Best movies like The Real Thing

As the perpetually lecherous Ataru and his friends prepare for a carnival at Tomobiki High School, they gradually realize the days are literally repeating themselves. Any effort to break the pattern dumps them back where they started.

Work Experience is a 1989 short film directed by James Hendrie. It follows Terence who is caught in a vicious circle. He cannot get a job because he has no experience, but he cannot gain experience without getting a job! The film won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

An effervescent musical about one of the most unlikely couples seen on screen: two Otaku intent on hiding their nerdiness from their colleagues!

Nate, a 19 year old film student, and Margaret, a 52 year old spinster, are best friends in an odd, quirky, totally working kind of way... until Nate's audacious classmate Darla sets him up on a date with James. Nate's new life shakes apart his friendship with Margaret, just as she is trying to start a career as a stand-up comedian. Written by Anonymous (IMDB.com).

A thug offers to pay a law student's gambling debt if the student will accompany him on a trip across Tokyo.

After not having seen each other in five years, Chris Terry goes to visit his younger sister Noelle Terry in Montréal. Their lives, both together and apart, have been turbulent ones with something toxic having affected the way they interact with each other.

Mitsuki is shy and rather isolated at school. Towa is on the basketball team and Mitsuki's class-mate. Due to circumstances, Mitsuki soon begins to socialize with four jocks of the basketball team, which affects her self-esteem, her social status, her loneliness and her life. She finds a new lease in her school life.

One day, an angel materializes before Kato's eyes. While the angel seems like an average girl with a passion for gin and lime, she sports a pair of big white wings. Only lonely-hearted people can see her. She may seem ordinary, but this angel touches hearts and transforms lives.

Akira Tachibana is a 17-year-old high school student. She was once a promising athlete, but an injury has prevented her from taking part in track and field. One day, Akira Tachibana goes to a family restaurant and the manager talks to her in a tender voice. This makes Akira Tachibana begin working part-time at the restaurant. The manager is 45-year-old Masami Kondo and he is divorced with a child. Akira Tachibana falls in love with him. --asianwiki

A suicidal high school student, a ramen shop owner closing shop after the passing of his wife, and a cuisine researcher stranded in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region get connected due to a bowl of ramen.

When he hears that the new female employee digs ambitious men who are the store employee of the month, a slacker gets his act together but finds himself in competition with his rival, an ambitious co-worker.

A man clashes with his daughter over her choice of fiancé.

Charlie Lang is a simple, kindhearted New York City cop. When he realizes he has no money to tip waitress Yvonne Biasi, Lang offers her half the winnings of his lottery ticket. Amazingly, the ticket happens to be a winner, in the sum of $4 million. True to his word, Lang proceeds to share the prize money with Biasi, which infuriates his greedy wife, Muriel. Not content with the arrangement, Muriel begins scheming to take all the money.

When two souls find one another, nothing can tear them apart. Widower Takumi lives a quiet life with his six-year-old son Yuji after the loss of wife and mother Mio. Yuji unfailingly remembers her promise to him: "I'll be with you again in a year's time, when the rains come." On the first anniversary of her passing, Takumi and Yuji are taking a walk in the woods when they come across a woman sheltering from a monsoon downpour.

Slacker Ichiko gets into a fight with her younger sister and begins to live on her own, working the late shift at a 100 yen shop. On her way home, she passes a gym and meets middle-aged boxer Kano who trains there in silence...

A troubled loner, Bob Maconel, imagines blowing up the tower in Los Angeles where he works. He takes a revolver to his office intent on killing colleagues, and then himself. At home, he holds conversations with his fish, who encourage him to do it. His supervisor picks on him. As he's screwing his courage to the sticking place, he drops a bullet; while on the floor looking for it, another colleague does exactly what Bob has been planning. Bob emerges a hero and the one colleague he likes, a woman with a bright smile, is severely wounded. Can Bob help her through despair and find himself and joy in life? Or, as everyone says, is this impossible for a man like him?

A widowed professor living in Paris develops a special relationship with a younger French woman.

Sayaka works at a office. She's not very good at her job or with love. One night, she finds a man, Itsuki, collapsed in front of her home. She takes him inside and they begin to live together. Itsuki teaches Sayaka about cooking wild herbs and collecting wild herbs, but he has a secret.

