Best movies like Buddies

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Buddies Starring Ken Takakura, Sumiko Fuji, Eiji Bandô, Yasuko Tomita, and more. If you liked Buddies then you may also like: The Fixer, One Week Friends, Reminiscence, Kura, A Boy Called H and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

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Based on a celebrated book by Kuniko Mukoda, this film directed by Yasuo Furuhata tells of a close friendship undone by love.

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The Fixer

Political fixer Homei Yamaoka's misdeeds come to light, throwing Japanese politics into deadly confusion. But he's not going down without a fight.

One Week Friends

High school student Yuki Hase wants to become close with classmate Kaori Fujimiya who is alway by herself. Kaori Fujimiya refuses to become close with Yuki Hase, because she forgets her friends every new Monday. Even though Kaori tells Yuki why she doesn't want to become friends, Yuki still wants to become close to her.

Kura

In spite of a longstanding tradition forbidding women from working in a sake brewery, Retsu, a young blind woman, challenges herself to overcome her disability in order to save her family's sake business.

A Boy Called H

Told from the viewpoint of the father Morio, "A Boy Called H" follows a young boy named Hajime Senoh, nicknamed "H". His father, Morio runs a tailor shop. With the onset of World War II, their family must endure difficult times. Nevertheless, H is filled with curiosity and a sense of justice. Based on the autobiographical novel "Shonen H" by Kappa Senoh (published by Kodansha, July 9, 1999).

Close Range Love

A smart high school student falls in love with her English teacher after she receives one-on-one tutoring from him.

Tokyo Ghoul

A Tokyo college student is attacked by a ghoul, a super-powered human who feeds on human flesh. He survives, but has become part ghoul and becomes a fugitive on the run.

Go Tell It on the Mountain

This film adaptation of James Baldwin's celebrated novel tells the journey of a family from the rural South to "big city" Harlem seeking both salvation and understanding and of a young boy struggling to earn the approval of a self-righteous and often unloving stepfather.

Shikake-nin Baian

This is an ensemble period drama adapted from Shotaro Ikenami's popular novel, featuring the famous Kabuki actor brothers Kinnosuke Manya and Katsuo Nakamura, who made the transition from the Kabuki world to the film industry, and a cast of gorgeous and diverse faces. The Edo period. Nagato Abe, a Hatamoto (a feudal lord), is annoyed by his son's bad behavior, and when it becomes a hindrance to his own career, he asks Otowaya Hanemon, a black marketeer, to assassinate his son. The target is then taken care of by the assassin, Umeyasu. In order to keep his mouth shut, Nagatomon no Mamoru also attempts to take Otowaya's life. Nagato's brother-in-law, Omiya Sahei, a corrupt merchant from the Kamigata region, also plans to replace Otowaya as the head of Edo's black market business, so Umebayashi and his fellow trapper Hikojiro set out to eliminate them.

Shogun's Shadow

A shogun's eldest son must do whatever it takes to survive a series of attempts on his life. He receives much-needed aid from seven warriors who are led by a strong leader.

Lupin the Third: The Hemingway Papers

A bloody civil war is the setting for Lupin's latest caper; the leader for one of the factions holds documents written by Earnest Hemingway and contain the location of a remarkable treasure. With Goemon and Jigen fighting on opposite sides of the war, Lupin must tackle this challenge alone. As the war rages on, can Lupin secure the treasure and keep Goemon and Jigen from killing each other?!

Railroad Man

A railway stationmaster at a dying end-of-the-line village in Hokkaido is haunted by memories of his dead wife and daughter. When the railroad line is scheduled to be closed, he is offered a job at a hotel, but he is emotionally unable to part with his career as a railroader. His life takes a turn when he meets a young woman with an interest in trains who resembles his daughter.

Poppy

Based on Soseki Natsume’s 1908 novel of the same title, Poppy is an ornately complicated story of desire and ambition. Fujio is beautiful, talented, well-heeled, and engaged to Munechika, a rising young diplomat. She has promised him a gold watch, a family heirloom, as an emblem of their engagement. But she falls in love with Ono, a student employed to tutor her in English, who is attracted by her beauty and wealth. Ono is himself bound by an engagement to Sayoko, the daughter of his mentor, Professor Inoue. The self-centered Fujio is ready to forsake everything for Ono, but he is prevailed upon to go ahead with his marriage to Sayoko. Fujio then offers the watch to Munechika who, perceiving Fujio’s true feelings, hurls the watch into the sea.

Lupin the Third: Dragon of Doom

The Lupin gang is once again dragged onto a wild treasure hunt! This time, the objective is a mysterious, small dragon statue that even Goemon's steel-rendering blade Zantetsuken cannot cut. The artifact, which once eluded even Lupin the Third's esteemed grandfather, rests deep undersea inside the infamous Titanic, and is the key to unlocking the mystery of Zantetsuken's almighty strength. A wealthy gangster, Lupin, and Goemon all want the statue for themselves!

Manji

The four principals in a love affair collide when jealousy, blackmail and suicide enter the picture.

