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Movies like Dolls

Key Features:
Puppets, Relationship drama, Arranged marriage, Forbidden love, Tragedy, Sacrifice, Japanese cinema, Visual storytelling, Melancholy, Fate, Social pressure, Cultural conflict
Tone:
serious, poetic, restrained
Target Audience:
Arthouse film enthusiasts, Fans of Japanese cinema, Drama lovers, Viewers interested in visual storytelling
Emotional Arc:
Longing → Despair

Dolls

2002-10-12
Dolls Poster - Find Similar Movies

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

Genres
Drama, Romance
Cast
Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi, Chieko Matsubara, Kyoko Fukada, Tsutomu Takeshige, Kayoko Kishimoto, Nao Omori, Kanji Tsuda, Yuko Daike
Crew
Takeshi Kitano, Takeshi Kitano
Rating
7.6(341 votes)
DollsDolls
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Love & Pop
7.7

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.



Air Doll
Air Doll(2009)
7

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 perfectly for her until something unexpected happens.



Audition
Audition(2000)
7.1

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.



Double Suicide
6.893

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.



The Face of Another

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.



Ride or Die
6.683

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.



The Doll
The Doll(2016)
5.2

Anya and Daniel just moved to their new house in Bandung. Daniel brings home a doll from his workplace. Anya, who is a dollmaker, welcomes the doll happily to their house. They later learned that the doll belonged to a little girl named Uci, who died when she and her family were brutally murdered in a robbery. Strange things begin to happen.....



Fireworks
Fireworks(1997)
7.686

Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.



Intentions of Murder

The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.



Mind Game
Mind Game(2004)
7.5

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.



Irezumi
Irezumi(1966)
6.8

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.



The Vampire Doll
6.8

A young man goes missing after visiting his girlfriend's isolated country home. His sister and her boyfriend trace him to the creepy mansion, but their search becomes perilous when they uncover a gruesome family history.



Over Your Dead Body
6.059

An actor named Kosuke plays the role of Iemon in a stage version of Yotsuya Kaiden and his new lover Miyuki plays Oiwa. However, as they delve deeper into their respective performances, the line between fantasy and reality becomes obscured until the murderous, vengeful themes of the play bleed into their own relationship.



Midori
Midori(1992)
6.1

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.



Tokyo Decadence
5.914

A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.



Maborosi
Maborosi(1995)
7.416

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



Bullet Ballet
6.938

After his girlfriend commits suicide, a man becomes embroiled in gang warfare attempting to obtain a gun in hopes to kill himself.



Shutter
Shutter(2008)
5.556

A newly married couple discovers disturbing, ghostly images in photographs they develop after a tragic accident. Fearing the manifestations may be connected, they investigate and learn that some mysteries are better left unsolved.



Dolls
Dolls(1986)
6.4

A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion.



Love Life
Love Life(2022)
7.2

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.



Early Summer
7.842

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.



The World of Kanako

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.



Ritual
Ritual(2000)
7.7

A disillusioned filmmaker has an encounter with a young woman who has a ritual of repeating "Tomorrow is my birthday" everyday. He tries to communicate with her through his video camera.



Tony Takitani
6.7

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



Flower & Snake
5.54

The wealthy president of a company has built up an unpayable debt to a local crime lord, and to escape punishment he sells his famous dancer wife to the lecherous old man figuring a 90 year old can’t do too much bad with her. Perhaps not, but others can while he watches. She’s put on stage in an underground BDSM sex show and begins a spiraling decent from strongly independent woman to submissive sex slave



Imprint
Imprint(2006)
6.822

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.



Pigs and Battleships

In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.



A Snake of June
6.8

A woman is being stalked by a stranger. His stalking turns to blackmail when he sends her copies of photos of her in an embarrassing position. Now he controls her and she has to do anything he says. Anything.



Hot Gimmick: Girl Meets Boy

A quiet teen's life is shaken up when she's forced to be her arrogant neighbor's slave. He loves her, but they both have a lot to learn about trust.



Silk
Silk(2007)
5.8

French silkworm trader Hervé is married to the beautiful Hélène. When an outbreak of disease ravages European silkworms, Hervé must travel to Japan to retrieve healthy eggs. After a long journey, Hervé finally arrives at a village where he can buy them. He becomes infatuated with a young concubine and goes to great lengths to see her again. But, when war breaks out in Japan, the concubine flees, forcing Hervé to return home to his wife.



Sakuran
Sakuran(2006)
6.5

Anna Tsuchiya blasts back in time playing an oiran, a top-notched geisha of the Edo period’s Yoshiwara District, navigating brothel politics while trying to cling to the man she loves.



