Best movies like Hula Girls

A genius film director, Tadashi Kobayashi holds an audition for his new film project. Several actors and actresses answer the open call, but most will only be cast as extras. Can the film come to a completion without accident?

On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her, and meets Masako, a formal and ethereal middle-aged woman whose luggage has gone missing. The three women work in the diner, interact, and serve customers. A somewhat brusque man teaches Sachie to make delicious coffee, then he returns under other circumstances. Three neighborhood women inspect the empty diner every day; will anything bring them inside? We learn why Sachie serves rice balls; but why Finland?

High school girl Madoka may look pretty and cute, but there is another side to her. She can exact revenge, land a good punch or a kick and not care about limits. She opts to inflict pain, coerce and blackmail a virgin when she is sensually touched on the train. She begins making his life hell.

High school student Rina has a bad attitude and thinks that friends are something that you use when you need them. She doesn't have any real relationships and is not even on good terms with her parents. Rina is the clubbing queen and could get any guy she wants with her stunning looks. One day, Rina suddenly collapses and her world falls apart. She finds out that she has cancer. The only one who starts to support her is her classmate Maki. Maki tells that they were friends in primary school even though Rina doesn't remember. Maki wants to get close to Rina and help her like Rina had helped Maki when she had hard times.

A high school girl with overwhelming literary talent shakes up the lives of those around her with her brilliant spontaneity.

A strict, but caring mother has an awakening when she is told she has cancer and it is terminal. She has a few months. She needs to complete her tasks in that short time frame.

In this high-octane slugfest, a group of badass female students are forced to battle a gang of criminals. Even with their short skirts and leather boots, the HIGH KICK ANGELS prove to be martial arts masters.

Story follows high school student Saki Miyanaga and her classmates as they become absorbed in the game of mahjong. They target an upcoming national competition.

A group of junior high school must find out the truth of their classmate's death is he was killed by someone or committed suicide.

A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the school's brass band.

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.

This exploration of Japan's fascination with girl bands and their music follows an aspiring pop singer and her fans, delving into the cultural obsession with young female sexuality and the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies.

Three aimless kids at a seaside high school have just one goal this summer break: to shed the virgin tag. One day, they rescue a pretty girl named Narumi by chance. Immediately smitten, Narumi makes it the summer to remember for the boys.

Kaori is a single mother and she raises her high-school age daughter Futaba. Her daughter is in a rebellious phase and ignores her mother. Kaori decides to take measures to communicate with her daughter and also get some revenge. Kaori creates messages in her daughter's bento meals.

Only three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei, drummer Kyoko, and bassist Nozomi are forced to recruit a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son, though her comprehension of Japanese is a bit rough! It's a race against time as the group struggles to learn three tunes for the festival's rock concert—including a classic '80s punk-pop song by the Japanese group The Blue Hearts called "Linda Linda".

Two teenage best pals attracted to the same boy end up scrambling his life after he walks into a door and is knocked unconscious.

A teenage boy is a virgin at high school. He has never had a girlfriend so females are a mystery to him. He focuses on his courses, male friends and club activities instead. When a new girl transfers to his new school he, like every other boy, falls for her. They get to know each other.

The movie Tokyo Shutter Girl, based on the comic series by Kenichi Kiriki, consists of three separate works by three separate directors, each set in Tokyo. It is about three Japanese schoolgirls in a photo club.

Makoto Gousuke has just transferred to a new high school with the intention of being the toughest kid there. Little does he know that there‘s an entire group of toughs who already rule the school, and they‘re all girls! After being humiliated by their leader, the pretty Misaki Shizuka, he vows revenge and starts a lengthy battle between the sexes at the school.

An island in Japan is the site for the dumped and the refuse. Nanakusa and Yu who were childhood and school friends meet on this island that is called Kaiden, a scary name that only refers to things not normal or earthly. The reunited friends strike a bargain and are soon involved in cases most would not dare be involved in or become entangled in.

A 21-year-old girl is released from prison, only to deal with the neighborhood gossip about her and family conflicts. She decides to save one million yen, move to where no one knows her and keep repeating the process.

Uninspired and newly single painter Sara is down on her luck and wants nothing more than to get away from her problems. When she decides to take a trip to visit her mom, she becomes involved in the efforts to save a local church which is in danger of closing down.

A car accident occurs in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture. Natsumi's (Aimi Satsukawa) classmates Maki (Mitsuki Tanimura), Risa (Yuria Haga) and Mika (Ayu Higashi) die in the car accident. Natsumi becomes isolated at school. Her three friends then come back as ghosts.

High school student Jinta is a hikikomori and lives in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. One summer day, when Jinta is absorbed in a video game, a girl suddenly appears in front of him. The girl is Jinta's childhood friend Meiko, but it seems impossible because Meiko died on a summer day. Meiko wears the same white dress when she died, but she looks a little taller. She tells Jinta that she has a wish and that's why she came back as a ghost, but Meiko can't remember what her wish was. To grant Meiko's wish, Jinta along with his friends Atsumu, Naruko, Chiriko, Tetsudo and Meiko gather together for the first time in 7 years. Jinta soon realizes that he is the only one able to see Meiko.

In her search for answers, 17-year-old Haru sets out on a long journey across the country to the town where, in 2011, the devastating tsunami swept away her brother and parents. This road trip takes the young woman, who is still haunted by her loss, from Hiroshima to Tokyo and Fukushima and all the way to Ōtsuchi, where her family home once stood. On the way she encounters other people, other stories, other lives and other losses. Landscapes and faces. The journey ends in the middle of a garden in full bloom among the scarred surroundings of her coastal hometown.. In it stands a telephone box which, even though it is no longer connected, is used to speak to those who cannot be reached any other way.

After helping a pregnant girl escape from their reform school and facing the resulting punishment, a clique of delinquent girls eventually reunites a year later in Tokyo to face different challenges in the form of yakuza and… street vendors.

A man disembarks a train at a countryside train station. He is from the area. He reminisces about a girl in a school uniform he had met and known. He had left town twelve years ago. He had three close friends while at high school and they always hung out together. They were two boys and two girls. He stole money from his grandparents and ran away to Tokyo to become a film director. He is back because he has become a director.

A hard-working cupcake maker is inadvertently elected mayor of a small town burdened with debt. With no formal experience or education to speak of, she must rely on her street smarts to clean up the town.

Hanpeita Takeichi, a samurai, finds that he has travelled through time to modern-day Japan. He's taken in by an old man who runs a cram school, and begins to work as a teacher there.

Fleeing heartbreak in the big city, Ichiko returns to Komori, her rural hometown. She battles summer's rain and humidity, bakes her own bread, grows hothouse tomatoes and tills the fields. During autumn, the time for pickling and preserving fish and sweet potatoes, Ichiko begins reaping rice and recalls her departure five years before.

Kiyosumi’s affection for his schoolmate Hari grows after he saves her from bullying, but a dark secret she’s unwilling to share threatens their bond.

A story about a small, dying town in need of hope until one day a young boy gives them something to believe in.

Haruna Tsunematsu (Yuri Tsunematsu) is studying folklore at university and she decides the subject of her graduation thesis will be the "Kisaragi Station" urban legend which has been a hot topic on the Internet since 2004.

When a nihilistic guy crosses paths with a suicidal girl in high school, it marks the beginning of an unusual friendship that might take them both toward healing.

A schoolboy has a crush on his pretty class-mate Keiko on the inland island of Awaji. He figures her routine of taking baths at the public one is a good way to get to know her, but he first has to overcome his sensitivity to hot water, the presence of other school-mates and of course his shyness. He has never mustered the courage to speak to her in class after all.