Mao Inoue

"Pay to Ace" realistically depicts the middle school entrance exam process while highlighting modern-day family and educational problems that are rampant in society. Not your ordinary entrance exam story, "Pay to Ace" is a drama about winning in life that features kids fighting to get into their dream middle school. What do we need to teach our children today so they can sail through the future?

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In August, 1918, Matsuura Ito lives in a coastal village of Toyama with her husband and three children. During the summer, there wasn't much fish to catch, so her husband has been far away from home to catch fish. To support herself and her children, Ito carries goods from ships like the other women in the village. Meanwhile, the residents encounter rising prices for rice. The women are unable to feed their family due to the high prices of rice. The women ask a nearby rice store to sell rice at lower prices, but it fails. The price of rice continues to rise daily. Due to an incident, Ito and the other village women step up to the plate.

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Renji Ishibashi, starring in the movie for the first time in 18 years, plays a hero with two faces, a dull novelist and a legendary killer. Susumu Ichikawa, an obsolete writer with no manuscript at all, had another face - a legendary hitman. But the truth of the matter is... he had never shot a person. One day, he receives a murder request from a friend. Seeing this as an opportunity to achieve the ideal hard-boiled novel, he decides to hire a real hitman and demands that he report to him the assassination situation as it was.

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Set at a movie theater in a small village around 100 years ago. Silent films are play at the movie theater. A young man aspires to become a benshi, a performer that provides live narration to silent films.

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On a snowy day on February 26, 1936, a baby is found under the eaves of a dango store. The baby Torajiro becomes the son of Mitsuko and Heizo. As he grows up, Torajiro doesn't want to make his mother sad and he tries to avoid bad behavior. His younger sister Sakura is then born. As an elementary school st

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A young couple is devastated when their son is killed by a falling tree during a windstorm. As the distraught father begins to look for answers into his son’s death, what appears to be a tragic accident turns out to have been the result of multiple blunders by multiple people.

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Set in the 1970's in the Kansai region of Japan.. Yong-Gil is Korean, but he moved to Japan and settled down. He runs a small restaurant named Yakiniku Dragon. He is married and has three daughters: oldest daughter Jung-Hwa, middle daughter Yi-Hwa and youngest daughter Mi-Hwa. Oldest daughter Jung-Hwa is dating Tetsuo, but they break up. Middle daughter Yi-Hwa loves Tetsuo and marries him, but Tetsuo still loves her older sister and they divorce. Youngest daughter Mi-Hwa wants to become a singer, but she is in love with a married man.

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Aizawa Hinata is a high school counselor who provides support to students with school and family problems. This is motivated by the warped relationship she had with her over-controlling mother which she could not discuss with anyone. One day, a male student who has not been attending school confesses that he likes her. However, he dies mysteriously the next day. Hinata takes action to determine the cause of his death and learns that the boy suffered insidious bullying at school and excessive meddling by his mother. He had a record of delinquency and kept rough company. Hinata is hounded by his mother who believes that she is responsible for her son's suicide, and is driven to the verge of breaking down.

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Rudolf, a black stray cat, is suddenly separated from his beloved master. He unexpectedly wakes up in a long-distance truck that takes him to metropolis Tokyo. There, he meets Ippai-attena, a big boss cat feared by everyone in town. Unable to return home, Rudolf starts a life as a stray with Ippai-attena, but Ippai-attena isn't all that he seems to be.

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Fumi becomes Genzui Kusaka’s wife. During the turbulent times of the closing days for the Tokugawa shogunate, she lives positively and tries to keep up Shoin Yoshida's will. Shoin Yoshida is her older brother and intellectual.

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An aspiring super hero gets his chance for bravery when a witch transforms his village into an uninhabitable mess. Now, he must save the day!

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A beautiful cosmetics company employee is found dead in a gruesome state. What's more, it becomes apparent that one of the victim's colleagues, a homely woman named Miki, has gone missing. Television director Akaboshi attempts to interview as many of Miki's friends and acquaintances as he can find, eliciting miscellaneous information from them.

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A brother and sister learn their biological grandfather was a kamikaze pilot who died during World War II. During their research into his life, they get conflicting accounts from his former comrades about his character and how he joined his squadron.

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Ryoro Kurojima is the director of a Tokyo apology center. His job is to teach others how to apologize. Ryoro Kurojima solves problems by using his apology techniques on anything from simple arbitration to a national crisis.

