Hitomi Serizawa leads a fulfilling professional and private life. What’s more, she will be getting married in 100 days. Plans are progressing smoothly until the unexpected appearance of her mother after an absence of 25 years. A free-spirited woman who lives impulsively and abandoned Hitomi to her stepfather, the mother, Kanako has suddenly decided to re-enter her daughter’s life in time to bask in the attention and respect given to the mother of a bride. Naturally, Hitomi is incensed and galled by the idea. But Hitomi soon finds out that her mother knows her intimately, for she has been corresponding with her mother all her life, believing her to be a childhood friend who moved away. As a result, Kanako knows all of HItomi’s closest-kept secrets, her innermost thoughts, everything about her upcoming marriage and even… that she was recently diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor that may ruin plans for the wedding. Hitomi makes every effort to resist her mother’s unsolicited intrusion into her life, but blood is thicker than water. And so begins the 100-day battle between a mother and daughter. Can it end well?

99 years ago, a Japanese man emigrated to the vast expanse of America with hopes of survival and dreams of a brighter future. He and those like him were settlers, 1st generation Japanese-Americans. From them were issued a second generation which grew up bearing little knowledge of, nor devotion to, their parents’ homeland. And yet fate was to deliver them all a cruel blow... as war proceeded to tear them apart along national and generational lines. This is a story about Japanese immigrants who endured the horrors and tragedy of war, overcame deep prejudice and attained their dreams in a new land through love and courage.

Natsu Ando, a pastry chef wanna-be, accidentally encounters a long-established Japanese confectionery shop founded in the Edo era called Mangetsu-do. To Natsu, who only knows Western confectionery techniques, the world of Japanese confectionery seems completely fresh and new. She witnesses the hard work of Japanese confectioners and somehow becomes attracted to the delicate taste of Japanese confectionery and the profoundness of the Japanese confectionery world, starting to set herself on the path of becoming a Japanese confectionery chef.

It is called “The Musical Koshien”, the All-Japan Wind & Brass Band High School Championship. Regional rounds begin across the country every July, gradually narrowing a field of over 3,000 high school bands to just about a dozen for the finals. Amid the event’s long history, one public school is legendary for having risen from complete anonymity to national champion. In 1983, Kanagawa Prefectural Noba High School was a rough and tumble, low-rated school with a music room littered with cigarette butts and an inactive brass band club made up of hopeless slackers. But in the short span of 2 years, one man turned them around and made them national heroes. Based on a true story about a teacher named Nakazawa who spent 10 years guiding students to glory while battling cancer, this inspiring drama depicts two years in the life of a broken down musician (Koichi Hikuma), searching for meaning after suffering an accident that forced him out of a musical career, and the turnaround he orchestrates for himself and for the lives of his problematic students.

Giving birth is not an illness. So naturally, it is not covered by standard medical insurance. People who work in maternity wards don’t treat injuries or cure disease. In fact, a professional doctor, an obstetrician, need not be present at a childbirth. But when complications arise, giving birth can become a life-or-death matter. Sakura Konotori lost his mother at his own birth and, as a result, grew up in an orphanage. Now he works as an obstetrician fueled by a deep love and yearning to “celebrate each and every baby that comes into the world”. But he is also something of a mystery, leading another life as a concert pianist who goes by the nickname “Baby” and plays with a passion that borders on brilliance. A delicate and realistic portrayal about the front lines of childbirth, Storks delivers a heartwarming drama that reflects upon the meaning and miracle of life.

Tokyo metropolitan Omotesando Senior High School is lorded over by a group of popular kids dubbed “the first team.” The rest of the student body either fall into the “second team” or lower, “the outsiders.” One day, a transfer student arrives at the school from the remote countryside as an unlikely heroine who “loves to sing!” The high school used to have one of the country’s best choruses, but is now facing the threat of closure. But the story’s heroine is determined to resuscitate the chorus and sets out to recruit new members. Fighting off a storm of ridicule and booing, she gradually begins to win allies to her cause with single-minded passion and hard work. What begins as a ragtag collection of misfits in a dorky glee club crescendos to a refreshing and bittersweet spring-of-youth drama!

The near future in Japan, in the age officially known as ‘Change for the Better’.
It is a time in which the expression of thought is censored, and the media is tightly controlled. Bearing up under a harsh regimen of instruction under the terrifying Atsushi Dojo, Iku Kasahara is now a full-fledged member of the Library Defense ‘Task Force’, and divides her time between hard physical training and regular library work. Dojo and the rest of the Task Force are ordered to guard a public exhibition featuring ‘The Handbook of Library Law’, a book widely seen as the symbol of freedom, of which there is only one existing copy. The assignment seems easy enough, but this is in fact a trap designed to wipe out and thus disband the Task Force and restore a twisted society to the correct moral path. Can Dojo and his unit defend both an invaluable book and themselves? The members of the Task Force must put their lives on the line in the greatest battle they have ever faced: The Last Mission.

It was the height of the Japanese economic bubble when Naoki Hanzawa landed a coveted job in a major bank. But he finds the life of a banker to be a stormy one. As a loan officer section chief, Hanzawa works to finance the Nishi Osaka Steel company 5 million dollars at the insistence of his stubborn branch manager, Asano, and without collateral! What appeared a blue chip company is actually a heavily indebted concern that has been cooking its books. Within 3 months of the loan, Nishi Osaka Steel goes bankrupt, and Hanzawa and his bank have been deceived out of 5 million dollars. Not willing to take the heat and jeopardize his career, Asano plots to lay the blame on Hanzawa. When called to headquarters in Tokyo to attend investigative hearings about the fiasco, Hanzawa decides instead to deny the money is lost and vows to recover it himself. A believer in the goodness of people, but aware that deception costs double, Naoki Hanzawa's life as a legendary maverick banker begins.

Michiko Shibata is single, unattached and unemployed after her previous employer went bankrupt. Failing to land a job, she leads a destitute life surviving mainly on cabbage but craving meat. And she has tapped out financially after lending all of her savings to a handsome young man she pines after.
Her life reaches an all-time low when she reaches for a can of cat food found on the street, but just then, former supervisor, Kurosawa appears and wonders what she’s doing. ”I’m dying for meat,” she wines. So Kurosawa takes her to a coffee shop he runs called “Himawari” (Sunflower) and offers her a part-time job. Michiko hesitates as she remembers the nightmarish life working under this tyrannical man at the last company. But at Himawari, he seems to show a different side. Maybe the fortunes of this sorry woman is about to change.

This is a unique program that introduces “izakayas” (Japanese-style bars) in downtown Tokyo, where “any adult can drop by alone when ever he feels like it.” One izakaya began as a food stall 80 years ago, another one serves raw pork guts… Every izakaya serves its own unique variety of Japanese sake and dishes, and viewers can enjoy watching the reality of the dramatic lives of its people. The program features the wonderful drinking experiences of illustrator Rui Yoshida and offers an introduction to the humanity of the people of downtown Tokyo.