Takeshis'
Takeshis'(2005)
6.089

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.



A Geisha
A Geisha(1953)
7.527

Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.



Guilty of Romance
6.912

In a Tokyo love hotel district, a woman is found dead in a derelict apartment. As police investigate, a romance novelist's wife lives a life that seems simply a daily repetition without romance. To break away from the loveless monotony, she follows her desires and becomes a nude model enacting sex in front of a camera. Soon, she meets a mentor and begins selling her body to strangers, while at home, she hides behind the façade that she's still the doting wife she's supposed to be.



Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman

Legend holds that 30 years ago, a suburban town was terrorized by the spirit of a woman whose horrid face had been grotesquely disfigured. Roaming the streets wearing a long coat and carrying large scissors, the spirit would approach her young victims and, while removing the mask, ask if she was pretty. The victim’s response would almost always lead to their violent death.



Chikamatsu Monogatari
7.745

When the wife of a 17th century Kyoto scroll-maker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves falling for one another.



A Bride for Rip Van Winkle

A woman hires actors and strangers to pretend to be her friends and family at her wedding.



Red
Red(2020)
4.7

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.



Late Autumn
7.7

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.



Tokyo Twilight
7.682

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.



I Give My First Love to You

Takuma knows that his life is shorter than the others and he feels that his demise is getting near. He chose to stay away from the girl that he loves so that she can easily move on. What he didn't know is that he is under-estimating her.



Azumi 2: Death or Love

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.



Tomie
Tomie(1998)
5.273

Following some trauma in her past that has since been repressed, a young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name "Tomie" but is unable to recall where she knows it from. Meanwhile, a police detective is investigating a string of brutal murders, where he also runs across the name "Tomie." How are the two connected?



The Idiot
The Idiot(1951)
7

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.



The Snow White Murder Case

Beautiful Noriko Miki works at a cosmetic company. One day, Noriko is murdered. People begin to suspect her co-worker Miki Shirono might have killed her. Television begins to cover her story. A TV show interviews Miki Shirono's colleagues, family, people from her hometown. Rumors turn into fear. Is she a wicked a woman?



Tokyo Story
8.2

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.



Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.



Miss Oyu
Miss Oyu(1951)
7.2

Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband's family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.



Dreams
Dreams(1990)
7.701

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.



To Me, the One Who Loved You

Koyomi Hidaka and Shiori Sato meet at his father’s research center and begin to fall in love, but so do their parents, who eventually marry. To avoid becoming stepsiblings, they decide to run away to a parallel universe. Traveling between dimensions is common in their world, but not without repercussions. Does a universe exist for the young couple, and what will it cost them to find it?



Hal
Hal(2013)
6.983

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.



Uzumaki
Uzumaki(2000)
5.883

The inhabitants of a small Japanese town become increasingly obsessed with and tormented by spirals.



Grotesque
Grotesque(2009)
5.7

An unnamed doctor has always had everything he's ever wanted, but that has only made him develop more extreme and depraved needs. He kidnaps a young couple in the prime of their life together and forces them into a game of torment that slowly extinguishes their hopes for survival.



The Garden of Words
7.583

Takao, who is training to become a shoemaker, skipped school and is sketching shoes in a Japanese-style garden. He meets a mysterious woman, Yukino, who is older than him. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other. But the end of the rainy season soon approaches.



Love Exposure
7.944

The story of a teenage boy named Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while operating for the sake of sin as an "up-skirt" photographer. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.



Helter Skelter
6.654

Top model Lilico, having recently undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries, begins to experience troubling side effects. As she desperately tries to retain her perfect image, Lilico descends into a world of nightmares and makes those around her miserable.



Outrage
Outrage(2010)
6.9

When a tough yakuza gangster is betrayed by his bosses, it means all out war. Bodies pile up as he takes out everyone in his way to the top in a brutal quest for revenge.



The Pillow Book
6.35

A woman with a body writing fetish seeks to find a combined lover and calligrapher.



Rashomon
Rashomon(1950)
8

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.



The Bad Sleep Well
7.7

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president Iwabuchi. At the reception, the wedding cake is a replica of their corporate headquarters, but an aspect of the design reminds the party of the hushed-up death of Nishi's father. It is then that Nishi unleashes his plan to avenge his father's death.



Exte: Hair Extensions
5.882

An aspiring hair dresser becomes the infatuation of a tricophilic man who sells hair extensions to nearby hair salons. The source of the hair is the corpse of a girl whose dead body continues to grow beautiful, voluminous, black hair that comes alive, driving those who use the extensions insane or killing them.



Sound of the Mountain
7.315

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.



