Kids ReturnMovies like Kids Return
- Key Features:
- Coming-of-age, Friendship, Yakuza, Boxing, Life choices, Loss of innocence, Disillusionment, Japanese cinema, Crime, Social commentary, Youth, Consequences
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Indie film enthusiasts, Drama lovers, Fans of Japanese cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- ['Optimism → Disillusionment']
Kids Return

Shinji and Masaru spend most of their school days harassing fellow classmates and playing pranks. They drop out and Shinji becomes a small-time boxer, while Masaru joins up with a local yakuza gang. However, the world is a tough place.
Kids Return
Martial artist Takuma Tsurugi returns to take on a Yakuza family that may be embezzling money from charities to finance their own operations. Both the police and the Yakuza find themselves battling Tsurugi, but Tsurugi's fight ultimately is with the mob, and he concentrates on them.

The students of Suzuran High compete for the King of School title. An ex-graduate yakuza is sent to kill the son of a criminal group, but he can't make himself do it as he reminds him of his youth.

When Koryu's childhood friend Shurei is abducted by gangsters, the desperate young woman recruits a female martial artist and a tough-as-nails stranger to join her for a dangerous rescue mission.

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.

We follow Ichi during his high school years. Mr. Dai is the best fighter in school... whenever he fights Ichi is there and has a huge smile on his face. Mr. Dai thinks that Ichi is laughing at him but in fact he enjoys watching the violence that goes through the fights. Everyone is bullying, taunting and making fun of Ichi... even little kids from his karate class. Yet Ichi refuses to let go of his anger and fight others. Just when Mr. Dai is about to get Ichi, a new transfer student starts to make his own laws... by beating up everyone and breaking their bones! In a fight with the new student, Mr. Dai ends up on the ground, beaten and broken up from almost everywhere. It seems like this new guy wants to fight Ichi because supposedly he is the only one that could give him some challenge.

Genji and his victorious G.P.S. alliance find themselves facing down a new challenge by the students of Hosen Academy, feared by everyone as 'The Army of Killers.' The two schools, in fact, have a history of bad blood between them. And the simmering embers of hatred are about to flare up again, burning away any last remnants of the truce they had so rigorously observed until now.

Ryuzo and his 7 former henchmen are all retired yakuza, but they now live as regular old men. One day, Ryuzo becomes the victim of a phishing fraud. He calls his 7 men together to reform their society.

An unemployed man learns that his ex-girlfriend was murdered. He suddenly finds himself travelling through time to his middle school years and has chance to change the future and save the girl. He aims to rise to the top of the most brutal delinquent gang.

Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, the film takes place over the 5-day period before, during, and after a ferocious, seemingly liberating typhoon, which six of the students endure while marooned in their school.

Framed for his family's murder and left for dead, an ex-hitman will stop at nothing to exact revenge on the masked "demons" who have taken over his city.

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.

Soon after being named the new leader of his high school's gang system, Kujo grows bored with the violence and hatred that surround him. He wants desperately to abandon his post… but his once-enviable position of power has a strange way of making him feel powerless.

After an opponent dies mid-match, a prominent MMA champion swore never to fight again and retired to run his family's company. But when his best friend dies under suspicious circumstances, he has no choice but to step back in the ring.

Young Haru rescues a cat from being run over, but soon learns it's no ordinary feline; it happens to be the Prince of the Cats.

A harsh young man seduces a freeloading young woman and eventually takes advantage of her knack for hitchhiking to rob middle-class men.

After serving six years for killing his schoolmate, a young man learns that someone is out for revenge.

The Batman family has returned to the present to discover that Japan has disappeared, and a giant island - Hinomoto - is now in the sky over Gotham City. At the top sit the Yakuza, a group of superpowered individuals who reign without honor or humanity and look suspiciously like the Justice League. Now, it’s up to Batman and his allies to save Gotham!

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

As the police launch a full-scale crackdown on organized crime, it ignites a national yakuza struggle between the Sanno of the East and Hanabishi of the West. What started as an internal strife in Outrage has now become a nationwide war in Outrage Beyond.

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.

Wishing to find peace, Zatoichi travels to his old village but only finds trouble when he ends up in a love triangle and finds old scores have followed him home.

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.

An eighteen year old high school drop out and his twenty-seven year old friend start trafficking marijuana across the border of Canada in order to make money and their lives are changed forever.

When a mysterious stranger muscles into two rival yakuza gangs, Tokyo's underworld explodes with violence.

