270 Best Movies to Watch In Japanese (Page 18)

Since the 1990s, Japanese filmmaking has been at the forefront of global cinema, and it seems we are entering another golden age. Here are the best movies to stream now featuring the Japanese language.

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256. MF GHOST, 2023

As the world tries to shift to more environmentally-friendly tech, it would be interesting to see how these shifts will play out. MF Ghost presents a near future world where street racing is the last arena standing for internal combustion cars, as the spiritual successor for the popular 90s manga Initial D. MF Ghost’s animation improves on Initial D’s art style, incorporating 3D models for more accurate racing, and cleaner character designs. Unfortunately, the introduction kills any intrigue in Kanata’s search for his father, as well as the dynamic between him and the family he’s staying with. Viewers already a fan of street racing might enjoy the stunning car racing, but when not focused on the sport, MF Ghost falters in making its characters compelling.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation

Actor: Ayane Sakura, Yuma Uchida

Rating: TV-14

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257. In Love and Deep Water, 2023

	
In Love and Deep Water is torn between multiple concepts. There’s a murder, sure, and a butler trying to figure out who’s the killer, but there also happens to be a romance plot where the same butler falls in love with the passenger that informs him of their partners’ infidelity. The film also tries to squeeze in comedy with the way the killers try to hide the dead body, the ridiculousness of some passengers, and cheeky but contextless commentary. While the romance is lovely, In Love and Deep Water isn’t the fun and chaotic murder mystery promised, as it drowns itself with interesting ideas that never really fully pans out.Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Romance, Thriller
Actor: Airi Matsui, Aju Makita, Amane Okayama, Aoi Miyazaki, Hatsunori Hasegawa, Hidekazu Mashima, Ken Mitsuishi, Ken Yasuda, Kento Nagayama, Michiko Tomura, Miyu Hayashida, Nahana, Rinko Kikuchi, Ryo Yoshizawa, Saki Takaoka, Takashi Okabe, Tomu Miyazaki, Yasuomi Sano, Yoh Yoshida, Yoshimasa Kondô, Yuki Izumisawa, Yunho
Director: Yusuke Taki
Rating: R, TV-MA

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258. Ride or Die, 2021

	
Love at its infancy can be pure and sweet, but sometimes, when it’s forced down, locked up inside without calm acceptance, this yearning can fester into something toxic, something too passionate to control. Ride or Die is based on the Gunjō manga, which portrays a relationship between two high school girl best friends made toxic when Nanae recruits Rei to seduce and murder Nanae’s abusive husband. Gunjō wasn’t a perfect representation of a lesbian relationship, but in the hands of a mostly male crew, the resulting lesbian road film adaptation is gorgeous, but feels a tad too long, and a tad too gratuitous with its sex and violence. Ride or Die has an intriguing, boundary-pushing premise about the dark side of devotion, but its execution makes the film an uneasy watch.Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Actor: Anne Suzuki, Artemis Snow, Honami Sato, Kiko Mizuhara, Sara Minami, Setsuko Karasuma, Shinya Niiro, Shunsuke Tanaka, Tetsushi Tanaka, Yôko Maki, Yui Uemura
Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Rating: R

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259. Dragons of Wonderhatch, 2023

	
When live-action and animation meet, it can lead to interesting results. With each medium as a separate world, this choice can lead to awesome, mind-bending, genre-breaking stuff, but not all films or shows that mix media achieve this. One such show is Dragons of Wonderhatch, which at its core, has an interesting idea of two worlds, one mundane, one fantastical, colliding, but there’s just something off with the way the show just drops the audience in the land of Upananta. Rather than take the time to introduce Nagi to us first, and then let Tyme introduce himself in the real world, the show just shifts to the other world, which might cause some confusion for new viewers. As far as the plot goes, it’s not terrible, but there was more that could have helped Dragons of Wonderhatch in taking flight.Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Actor: Daiken Okudaira, Go Morita, Mackenyu, Sena Nakajima, Sumire
Rating: TV-14

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260. Jigen Daisuke, 2023

Though it borrows from some of the oldest genre tropes—stoic but kind-hearted hero finding a heart in a community that needs his help—Jigen Daisuke still manages to carve out a visual identity that has one foot rooted in its Lupin III manga origins, and another in noir fiction. The world of the film is beautifully lit and feels bustling with activity, as are the frenetic action scenes that turn gleefully silly with the sheer amount of gunfire being sprayed everywhere. That said, the movie can't handle the number of plates it tries to spin, as side characters fail to develop more meaningfully and its more exciting parts are diluted by long stretches of drama that aren't as engaging as the film thinks they are. This feels like a sampler for the kinds of stories the title character could be involved in in the future, but little else.

Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Actor: Akihiko Sai, Eugene Nomura, Honami Sato, Kazuki Namioka, Kotoka Maki, Masatoshi Nagase, Mitsuko Kusabue, Rina Sakuragi, Takashi Sasano, Tetsuji Tamayama, Toru Baba, Yasukaze Motomiya, Yoji Tanaka, Yôko Maki, Yuuki Tsujimoto

Director: Hajime Hashimoto

Rating: PG-13

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261. Pending Train, 2023

When a group of people have to band together for survival, whether it be due to zombies, bus accidents, or being lost from civilization, there’s no higher stakes than life or death. If we care about the characters enough, the will to survive already drives the plot. However, Netflix show Pending Train doesn’t trust in the entertainment of this survival premise. Instead of focusing on the group’s survival, it constantly shifts to flashbacks depicting everyday drama. When the group finds out that they got lost way into the future, there’s less strategizing, and even more flashbacks. This strange episode structure makes the series feel less like a compelling survival show and more like a soapy melodrama.

Genre: Drama, Mystery

Actor: Ayaka Onishi, Eiji Akaso, Goki Maeda, Kai Inowaki, Kotone Furukawa, Miho Kanazawa, Moka Kamishiraishi, Sara Shida, Sayaka Yamaguchi, Sho Nishigaki, Shunya Shiraishi, Takayuki Hamatsu, Tetta Sugimoto, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Yoshiyuki Tsubokura, Yuki Yamada

Director: Kenta Tanaka, Naoki Katō, Okamoto Shingo

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262. Why Didn’t I Tell You a Million Times?, 2023

If you’re familiar with the classic supernatural romance Ghost (1990), Why Didn’t I Tell You A Million Times? will remind you of it. It doesn’t have the comedic banter of Whoopi Goldberg, but it does have a back-and-forth dynamic between the ghost and the detective that sees him. It doesn’t have the leading lady’s potential murder, but it does have a murder to investigate. It also has more food porn, as the main couple is bound by Japanese hamburg steak and salty custard puddings. There’s something here about love transcending the physical realm and troubled pasts lead to a lifetime of service or a lifetime of crime. However, the series can’t decide on one perspective to start from and relies too much on flashbacks to tell its story. Why Didn’t I Tell You A Million Times? had the potential to be a moving supernatural romance, but it’s let down by lackluster execution.

Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Kami Hiraiwa, Kenichi Matsuyama, Mao Inoue, Shim Eun-kyung, Takeru Satoh

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263. SEE HEAR LOVE, 2023

With a premise that just seems inherently emotionally manipulative, it should take an especially sensitive touch to make a story like this work on screen. Unfortunately, See Hear Love—itself based on a South Korean webcomic—is both overdramatic and not nearly stylized enough in any meaningful way to help its subject matter evolve beyond melodrama. It remains a well-shot and decently acted film that, at the very least, treats its characters as adults and not as caricatures with disabilities. But the movie makes little effort to place these characters in believable situations that should shed a light on what it's like to live with blindness or as a Deaf person. See Hear Love takes the easiest (and slowest) way out, bringing its two lovers together under somewhat creepy circumstances, and having them endure cartoonishly exploitative "antagonists"—all for the sake of portraying the romance as grand and artificially tragic.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Dai Watanabe, Daikichi Sugawara, Mahiro Takasugi, Maika Yamamoto, Mari Natsuki, Masaya Kato, Motoki Fukami, Sayaka Yamaguchi, Tomohisa Yamashita, Tomoki Kimura, Yuko Araki

Director: John H. Lee

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264. Lumberjack the Monster, 2023

	
Horror novels scare readers through the power of their imaginations, but sometimes, adapting these words straight on screen limits the fear factor. That’s what happened with Lumberjack the Monster. While the film crescendos nicely into the intense graphic violence director Takashi Miike is known for, the introduction is a bit shaky, alternating between the cops and protagonist Akira Ninomiya without a neat balance, and having to reveal key points of the mystery only through dialogue. The film does still retain some of novelist Mayusuke Kurai’s contemplations about the consequences of clinical psychopaths placed in critical roles, but Lumberjack the Monster feels a tad too uneven.Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Actor: Ariei Umefune, Chigusa Yasuzawa, Hinami Mori, Katsuya Kobayashi, Kazuya Kamenashi, Keisuke Horibe, Kentaro Furuyama, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Masatoshi Kihara, Masayuki Deai, Minosuke, Nanao, Reon Yuzuki, Riho Yoshioka, Ryushin Tei, Shidô Nakamura, Shota Sometani, Yasushi Kimura
Director: Takashi Miike
Rating: R

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265. Onmyoji, 2023

With a history of court magicians and diviners, it’s easy to imagine ancient Japan as a fantastical world. Onmyoji depicts Abe no Seimei, Japan's most famous historical court cosmologist, as he solves cases that involve the supernatural. With people turning into demons, or demons possessing people, you’d think that the anime would be mystical, fantastical, perhaps even totally crazy, as magic could free the story from normal earth-bound logic. However, Onmyoji stays on the tamer side, mostly explaining its magic through Seimei’s dialogue, and each case’s flashbacks. The show doesn’t even delve into the court politics that would drive Seimei’s rivalry with a genderbent Ashiya Doman. Onmyoji feels like a missed opportunity to go absolutely nuts with its magic.