A reclusive telemarketer has only one semblance of a friend: His telecommuter boss. But the telemarketer's social circle seems to improve greatly when a whimsical co-worker enters his life. Only, as he begins to sketch his new friend's portrait, disturbing "voices" from the phone man's past threaten to lead him into a network of destruction

A Japanese illustrator falls for a shopaholic client.

Gloria is a free-spirited divorcée who spends her days at a straight-laced office job and her nights on the dance floor, joyfully letting loose at clubs around Los Angeles. After meeting Arnold on a night out, she finds herself thrust into an unexpected new romance, filled with both the joys of budding love and the complications of dating, identity, and family.

A daughter is constantly overshadowed by her famous father, but she is determined to make her own mark in the world.

Clannad is set in a high-school located in some Japanese town. Okazaki Tomoya is a third-year student who doesn't take his studies seriously. Always late for class, he's seen as a delinquent by the rest of his classmates who are busy preparing for their entrance examinations. Needless to say, he hasn't too many close friends either.

Two divorced fathers Mathias and Antoine, decide to raise their children together in London. Their lives consist of Sophie the pretty florist secretly in love with Antoine, Yvonne who runs the 'bistrot français' and has a very maternal outlook on life and Mac Enzie, the boss of Antoine's agency who is completley in love with Yvonne despite the big age difference.

Middle-aged Riichi Takamiya drives the midnight bus between Tokyo and snow-swept Niigata, where he lives. Just as the relationship with his younger girlfriend is about to bloom, his emotionally desperate ex-wife suddenly reappears.

An aspiring artist runs from men as a result of an early life problem that has left her relationship with her father strained. She decides to move into a convent where troubled women receive cheap lodging in exchange for work. She finds a dirty area in the basement where she paints a mural that deals with all of her psychological problems. While some find it gaudy, others such as the mother superior realizes its potential to save the convent which is to be closed. During all this the artist starts a relationship with a man who owns an art supply shop where she shop-lifts her supplies. Written by John Sacksteder

Asami Ogawa in her first leading role as an office worker with an extremely kinky private life. She not only has an affair with her boss and others in the company but also organizes women to her widower to father.

A jealous wife suspects the worst when her dingaling husband hires his former girlfriend for a position at his company.

At Baycrest, an old-age home in Toronto, we follow a social worker as she talks to residents, particularly Max, Claire, Ida, and Rachel. The film opens on Claire's birthday, she's 89; Max, a tiny cheerful man, is her close friend. Rachel is lonesome, missing her son, complaining he rarely visits. Ida relies on memory for her solace. Helen has no memory and doesn't recognize her daughter; her moods swing. Murray keeps his cap on and likes women. Staff members bring medication, provide care, and offer small talk. Memory is fleeting: Claire re-experiences the death of a close companion several times, each time without remembering her previous grieving. Lives are circumscribed

Dick Wallace wants to marry a minister's grand-daughter but his father, who wants him to get work on his company's business, is opposed. She takes a job with the company to prove she's okay.

Kyohei Nagashima (Masaki Okada) has shut away the world. During his high school days he was the target of bullying and experienced horrifying moments. Now as a young adult Kyohei takes a new job. He works for a company that specializes in cleaning out the homes of recently deceased individuals. With his new job Kyohei meets co-worker Yuki (Nana Eikura). Yuki has also experienced a traumatizing event as a teen and has also shut herself away from the world. These two young people form a bond as they go through the homes of the recently departed people. They gradually open up to each other and in the process to the world. Yet, their fragile psyches may or may not be ready for such changes ...

A young security guard works the late shift at the Driftwood Inn along with a desk clerk and a married night maid with whom he is having an affair in whatever room is available. Unexpectedly, his brother and his lover, who used to be the guard's girl friend, show up at the motel. Turns out the two have been robbing convenience store and want the guard to join them to steal the motel safe after the Fourth of July when it will be at its fullest. Past history surfaces as jealousies mar the group's plans.