Moshimo, Japan. The annual fireworks festival is about to take place and a group of schoolboys, arguing over whether they are round or flat when viewed from different angles, set out to find it out.

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...

Returning to the village where a year before he had killed Hirate, a much-admired opponent, Zatoichi encounters another swordsman and former rival in love.

Former yakuza underling Kazuma Kiryū has recently been released from prison after a lengthy incarceration and is trying to piece his life together and distance himself from his yakuza past. Unfortunately, Kiryū's problems slowly escalate as he is pursued by a former associate, the baseball-bat-wielding psycho Gorō Majima, who has a grudge to settle with Kiryū.

Five years after the all-out war between the Sanno and Hanabishi crime families, former yakuza boss Otomo works in South Korea for Mr. Chang, a noted fixer. When tensions rise between Chang and the Hanabishi, and Chang's life is endangered, Otomo returns to Japan to settle things once and for all.

All Might and Deku accept an invitation to go abroad to a floating and mobile manmade city, called 'I-Island', where they research quirks as well as hero supplemental items at the special 'I-Expo' convention that is currently being held on the island. During that time, suddenly, despite an iron wall of security surrounding the island, the system is breached by a villain, and the only ones able to stop him are the students of Class 1-A.

Two boys are becoming real adults during a turbulent time as they experience a world that doesn't go their way.

Introverted Girona student Nacho meets two delinquents from the city's Chinatown and gets caught up in a summer onslaught of burglaries and hold ups that will change his life.

Anthony is in the Phillipines visiting his father. He inadvertently interferes with the affairs of local gangster Quino, who also happens to be a champion Karate fighter. After embarrassing Quino near a local tournament, Anthony is beaten up and left for dead. An old monk nurses Anthony back to health and teaches him the ways of martial arts so he may go back and fight Quino again.

A young man returns home for the weekend to discover the difficulty of juggling friends, parents, magic mushrooms and several thousand chickens.

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.

Following the defeat of Majin Buu, Son Goku and friends travel to Mr. Satan's newly-opened hotel for an all-you-can-eat banquet, when they are paid a visit by Vegeta's younger brother Tarble. They are informed by Tarble that the terrible brother duo of Abo and Cado have terrorized his planet and are on their way to Earth.

Makunouchi Ippo is the new Featherweight champion of Japan and is now ready for his first title defense. His opponent, the former Jr. Featherweight champion and a medical student, Sanada Kazuki. In addition to this feud, Sanada is being coached by Kamogawa's former rival, Hama Dankichi. What makes things worse is that Sanada works at the same hospital where Kumi is a nurse at and everybody at the hospital wants Sanada to win. Not only does Ippo have to defend his title, he has to reclaim his love.

A former NCAA champion wrestler is paroled after 10 years in prison. Now, to save a friend's life, in a series of cage fights he must agree to do the impossible - lose.

A detective breaks all rules of ethical conduct while investigating a colleague’s involvement in drug pushing and Yakuza activities.

The year is 1987 and Japan is just reaching the peak of its economic success. Eighteen-year old Yonosuke Yokomichi arrives in Tokyo from Nagasaki. Ordinary in every way possible, he lives in a suburb far from the excitement of the big city and commutes to a university in the center of Tokyo.

After two teenagers from abusive households befriend each other, their lives take a dark adventure into existentialism, despair, and human frailty.

A high-school girl inherits a declining yakuza organization, which seeks to repair its fortunes under her leadership.

A month after Genji Takiya graduates, a new battle for supremacy at Suzuran All-Boys High School begins. Transfer student Kaburagi Kazeo combats Kagami Ryohei for the coveted top spot, amidst a brewing inter-school conflict with Kurosaki Industrial High.

Set shortly after the end of World War II, a philosophical boxing drama of two fighters from opposite worlds (USA and Japan) who are pulled together for a questionable fight arranged by their unscrupulous managers and the Yakuza.

Kyousuke and Madoka have finally arrived at the point where they are close to graduation and have to decide where they want to go to college. Naturally, they want to go together, so beside all the studying they also have to look for a proper college where they can enter both. Hikaru, still a year from graduating, wants to support Kyousuke as well and does that in her own way. But while she does that, Madoka feels jealous and tells her feelings to Kyousuke. And then Kyousuke has to take action to finally decide on the girl he loves.

A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the school's brass band.

Falsely accused for cheating in a martial arts competition, two boyhood friends are banished from their Shaolin Temple and go their separate ways. As adults, they join opposing sides in a civil war. When one betrays the other, they settle their differences mano-a-mano.

