminal psychology. But his desire to get to the bottom of criminals’ motives remains, and he does not hesitate long when former colleague Nogami asks him to reopen an old case.

Rei helps the woman she's been in love with for years escape her abusive husband. While on the run, their feelings for each other catch fire.

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

Nishi is a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place.

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

Veysel loves a singer named Basak. But she doesn’t love him back. One day Veysel saves the life of a Japanese tourist. Later, the tourist sends a gift to Veysel from Japan. The gift is a robot that looks exactly like the singer he loves, Basak.

Police officers around Tokyo are being murdered by an unknown assailant. When Ran witnesses an attempt on the life of one of her friends in the police, she loses her memory. Now, Conan and Inspector Megure must find the murderer while Ran attempts to regain her lost memories.

A postman learns that he doesn't have much time left to live due to a terminal illness. A devil then appears in front of him and offers to extend his life if he picks something in the world that will disappear. The man thinks about his relationships with ex-friends, ex-lovers, relatives and colleagues who will be sincerely sad when he dies.

High schoolers Mitsuha and Taki are complete strangers living separate lives. But one night, they suddenly switch places. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki’s body, and he in hers. This bizarre occurrence continues to happen randomly, and the two must adjust their lives around each other.

Young assassins Azumi and Nagara continue their mission to prevent a civil war. In their hunt for Masayuki Sanada, who is protected by both an army and a dangerous clan, they meet Ginkaku, a person who shows a remarking resemblance with former friend Nachi.

A depressed man moves back in with his parents following a recent heartbreak and finds himself with two women.

A psychologist connects her missing brother to the strange case of a mysterious little girl believed to be Sadako reincarnated.

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.

Consumed by jealousy, a woman takes an extreme step and undergoes surgery for a new face. Although her lover of 2 years misses her, he falls in love with the new face, not knowing it's the same woman.

Two teenage best pals attracted to the same boy end up scrambling his life after he walks into a door and is knocked unconscious.

Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art. The image of the large demonic spider that he emblazons across Otsuya's back marks her as the property of another man, radically altering her relationships with all around her as her personality seems to transform under its influence.

Mizuki's husband Yusuke has been missing for three years. He suddenly comes back home as a ghost and asks Mizuki to go on a trip with him. Their trip consists of visiting the people that helped Yusuke on his previous travel.

While everyone thinks that Momo is a wild party girl, the reality is that she is shy and lonely. Can Momo confess her love to her classmate, Toji, or will her best friend Sae steal him away? It's a bittersweet drama of growing up and fitting in.

Chloé, a fragile young woman, falls in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul. A few months later she moves in with him, but soon discovers that her lover is concealing a part of his identity.

With dreams of diving abroad, Tsuneo gets a job assisting Josee, an artist whose imagination takes her far beyond her wheelchair. But when the tide turns against them, they push each other to places they never thought possible, and inspire a love fit for a storybook.

Ayuha Samaru is a high school student. She is honest and works hard at everything, no matter what. One day, she has trouble at a gyudon restaurant due to money. A man at the restaurant, Yoshitaka Hiromitsu, helps her out. The next day, she finds that Yoshitaka Hiromitsu has come to her school as a substitute teacher for her ill homeroom teacher. Ayuha Samaru now believes that Yoshitaka Hiromitsu is her fate in love. She keeps expressing her feelings to him.

When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.

Due to an error the male student Kagami Yuuki is registered for a room in the girls dormitory of his new co-ed high school. Since no male rooms are available he is left with no other option than to sleep in the girls dormitory in the same room as the teacher that made the mistak in the first place, Ayane-sensei. To avoid getting kicked out of the school for being a boy in a girls dormitory he has to cross-dress whenever he is leaving his room. Needless to say that this brings him a lot of trouble.

In Tokyo, Japan, several grotesque murders take place on rainy days. Detective Sawamura, who is in charge of the case, soon discovers that his own family is connected to the crimes.

A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances is sweeping Tokyo.

At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...

In an abandoned Tokyo overrun by bubbles and gravitational abnormalities, one gifted young man has a fateful meeting with a mysterious girl.

Set in the Aokigahara Forest, a real-life place in Japan where people go to end their lives. Against this backdrop, a young American woman comes in search of her twin sister, who has mysteriously disappeared.

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

Ichiko works as a private nurse for a family she almost became a part of. While Ichiko cares for the grandmother, she is also a confidant to Motoko, the eldest sister. But one day, Motoko’s younger sister disappears. And the media soon reveal the kidnapper to be Ichiko’s own nephew.

Amateur photographer Makoto and the homely but endearing Shizuru meet during their university entrance ceremony and become instant friends. Shy by nature, Makoto finds himself opening up around Shizuru, who is secretly in love with him.

After losing her parents, young flower selling Midori is put up by a fairground group. She is abused and forced to slavery, until the arrival of an enigmatic magician of short stature, who gives her hope for a better future.

High school student Yuki Hase wants to become close with classmate Kaori Fujimiya who is alway by herself. Kaori Fujimiya refuses to become close with Yuki Hase, because she forgets her friends every new Monday. Even though Kaori tells Yuki why she doesn't want to become friends, Yuki still wants to become close to her.

In the suburbs of Rome two very different souls intersect. One is the son of a restaurant owner who disappeared with his lover. The other is a young mysterious woman who has arrived from China in search of her missing sister.

In spring, a girl leaves the island of Hokkaido to attend university in Tokyo. Once there, she is asked to reveal why she wanted to go there in the first place.

Haruki secretly had feelings for Akihiko for years, but Akihiko was still in a relationship with his roommate, the violinist Ugetsu Murata. Haruki, Akihiko, and Ugetsu's love clashes and starts to move forward.

A chambermaid and a former cop meet at a speed dating event and a romance develops. But during a romantic getaway things suddenly take a turn for the worse when her mysterious past is revealed.

A married woman with a lovely daughter lives a carefree life, until she meets her ex-lover at a friend’s wedding. They haven’t seen each other in ten years, but they begin an affair.

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.

Shin has shut his heart ever since his mother died when he was young. His childhood friend Kotori has been looking after him ever since. Now that they are in the third year of high school, and it seems like they can finally move forward, another Shin from another Japan has suddenly appeared in front of them.

A young man awakens in the hospital after an accident wipes his memory. Fascinated by a textbook full of drawings of dissections, Hiroshi is drawn to medical school. There he catches the eye of a fellow student, but it's another who becomes his obsession: the dead woman on the cadaver table.

Slacker Ichiko gets into a fight with her younger sister and begins to live on her own, working the late shift at a 100 yen shop. On her way home, she passes a gym and meets boxer Kano who trains there in silence...

A Japanese actress begins having strange visions and experiences after landing a role in a horror film about a real-life murder spree that took place over forty years ago.