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The mayor of Oita wants to improve the image of his city, so he instructs Chiaki - a young woman working for the city's PR department - to form a female tug of war team. Nobuo MIZUTA mixes comedy, drama and a pinch of social criticism to tell a tale of eight women, their everyday struggles and their support for each other.

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'Tokkan' tells a story of Suzumiya Miki, a newbie tax collector who learns the strictness and difficulties of working through her job. Miki is called ‘Guuko’ because she often freezes up in front of her cold-hearted boss.

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Shima (Mirei Kiritani) is a second year high school student. She has already become the youngest ever winner of a "new writer award" for poetry. Yet, she keeps it a secret that she is a writer at school. Shima has developed feelings for fellow second year high school student Kento (Takahiro Miura). One day, Kento confesses his feelings for her and they begin to have a relationship. Shima has difficulties understanding other's emotions and can't understand Kento's feelings. Soon afterwards, Kento decides to break up with Shim...

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After the collapse of their relationship, Kiwako abducts the 6-month old child of a man she was having an affair with. Raising the child as her own, it is four years before the authorities catch up with her and the young child.

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Ohisama is a Japanese television drama that aired on NHK in 2011 in the Asadora time slot. Set in Nagano prefecture, "Ohisama" covers the life of Yoko Sudo (Mao Inoue) through World War II. Yoko Sudo with her smile is able to bring brightness to those around her & she follows her mother's motif to laugh through the hard times. During the onset of WW II, Yoko is a high school student and "Ohisama" follows her as she eventually becomes a teacher and then gets married and has a child. Yoko then opens a soba restaurant with her student. --asianwiki

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In 1944, the American military lands on the shores of Saipan. Refusing to commit suicide with his superiors or be forced into camps for prisoners of war, Captain Oba Sakae leads a group of his men and other similarly minded local residents into the mountains. Even after hearing reports of the Japanese military's surrender, Oba dismisses the reports as propaganda and continues to launch guerilla attacks against the American soldiers, earning him the nickname "The Fox". Soon, even the American commander who's charged with the task of capturing Oba comes to admire his persistent enemy.

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Tottori Kenichi is a foul-mouthed but gifted veterinarian nicknamed Dolittle. His catch phrase is 'pet care means business'. He is the director of his animal clinic and rescues not only 'voiceless' pets but also helps their owners, who lack understanding and caution, with their problems and worries. Working with him is animal nurse Tajima Asuka. Hanabishi Masaru is Dolittle's rival, a charismatic vet and director of another animal hospital who has not only an opposite personality but also a different stance towards pet care.

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Drawing influence from the street musicians of Miyagi, four high school students form a band and spend their free time practicing for their school's upcoming festival. When the festival is abruptly concealed, they come up with a dimwitted strategy of faking a bomb threat to the school in order to force the principal to change his mind. Their plan seems to work at first, but when a real bomb goes off, the group is forced to take responsibility for the explosion and they are kicked out of school. Three years later, more details of the incident is revealed as the youth look back on the past.

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Based on a true story. A Japanese girl and an American guy, fall in love in Japan. Their relationship will not be easy to manage, with their different cultures and their different langages.

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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.

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Nonoue Junichi is a psychiatrist working in the counseling room of a cancer treatment center by the beach. While tending to the patients, part of his job involves taking dictation from them when they want to send a letter to a loved one.

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The second Anmitsu Hime TV-movie.

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Four years have passed since that emotional marriage proposal at Tsukushi Makino's high-school prom, and Tsukasa Dōmyōji announced his engagement to Tsukushi to the entire world. At an engagement dinner between their families, Dōmyōji's mother, who has been strongly against their relationship before, presents Tsukushi a tiara, which is estimated to be worth roughly 10 billion yen, as a token of their engagement. But that night, the tiara is stolen by somebody! Then, Dōmyōji and Tsukushi travel around the globe to Las Vegas, Hong Kong, and even a deserted island to get the tiara back—the legendary tiara that has been believed to "bring eternal love." In the meantime, where and what are the "F4" fellows, who have just gone separate ways, doing now?

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At age 16, a tomboy princess, Princess Anmitsu, has no love interest in her life and worries her parents. Despite their concern, Anmitsu runs away from the castle to venture into the commoners' life. During her daring adventure, she befriends a group of children who make a living by pick-pocketing. At the same time, she finally meets her prince charming Senbei, the leader of the group. However, she soon finds herself in an awkward position when she learns of the children's new plot: they are planning to steal the treasures from her own castle. Will she be able to put a stop to it without revealing her true identity?

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