After a fishing boat is attacked, the sole surviving crew member realizes it is none other than a resurrected Godzilla. However, efforts to bring the story to light are suppressed by the Japanese government amid growing political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, who are both willing to bomb Japan to stop the monster.

Six high school friends in their 40s who haven't seen each other in nearly 20 years rekindle their younger selves after a court cancels their diploma, forcing them to repeat the final high school exam.

In order to settle a business dispute, a mob leader murders one of his own teenage sons. The surviving son vows to avenge his brother's death, and organizes his own gang of teenage killers to destroy his father's organization.

Chow Sing Sing is about to be kicked out of the Royal Hong Kong Police's elite Special Duties Unit. But a senior officer decides to give him one last chance: Star must go undercover as a student at the Edinburgh High School in Hong Kong to recover the senior officer's missing revolver.

Jobless, besieged by creditors, and abandoned by his wife, the once silver medalist Tae-shik has sunk to street hustling, becoming a human punching bag. Meanwhile, young Sang-hwan's delinquent ways land him behind bars. Both men look to boxing to turn around lives gone astray, aiming for the amateur title, ultimately pitting them against each other, but more importantly, against themselves.

A young boxer is taken under the wing of a mob boss after his mother dies and his father is run out of town for being an abusive alcoholic.

A searing legal drama that centers on a highly credentialed child psychologist whose life is shattered when he's accused of sexually assaulting a young boy he's been treating.

A group of former high school classmates meets for a reunion 15 years after graduation, only to discover that any innocence or friendship is long lost.

Blind swordsman/masseuse Zatoichi befriends a young woman returning home with her baby. When gangsters mistake her for Zatoichi and kill her, Zatoichi determines to escort the baby to its father. He gains the reluctant help of a young pick pocket and together they travel to find the baby's father. But they do not reckon on the father's reaction to their arrival, nor on their own growing feelings for the child.

An expelled boxing champion, who now is a high-school teacher, witnesses intolerable violence and throws her first punch to build justice against it, while putting on a mask.

A warrior-in-training and his bumbling friends go in pursuit of a stolen sword.

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.

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.

As children, the introverted Smile was being bullied by a gang of kids until the brash Peco comes by and chases all of them them away. Peco then takes Smile under his wings and teaches him how to play the game of ping pong. From there a life long best friend relationship comes into existence between these two polar opposite kids.

Taken in by the yakuza at a young age, Kenji swears allegiance to his old-school boss, pledging to adhere to the family code amid ever-changing times.

Moritaka Mashiro doesn't want to follow in the path of his uncle who worked as a manga artist, but ultimately died because of exhaustion. Moritaka Mashiro figures he will graduate from school and work at an office. Things change though when falls in love with a girl at school. The girl, who hopes to become a voice actress, tells Moritaka they can marry, but only after they both achieve their dreams. Moritaka then teams up with fellow classmate Akito Takagi to publish their first manga.

A businessman, Tsuda, runs into a childhood friend, Kojima, on the subway. Kojima is working as a semiprofessional boxer. Tsuda soon begins to suspect that Kojima might be having an affair with his fiancée Hizuru. After an altercation, Tsuda begins training rigorously himself, leading to an extremely bloody, violent confrontation.

Ryōko Itakura returns as the tough-as-nails government taxing agent. This time she must figure out a way to expose a fanatical religious cult lead by a corrupt sociopath.

A former fighter must find the missing son of an opponent he accidentally killed years ago, taking on a brutally violent crime gang in Marseille.

An unknown future. A boy confesses to the murder of another in an all-boy juvenile detention facility. More an exercise in style than storytelling, the story follows two detectives trying to uncover the case. Homosexual tension and explosive violence drives the story which delivers some weird and fascinating visuals.

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.

Popular, outgoing Fujino is celebrated by her classmates for her funny comics in the class newspaper. One day, her teacher asks her to share the space with Kyomoto, a truant recluse whose beautiful artwork sparks a competitive fervor in Fujino. What starts as jealousy transforms when Fujino realizes their shared passion for drawing.

Two adults go to their middle school reunion in order to show off their success to old bullies teenage crushes.

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.

A bullied teenager who is locked up at a juvenile detention center due to an unexpected accident, meets a mixed martial arts champion to break through his own limits.

In this rousing sequel to Kickboxer, Tong Po broods about his defeat at the hands of Kurt Sloan. Po and his managers resort to drastic measures to goad Kurt's brother into the ring for a rematch.

