Yasutake Shingo is a newspaper reporter whose only redeeming feature is his earnestness. He meets Matsunaga Chie, who attends a music college, and they start dating. Each day becomes all the more bright and enjoyable for Shingo because of the lively Chie. She loves to laugh, sing and eat. After one and a half years, Chie is employed as a music teacher. One day, Shingo is informed that Chie has breast cancer. After thinking about it, he decides to share a lifetime with her and proposes. His proposal gives her the courage to undergo surgery which she had been mulling over. One day, Chie starts to teach 5-year-old Hana the “important things in life” such as laundry, cleaning and cooking. She thinks that even if she is no longer around, her daughter and husband will be able to live.

Gathering a band of 13, Inspector General Shmada Shinzaemon sets out on a death-defying journey to cut down the shogun’s half-brother, Matsudaira Naritsugu.

In the pressure-cooker of opening night, a Japanese playwright struggles with his aging, arrogant actor father for control of the play and their relationship.

Shipwrecked African-American slaves arrive in the midst of Bakumatsu-era Japan; they soon carve out a niche in the market with their musical talents.

Himeshiro is a wandering yakuza, his father was the best doctor in the eight provinces of the Kanto region, and Himeshiro took over the knowledge of medicine from his father. If he encounters a sick person on the way, he uses his right hand, wrapped in a rosary, to give medical attention, while if he sees a bad person, he draws his sword with his left hand and uses it to punish the evildoers. So he travels on the verge of life and death along the Nakasendo highway...

A frustrated young woman returns from Tokyo to her hometown in Toyama where she meets an old woman who lives alone. There she slowly finds purpose in life by taking "photographs" that spin memories instead of ghosts.

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.

A suspenseful story about an earnest and kind-hearted taxi driver who, by chance, turns into a violent murderer and races through the darkness of the city.

Obayashi's take on the famous Kosuke Kindaichi series, made popular partly thanks to the numerous movie-adaptions by Kon Ichikawa, the most known being The Inugami Family. Kosuke Kindaichi is the most famous detective in Japan. Kindaichi gets a new case to figure out who has beheaded a valuable statue and made off with its head.