A Bride's Story - Recommendations

• TV (12 eps)
• 2014

Nike, the fourth princess of the Principality of Rain and one who holds the power to call forth the rain, travels to the Sun Kingdom to marry Sun King Livius for her country, despite her own reluctance. She soon discovers that the King, who conquered the world in only three years after his ascendance to the throne, is still a child!! Furthermore, for trivial reasons, he has demanded that Nike call forth the rain…!?

• TV (12 eps)
• 2018

In the early twentieth century, Russo-Japanese War veteran Saichi “Immortal” Sugimoto scratches out a meager existence during the postwar gold rush in the wilderness of Hokkaido. When he stumbles across a map to a fortune in hidden Ainu gold, he sets off on a treacherous quest to find it. But Sugimoto is not the only interested party, and everyone who knows about the gold will kill to possess it! Faced with the harsh conditions of the northern wilderness, ruthless criminals and rogue Japanese soldiers, Sugimoto will need all his skills and luck—and the help of an Ainu girl named Asirpa—to survive.

• Movie (1 ep)
• 2015

As all of Edo flocks to see the work of the revered painter Hokusai, his daughter O-Ei toils diligently inside his studio. Her masterful portraits, dragons and erotic sketches – sold under the name of her father – are coveted by upper crust Lords and journeyman print makers alike. Shy and reserved in public, in the studio O-Ei is as brash and uninhibited as her father, smoking a pipe while sketching drawings that would make contemporary Japanese ladies blush. But despite this fiercely independent spirit, O-Ei struggles under the domineering influence of her father and is ridiculed for lacking the life experience that she is attempting to portray in her art.

• Other

In the summer of 1907, 15-year-old Inako Momokawa lives in the Fushimi area of Kyoto, and is the second daughter of a sake brewer. Nothing she does ever comes out right, and she receives a scolding from her father every day. Her only relief is the trust she places in her prayers to the gods. One day while at Fushimi Inari shrine, she meets a freewheeling young man named Kihachi Sakamoto. He rejects the gods, and boasts of the incoming age of electricity. The topic of marriage suddenly comes up in Inako's household. Her father is one-sidedly making all the decisions for her, and Inako is about to give up hope. It is then that Kihachi draws out Inako's true feelings of wanting to run away from her family. The only way to stop her marriage is to find an unusual book called the "Electricity Catalog." The book is a prediction book about electricity that Kihachi wrote when he was a child, but his older brother Seiroku took the book, and its current whereabouts are unknown. Inako and Kihachi together go in search of the book across Kyoto and Shiga prefectures.

• Movie (1 ep)
• 1984

Oshin comes from a family of poor rice farmers. Her father and brother must work in the fields and her grandmother and mother, who is expecting another child, barely have enough to eat. In order to make ends meet for her family, 7-year-old Oshin gives up school and decides to become a servant in the household of a wealthy family, where she faces trials and tribulation beyond her worst fears.

• TV

The second season of My Happy Marriage.

• Movie (1 ep)
• 2017

During the Taisho era of 1918, 17-year-old Benio Hanamura thrives on bucking tradition. As a boisterous and quarrelsome tomboy, Miss Hanamura leads a life of kendo and tree-climbing adventure with her best friends Tamaki and Ranmaru. Benio determines to find love on her own, though her family has other plans. Benio will encounter tests of love, independence, and friendship during wartime.

• Other

Yoshino grew up as the yakuza princess of the Osaka Somei crime family. Everyone left her alone due to her sharp gaze and mobster ties. But when her grandfather signs a truce with the Tokyo-based Miyama crime family, she’s offered for betrothal to the Miyama leader’s grandson, Kirishima. At first, Kirishima seems amiable and polite–but when he shows his dark side, he proves to be more disturbing than any gangster Yoshino has ever met. This engagement is sure to be a wild ride for a tough yakuza princess and her twisted yakuza prince!

• TV (13 eps)
• 2023

Isaku never asked to be the daughter of a yakuza boss, but when her parents died in a car accident when she was 5, her gangster grandfather took her in and raised her as part of the clan. After years of being avoided by her schoolmates because of her family ties, Isaku is finally ready to make her high-school debut, live a normal life, and maybe even find love...until loyal family servant and Isaku's dedicated guardian, 26-year-old Keiya, enters high school right alongside her and vows to protect her from all of the above! Now she's got a chain-smoking, pistol-wielding knight-in-shining(?)-armor to deal with, and navigating high school besides? What's a young lady to do?!

• TV (12 eps)
• 2018

Akira Tachibana is a reserved high school student who was the star of the track and field team but had to quit when she got injured. Sidelined and depressed, Akira stops in at a family restaurant one rainy day, and after the manager—a 45-year-old man with a young son—serves her free coffee, she is smitten, and soon takes a part-time job at the restaurant. Despite the age gap, Akira is drawn to his kind nature, and little by little, the two begin to understand each other. One day, she decides to finally tell her manager how she feels… but how will he react?