Love Object
5.9

The twisted tale of Kenneth, socially insecure technical writer who forms an obsessive relationship with "Nikki", an anatomically accurate silicone sex doll he orders over the Internet.



Tokyo Sonata
7.4

A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.



Asako I & II
6.762

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.



Scandal
Scandal(1950)
6.9

A celebrity photograph sparks a court case as a tabloid magazine spins a scandalous yarn over a painter and a famous singer.



Sadako
Sadako(2019)
5.905

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



Sadako 3D 2
4.7

Five years have passed since the events of Sadako 3D. Akane is pregnant with a child with her boyfriend Takenori. However, Akane dies after giving birth to her daughter. When Takenori's sister Fuko takes up the task of caring for Akane's daughter, the infamous cursed video resurfaces. During her investigation, Fuko learns about the legend of Sadako's daughter...



Early Spring
7.505

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



The Lower Depths
7.1

Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.



Gonin
Gonin(1995)
6.533

Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.



Love Like the Falling Petals

Haruto Asakura falls in love with hairdresser Misaki Ariake and asks her out. Watching Misaki Ariake work hard to achieve what she wants, Haruto Asakura, who almost gave up his dream to become a photographer, begins to pursue his dream again, but Misaki Ariake is diagnosed with a disease that ages her 10x faster than normal.



Rage
Rage(2016)
6.783

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.



Reincarnation
6.1

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.



Achilles and the Tortoise

Machisu is a painter. He never had the success he thinks he is entitled to. Regardless of this, he always remains trying to be successful. His wife Sachiko keeps supporting him, despite all setbacks.



Hill of Freedom
6.601

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.



Strange Circus
7.2

The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality might be too much to bear.



Baby Assassins
6.6

Two high school girls who are about to graduate also happen to be highly-skilled assassins. When the organization they work for orders them to share a room, their relationship quickly sours. But when they become targets of the yakuza, the girls realize they'll have to work together to survive.



R100
R100(2013)
5.727

Ruthless dominatrixes pursue a mild-mannered salesman who wants to get out of his unbreakable contract with a secret bondage club.



Memories of Matsuko
7.799

While combing through the belongings of his recently deceased aunt, Matsuko, nephew Sho pieces together the crucial events that sank Matsuko's life into a despairing tragedy.



Demons
Demons(1971)
7.637

Tells the story of the samurai Gengobe, who seeks revenge after falling prey to the schemes of a geisha and her husband.



The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

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



Belladonna of Sadness

An evil feudal lord rapes a village girl on her wedding night and proceeds to ruin her and her husband's lives. After she's eventually banished from her village, the girl makes a pact with the devil to gain magical ability and take revenge.



Sonatine
Sonatine(1993)
7.502

Murakawa, an aging Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life, is sent by his boss to Okinawa along with a few of his henchmen to help end a gang war, supposedly as mediators between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, his group is attacked in an ambush. The survivors flee and make a decision to lay low at the beach while they await further instructions.



Swallowtail Butterfly
7.446

The struggles of a group of outcasts living in "Yentown", in an alternate-future Japan.



Time
Time(2006)
6.862

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.



An Actor's Revenge
6.6

In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago.



Like Someone in Love
6.885

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.



Floating Clouds
7.7

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.



Faust
Faust(1994)
7.451

A very free adaptation of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", Goethe's "Faust" and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A nondescript man is lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, where he finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.



Creepy
Creepy(2016)
6.7

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.



Meatball Machine
5.358

Capable of making bio-mechanical weapons out of human flesh, alien parasites grotesquely invade the Earth, turning their hosts into maniacal killers who seek and destroy each other to the bloody death! And yes, it s also a human love story, even though the budding romantics are infested with slimy, tumor-like globules.



Floating Weeds
7.5

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



Baby Doll
Baby Doll(1956)
7

Archie Lee Meighan is a failing cotton gin owner who is married to Baby Doll, a 19-year old childlike beauty whose father arranged the marriage for financial reasons. As Archie awaits the arrival of Baby Doll's 20th birthday, the day that they are supposed to consummate their marriage, he faces interference from business rival Silva Vacarro, who plots to seduce Baby Doll away from Meighan.



True Mothers
7.3

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.



Scissors
Scissors(1991)
4.975

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.



Pale Flower
7.3

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.



Ring 2
Ring 2(1999)
5.77

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.



Perfect Blue
8.299

Rising pop star Mima quits singing to pursue a career as an actress. After she takes up a role on a popular detective show, her handlers and collaborators begin turning up murdered. Harboring feelings of guilt and haunted by visions of her former self, Mima's reality and fantasy meld into a frenzied paranoia.

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