Yuko is a biology teacher and education counselor at a local high school. Between the school bell chimes, she’s an ordinary teacher with superlative instructional technique. But when school lets out, she transforms into the one person you don’t want to mess with, a super problem-solving mercenary for whom no method is off limits when it comes to rooting out the myriad problems infesting teenage life in the schools. With an “eye for an eye” approach, she’s not above breaking a few laws and demands payment for her services. Enlisting as her sidekicks, Sumire and Aya, the personality-diverse trio run their elite “extra-curricular social work” club unified around Yuko’s charismatic leadership. High school students do not live in a sanitized bubble, and some extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions that black-and-white rules of propriety or common sense alone cannot solve.

The death of a father places his son, Masato Ihara, in charge of the family undertaker business, “Iharaya” as its 5th generation owner. In an old quarter of Tokyo, the business is frequented by the police who bring only the deceased with checkered pasts. Inevitably, Masato, along with his elder brother, younger sister and a rookie female cop, find themselves involved in unraveling the mysterious lives and hard realities that these voiceless clients faced when they were alive, and endeavor to bring some “redemption”, warmth and comfort to the bereaved families. A human drama that powerfully depicts what it means to live.

It is the Showa 30s - the mid-1950s to mid-1960s - and a full decade has passed since Japan’s devastating defeat in World War II. The people are hard at work rebuilding their tattered lives and country seeking to regain their confidence in the process. Meanwhile, and the victor nations from the war are all eager to explore the planet’s last frontier - Antarctica; with teams of scientists from the U.S. Soviet Union and other countries racing to divvy up the vast frozen continent of Antarctica. Japan is the only Asian nation eager to declare a desire to take part, despite global skepticism about what Japan as could possibly contribute in its current state. As a result, Japan is allotted a virtually “inaccessible region” of Antarctica to study, where temperatures plunge to minus 50 degrees centigrade and blizzard winds whip up to 100 meters an hour. Nobody expects them contingent to succeed.
“Now is precisely the time when we must show the world our true mettle and determination,” says the Japanese Antarctic exploration team. “We have to prove that we can stand on our own two feet.”
The mission soon becomes synonymous with Japan’s return to the global community. But the unforgiving continent is not about to yield its pristine, never-before-touched-by-man territory easily. With such seemingly insurmountable challenges, the wintering team draws inspiration, hope and motivation from none other than its 19 Karafuto dogs. This is a story about one young scientist who risks his life in Antarctica for his loved ones, his country’s honor and for his “comrades in arms”, the dogs with whom he forges true bonds of kinship and shared destiny.