The Last Recipe

A famous chef who is tasked with tracking down a 70-year-old missing recipe.

The Perfect Education

Schoolgirl Kuniko is kidnapped by a middle-aged man Iwazono when she is jogging. He tells her that he had a failed marriage which leaves him a deep and everlasting scar in his mind. He kidnaps her in search of a perfect marriage and intends to lock her in the room and 'educate' her to perform perfect sex where body and soul are united.

The Werewolf Game: Lovers

Contestants in "The Werewolf Game" have to kill each other to win. These contestants have experience in similar slaughter games. Ranko Takano is one of the participants. She takes part to help a family mired in dept. New positions of "Cupid" and "Lover" are added.

A Modern Yakuza: The Code of The Lawless

Just released on parole, one young man hurtles towards a face-off with the gangsters controlling Shinjuku and its lucrative prostitutes.

New Prison Walls of Abashiri 2

Suehiro Katsuji, a prisoner of Abashiri, is sent to Shikoku to work at a dock where a fierce turf battle takes place between a local gang and the dock operator.

Yakuza Ladies Revisited: Love is Hell

The seventh movie of the series “Yakuza Ladies” focuses on a wife of a small Osaka family. She risks her life to protect her husband’s family and its members against much larger, more established organizations.

Blue Summer

Rio is a high school student in Tokyo. Her mother tells her she will spend the summer in the countryside. There, she meets Ginzo. He is a high school student and handsome. They fall in love.

I've Always Liked You

Love is blooming at Sakuragaoka High School. Natsuki Enomoto has finally mustered the courage to confess to her childhood friend, Yuu Setoguchi. However, in the final moments of her confession, an embarrassed Natsuki passes it off as a "practice confession." Oblivious to her true feelings and struggling with his own, Yuu promises to support Natsuki in her quest for love. While Natsuki deals with her failed confession, fellow classmate Koyuki Ayase struggles with his own feelings for Natsuki. Despite his timidness, he is determined to win over her heart. This movie follows Natsuki as she dreams of one day ending her practices and genuinely confessing to Yuu. Meanwhile, close friends also find themselves entangled in their own webs of unrequited love and unspoken affections.

Kimagure Orange Road: I Want to Return to That Day

Kyousuke and Madoka have finally arrived at the point where they are close to graduation and have to decide where they want to go to college. Naturally, they want to go together, so beside all the studying they also have to look for a proper college where they can enter both. Hikaru, still a year from graduating, wants to support Kyousuke as well and does that in her own way. But while she does that, Madoka feels jealous and tells her feelings to Kyousuke. And then Kyousuke has to take action to finally decide on the girl he loves.

The Blue Sky Maiden

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was.

Demon

Shuji was once a feared member of the Yakuza crime syndicate, but he's reformed his ways, abandoned his old life and left the city for a small coastal fishing town where he's become an honest fisherman.

Moment of Demon

Filled with guilt over his forbidden desires, a young man leaves home and his studies. He finds a new smaller place to stay, a low-paying but satisfying job and a girlfriend. Then his mother, unable to fight her forbidden desires, shows up.

Ah, Wilderness: Part 2

Set in the near future around Shinjuku, Tokyo. Shinji got out from a youth detention center. Barikan suffers from stuttering and extreme shyness. These two men meet in a boxing gym. Shinji and Barikan become friends and pursue boxing under a hopeless situation.

Dearest

The posthumous wish of Eiji's wife is for her ashes to be scattered in the ocean near her hometown. Eiji also learns that his wife letter for him at the post office before she died.

Flame of My Love

A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, just as the party is being disbanded by the government.

The Haunted Samurai

A lowly but academically diligent warrior named Bessho Hikoshiro finds himself unable to move up in the world due to the stifling caste system of the Bakumatsu era. After being expelled from the household into which he was adopted through marriage and separated from his wife and son, he moves in with his disapproving elder brother and his wife. He meets his old class rival Enomoto Takeaki, now a commander of a naval ship, and is later told by a kindly noodle shop owner that Enomoto's rise in social status came about after he prayed at a shrine in Mukojima. Stumbling home drunk one night, Hikoshiro falls down a riverbank and comes across a small run-down shrine which he is convinced is affiliated to the one in Mukojima. Pressing his hands together in prayer, he unwittingly invites the unwanted attentions of the gods of poverty, pestilence and death..

Akai Tsuki

Namiko Morita, who lived in Otaru, moved to this area with her husband, Yutaro, and opened the brewery "Morita Brewery". Eventually, they succeeded in this business and lived happily while raising three children. However, in August 1945, the situation changed completely due to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

A Little Aerial Navigator

Story of two close friends who long to become pilots in the air corps. Only one succeeds in entering the service, while the other finds a job in civilian aviation through his instructor's good offices.

Midwinter Camellia

Yasuo Furuhata directs this romantic yakuza flick based on a book by popular romance novelist Tomiko Miyao. Set in 1932, the film centers on Peony (Yoko Minamino), a geisha who was forced into the business at a young age by her dissipated father.

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