Hisashi Yamanaka

After his parent's divorce, Kazuo Saito moves with his mother from Onomichi and must leave his girlfriend behind. At his new school, Kazuo is surprised to reunite with his childhood friend Kazumi.

Ayase Shinsuke, a popular writer of a series of girl novels, visits Otaru, the town he grew up in. He meets a strange boy who calls himself by the author's real name.

Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?

Tajima Yumi, in grade school, is overjoyed when her father says they are moving to an apartment in a big city. But the beautiful home she had imagined is in a slum area called Samurai Village, a little settlement, where people live from hand to mouth. To make things worse, a group of vagrants descends on the already crowded ragpickers' village. The sight depresses and saddens little Yumi, but when her father gives up drinking, it makes up for everything in her eyes, and when he runs past liquor shops to avoid temptation, Yumi's laughter rings out merrily again. A unique social drama depicting the growth of a new generation that confronts the world of adults full of vanity in the image of a girl living in poverty.