Influence

The story focuses on a group of moms who all have children around the same age. These women form a bond through sharing their anxieties about raising their children, each coming from a different background. However, the friendship between the five women also turns to jealousy and betrayal, due to the fact that their children are all taking similar entrance exams for elementary school.

Sugata Kentaro used to be one of the most hopeful trainee to be a professional Shogi (Japanese chess) player, but fails at the final test. Now he has become a "Shinkenshi," a gambler who plays Shogi for money, and boasts his 182 wins in a row. But he is devastated when he is beaten completely by a young woman known as "Ukeshi" who takes any challenges and never loses. As Shogi means everything to him, he decides to train himself harder to become the strongest player. Based on a popular comic, this comedy drama is about a young man's exciting journey to reorganize his life through a series of tough challenges in Shogi guided by a mysterious girl.

Ryutaro Asada was the chief surgeon of Team Medical Dragon, a globally active emergency medical care team that worked in refugee camps. After his return to Japan, this amazingly talented surgeon starts work at a university hospital, where he uncovers one case of corruption after another and takes on a lot of powerful contenders in this heroic drama. The struggles between the hospital and the patients, the infighting among the hospital staff, and the patients who get involved in those struggles are all depicted in a realistic manner in a drama that has an overwhelming feeling of speed. Here’s a human drama depicting a thrilling battle between life and death, a totally new, outstanding form of entertainment.

Lunch no Joō is a Japanese drama series aired in Japan on Fuji TV in 2002. It stars Yuko Takeuchi, Yōsuke Eguchi, Satoshi Tsumabuki, and Shinichi Tsutsumi. Natsumi loves lunchtime and food. Nothing excites her more than to walk down the street thinking about where she'll eat lunch. One day, a man Kennichiro interrupts Natsumi as she's about to eat her favorite rice omelet and drags her outside and begs her to come home with him so that he can introduce her to his family. He explains to her that his father is sick and after leaving on bad terms, the only way he'll be allowed back home is to return with a fianceé. Natsumi is left with quite the predicament.

It's January 7, just after the New Year begins. Make up classes are being held for students that aren't keeping up with their daily studies; anxious students are there to discuss their exams; and club activities are still in progress. Asami Akio, a teacher, finds himself at the gate of the school with Misaki Yuka, a woman he met long ago and had lost contact with. Before he can explain their disconnect, a group shudders as an earthquakes rocks the school. When it subsides... nothing is the same.

A young daughter (Mana Ashida) supports her father (Etsushi Toyokawa) who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

A woman’s dead body is found in an apartment in Kokubunji, Tokyo. The decayed body seems like a half year has passed since its death and it is damaged by domestic cats that ate the body. The woman's death is thought to be a "lonely death" (someone died naturally without anyone noticing for a long period of time). Detective Ayano has doubts about that conclusion. The cats seemed like they were not house trained, which is odd for domestic cats. Detective Ayano wonders whether the cats were really owned by the dead woman. Detective Ayano then finds Suzuki Yoko’s bankbook in an empty fishbowl. It seems like the dead woman is 36-year-old Yoko.

Kazuki Yoshinami is a pharmaceutical researcher at a university. His friend Wataru Kashiwagi is also a pharmaceutical researcher at the same university. They are rivals, but talk to each other about their dreams. One day, Kazuki Yoshinami has a groundbreaking discovery. This leads to Kazuki Yoshinami and Wataru Kashiwagi becoming involved in a competition among companies over patents. Newspaper reporter Tomoko Kawahara, who is Kazuki Yoshinami’s childhood friend, becomes aware of this.

Ritsu was abandoned by his mother Reiko when he was little, so now he belongs in the lower social strata. One day, Ritsu gets involved in a case and his head is severely injured, so he can die at anytime. Convinced she abandoned him due to poverty, Ritsu attempts to find his mother and be good to her before his death. But when he learns that she is leading a happy life instead, with her pianist son Satoru, he decides to take revenge on his mother. Ritsu then meets Rinka, a girl whom he happened to help in the past, and discovers she is Satoru’s childhood friend.

Iki Tadashi is a military leader named who was captured by the Soviets during World War II. Treated as a war criminal, he was sentenced to many years of labor in a harsh Siberian detention camp. After 11 years of imprisonment, he is released. He returns to Japan and begins readjusting to life as a civilian, rejecting an offer from his former colleague to work on a defense project. Tadashi has decided to never involve himself in war again, much to the joy of his family. Instead, he attempts to set off on a new path working at a major trading company. --Tokyograph