(9 vote(s), average: 9.0 out of 10)

Alternative Title: GTO (ジーティーオー) | GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka | GTO

Genre: Comedy, School

Film Date: December, 1999

Japanese Movie Cast: Fujiwara Norika, Kasahara Hideyuki, Kinouchi Akiko, Komoto Masahiro, Sorimachi Takashi

Description: While peeping up girls' skirts at a local shopping mall, Onizuka meets a girl who agrees to go out on a date with him. Onizuka's attempt to sleep with her fails when her current "boyfriend", her teacher, shows up at the love hotel they are in and asks her to return to him. The teacher is old and unattractive, but has enough influence over her that she leaps from a second story window and lands in his arms.Onizuka, seeing this display of a teacher's power over girls, decides to become one himself. In his quest, he discovers three important things:1. He has a conscience and a sense of morality. This means taking advantage of impressionable schoolgirls is out... but their unusually attractive mothers are a different matter.2. He enjoys teaching and most of the time, he teaches life lessons rather than schoolwork.3. He hates the systems of traditional education, especially when they have grown ignorant and condescending to students and their needs.With these realizations, he sets out to become the greatest teacher ever, using his own brand of philosophy and the ability to do nearly anything when under enough pressure. He is hired as a long-shot teacher by a privately operated school to tame a class that has driven one teacher to a mysterious death, one to nervous breakdown, and one to joining a cult. He embarks on a mission of self-discovery by breaking through to each student one by one, and helping each student to overcome their problems and learn to genuinely enjoy life.

(27 vote(s), average: 9.04 out of 10)

Alternative Title: The Prodigy | 神童 | Genius

Genre: Drama, Music

Film Date: April, 2007

Japanese Movie Cast: Komoto Masahiro, Matsuyama Kenichi, Narumi Riko, Nishijima Hidetoshi , Tezuka Satomi

Description: One 13-year-old piano prodigy, Uta Naruse (Riko Narumi), and her struggle with the meaning of playing classical music. Her father (Hidetoshi Nishijima) died mysteriously some years earlier, leaving her mother (Satomi Tezuka) poor and obsessed with making Uta fulfill her immense promise. But Uta is not sure if she even wants to play the piano.She gains a new perspective one day when she runs into Wao Kikuna (Kenichi Matsuyama) in a park.The piano-playing son of a greengrocer who is still trying to enter the music academy after several failures, Wao is six years her senior but far below her level of talent.Yet through his clumsy and misguided but earnest efforts to pursue music, Uta touches a more down-to-earth love of playing the piano. Wao, although a bit envious of Uta's genius, is sparked by her presence to have his own moments of brilliance.