Genre: Animation, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Daisuke Kishio, Daisuke Namikawa, Kenji Hamada, Shintaro Asanuma, Yui Ishikawa

Rating: TV-14

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266. Once Upon a Crime, 2023

Fairytale parodies reimagine these classic tales to reexamine or question its related themes. Once Upon a Crime attempts to do this by imagining Little Red Riding Hood as a detective investigating the murder of a hairdresser in Cinderella’s ball. The campy glamor of the costumes and sets, as well as the incongruence of Little Red’s detective mindset, makes the film watchable. However, the film takes strange twists that stray too far from the original stories. And while the cut locks make an intriguing metaphor, the resulting ending betrays any sense of justice for the characters, most especially the abused Cinderella.

Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Fantasy

Actor: Atsuhiro Inukai, Jiro Sato, Kanna Hashimoto, Masaki Kaji, Midoriko Kimura, Miki Maya, Mirei Kiritani, Mizuki Yamamoto, Natsuna Watanabe, Takanori Iwata, Tomoharu Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi Muro, Yuko Araki, Yumi Wakatsuki, 室毅

Director: Yuichi Fukuda

Rating: PG

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267. Synduality: Noir, 2023

Science fiction imagines new worlds we’ve never seen before, but the world of Synduality: Noir doesn’t feel that way. Noir feels like it presents a familiar world, except with an added touch of AI assistants called Maguses. The fighting piloted mecha robots are reminiscent of Gundam and Pacific Rim. At times, the action looks like automated 3D animation made to cut costs. However, even if the world-building was stronger, Synduality: Noir doesn’t feel like a show that wants to tell a story. There aren’t enough moments that we get to spend with the main characters Kanata and his Magus Noir to justify creating a whole series around it. We don’t even need to get into the icky slave-like dynamic between the (mostly) male Drifters and their (mostly) female Maguses.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Aoi Koga, Ayaka Ohashi, Fuminori Komatsu, Mao Ichimichi, Nagisa Aoyama, Taito Ban, Takeo Otsuka, Yusuke Kobayashi

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268. Let’s Get Divorced, 2023

Unsatisfying as the marriage depicted, Let’s Get Divorced had a promising premise but its approach to its themes betray its message. The couple, actress Kurosawa Yui (Naka Riisa) and incompetent political heir Shoji Taishi (Matsuzaka Tori), wants to split, much to the disapproval of Kurosawa’s agent and Shoji’s mother. At its most interesting, the show attempts to critique Japan’s attitudes towards divorce and the expectations surrounding famous couples, but it mostly shies away from the root of these views. However, what doesn’t help is how uninterested the show is in making us root for either character. Shoji is so incompetent that it’s downright infuriating. But it’s mostly the show’s treatment of Kurosawa that makes this comedy deeply unfunny. Gags about her (actually reasonable) anger reveal an underlying misogyny rooted in the show’s approach.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Arata Furuta, Fuju Kamio, Kōji Yamamoto, Lisa Oda, Reiko Takashima, Riisa Naka, Ryo Nishikido, Shin Yazawa, Tori Matsuzaka, Yuka Itaya

Rating: TV-14

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269. Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, 2023

Being reincarnated as a vending machine is, admittedly, a good hook. But when you're watching a machine fight frogs in a new dimension, the plot starts to lose you. At its core, it's an easy watch, without any nefarious characters (yet), but even though Boxxo always finds a way to utilize the powers of his new vending machine body and has a genuine, endearing personality, the gimmick doesn't hold attention past that. It is a wholesome isekai adventure, but the vending machine-loving vending machine isn't as memorable as you'd think.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Jun Fukuyama, Kaede Hondo

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270. Garouden: The Way of the Lone Wolf, 2024

Sweet heavens, this is cringe. Starting with that edgy, dated intro sequence with the hardcore track. It isn’t accurate to say that there’s a lot of cringe writing because that's just the default here, with a lot of the material being 'you won't believe how strong I am.' The elaborate fight sequences are full of heavy blows like a button-mashing game and it's where the show shines, but any semblance of story feels like incidental world-building for a tough guy anime. Maybe the kindest thing to say about it, apart from it promoting martial arts, is the fact that it's generic enough that you won’t have to remember anything about it afterwards if you don't want to.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation

Actor: Rintaro Nishi, Ryota Takeuchi, Shunsuke Takeuchi, Tessyo Genda, Tetsu Inada

Rating: TV-MA

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