Kensuke Sonomura directs the legendary Hitoshi Ozawa in this ultimate V-Cinema actioner. Kaiko City is plagued with poverty and crime. When a corrupt businessman decides to run for mayor and starts eliminating opponents from the rival mafia, a former police captain serving time for murder is secretly released and put in charge of a special task force to arrest him.

Two contract killers cross paths in the middle of the same job and realize they are childhood friends. Together they take a break from killing and visit the small island they once called home. After reflecting on their past lives they decided to team up and use their talents in killing for good... much to the upset of the crime syndicates.

A pair of aging boxing rivals are coaxed out of retirement to fight one final bout -- 30 years after their last match.

A once-celebrated kid detective, now 31, continues to solve the same trivial mysteries between hangovers and bouts of self-pity. Until a naive client brings him his first 'adult' case, to find out who brutally murdered her boyfriend.

Five young hoodlums sing karaoke, murder, joke around, get beaten up, win and lose women, and learn the value of blind loyalty.

Shin-chan must rescue the adults of Kasukabe when they mysteriously abandon their responsibilities to relive their youth at the new 20th-century expo.

In a Japanese school, 5 adolescent geeks join the new sport teacher and take up the challenge to take part in the synchronised swimming competition, in-spite of the mockeries of the real sportsmen.

Devastated at the death of her four-year-old daughter, a grieving middle school teacher is horrified to discover that her students aren't as innocent as she thinks.

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.

In the town of Saima, when summer is about to begin, a group of six high school students intend to live a secret adventure by spending seven carefree days in a ruined mining facility.

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.

In a world with no guns, a mysterious drifter, a bartender and a young samurai plot revenge against a ruthless leader and his army of thugs, headed by nine diverse and deadly assassins.

While settling into married life with Akiko, Ryu is brought into a case involving a woman named Katsuragi Aoi, a member of a pickpocketing ring with most of her teammates murdered from unknown masked vigilantes that Ryu fought as Accel. As the details of the case begin to unravel, Ryu is framed and Akiko believes that he may not be faithful to her. As the clock ticks down, Ryu must solve the case, clear his name, and save his marriage before everything comes to an explosive end!

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

During a championship baseball match, the three brothers hear that their grandfather in Japan is in trouble, and head out to help him, conceding the match. When they arrive in Japan, they must use all their powers to defend him against his ancient enemy, who has returned to exact revenge.

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.

After his family is killed in Japan by ninjas, Cho and his son Kane come to America to start a new life. He opens a doll shop but is unwittingly importing heroin in the dolls. When he finds out that his friend has betrayed him, Cho must prepare for the greatest battle he has ever been involved in.

Charts the troubled teenage years of students Yūichi Hasumi and Shūsuke Hoshino, exploring the shifting and complex power dynamics of their relationship against the backdrop of Yūichi's love for the dreamy and abstract music of pop star Lily Chou-Chou.

Giko Nokomura is a female student at Nightingale Academy, who carries around her very own chainsaw. One day she begins to be attacked by modified corpses created by one of her classmates, Nero Aoi . She tears her way through the corpses and busts into Nero's hideout. Why is Nero so intent on attacking Giko?! The reason will shock you!After her battle with Nero, she encounters a new enemy. It's the leader of the Nightingale Academy Student Council Guardians, Nemesis.

Retired martial arts world champion Alex Faulkner has settled into a simple life, when the disappearance of two of his students leads to an unthinkable discovery close to home. Just when all hope of finding the children is lost, he locates the imprisoned girls and unsurfaces an international child trafficking operation, which draws him back into the fight of his life against those behind it.

Before he hit it big, Takeshi Kitano got his start apprenticing with comedy legend Fukami of Asakusa. But as his star rises, his mentor's declines.

Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.

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.

A group of ruthless gangsters, an unknown woman and an escaped convict have met, in The Forest of Resurrection, the 444th portal to the other side. Their troubles start when those once killed and buried in the forest come back from the dead.

Chicken is back in exile. Hung Hing, a triad, is trying to ally with Chicken's new group, the Taiwanese triad San Luen. A contest is on in Hong Kong. The winner will head the Causeway Bay branch.

Two young children and an adult in a small town have an encounter with an alien spaceship. 25 years later the children are reunited as adults in the same town which is now beset by strange cattle mutilations. Matters become worse when the cattle mutilations are joined by human murders and mutilations.