A group of four decides to commit suicide using gigantic fireworks. But every time the fireworks explode, they find themselves back in time before they carried out the plan. They suspect the cause to be the young age of one of the members and try to convince the high school girl to quit.

A young, depressed man is trying to move on with his life after his girlfriend's bizarre death. One day, a mysterious woman notices him at work and convinces his coworkers to introduce him to her.

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.

Taeko and her husband, Jiro, are living a peaceful existence with her young son Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.

When widowed cabbie Ray and retired teacher Jim meet by chance, they discover they long for the same things from life: adventure, challenge and love. Together Ray and Jim discover that being 64 means a new beginning: it's time to try the things they never dared in their youth.

Lee, a Chinese man, works as a waiter in a hotel in England, despite speaking very little English. Told that a girl called Iris might be interested in him, on his afternoon off work he buys a box of chocolates and sets off to find her.

A woman struggles to escape the clutches of her overbearing, co-dependent mother, while gradually falling for a sexy, sophisticated attorney.

Your favorite cozy camping anime returns with a movie as the former members of the Outdoors Club get together again, this time to build a campsite! Reunite with Nadeshiko, Rin, Chiaki, Aoi, and Ena as they gather around the campfire once more with good food and good company.

Nana is 19 and lives in a corner of Tokyo. Her birth mother and Marin, a girl the same age who she loves, were the only people she could trust. Nana confronts them in her yearning for love, but the world does not give it to her. With her whole life ahead of her, Nana struggles, suffers, and begins a search for the true meaning of love.

Divorced father Will and divorced mother Jane start to meet at Denver International Airport when picking up and sending off their children to ex-spouses for holidays and summer vacation. They both long for companionship and love while struggling with the reality of being single parents amid a series of missed opportunities and fears of rejection.

Daikichi learns that his recently deceased grandfather has an illegitimate daughter with an unknown mother. The girl's name is Rin and she is just 6 years old. Everybody in Daikichi's family looks at the girl as an embarrassment and wants no part of her. Daikichi, annoyed by his family's attitude, decides to raise Rin by himself. Even though Daikichi himself has no experience raising a child and is still single.

Chisato and Mahiro are two high school girls who are about to graduate. They also happen to both be highly skilled assassins. When the organization they work for orders them to share a room, the relationship between the pair quickly turns sour. However, when they find themselves targeted by the yakuza, the girls quickly realise that they will have to find a way to work together.

Hino Miharu, a dull man who has been working part-time at the convenience store Pawson Nerima Kitaguchi for three years, suddenly kidnapped by a man wearing a black Santa suit, saying, "It's a job offer! I'll be counting on you from today". When he wake up, there is a mysterious company in the North Pole, Santa Claus House. Miharu starts working as a black Santa who distributes presents to children around the world with his colleague with a strong personality, but this company has a secret.

A life-size, inflatable sex doll suddenly comes to life one day. Without her owner knowing, she goes for a walk around town and falls in love with Junichi. She starts to date Junichi and gets a job at the same store where he works. Everything seems to be going perfectly for her until something unexpected happens.

Dan Mitsu stars as Kana, a female employee at a publishing company who strikes up a sexual relationship with a younger co-worker. He soon discovers that Kana's fetishes extend to sadomasochistic tendencies, involving a mysterious man only known as "Sensei". This discovery will push his relationship with Kana to a new, dangerous level that he may not be ready for.

Following the comic series and the subsequent television serial of the same name, and featuring the same cast, a young and relatively inexperienced man comes across a woman during his working day and sparks fly.

Rika, a bright, attractive, and driven young woman, is intent on marrying her dreamy boyfriend Seiichi Ono who is not only tall and handsome but also an up-and-coming executive. One day, Ono abruptly dumps her.

Romantic comedy about a woman struggling with work and romance as she tries to figure out how to really live and love. Directed by Kataoka Shuji of the "Shin janki" and "Yakuza no daimon" series. Shimamura Misaki (Seto Saki), who works for a company in the restaurant industry, is a go-getter spinning her wheels and making little headway in either romance or work. An older colleague asks her to organize a wedding, and then she gets asked to serve as an interim manager at an udon shop operated by her company. Her troubles pile on, and then the restaurant manager Iwabuchi Tatsuya (Shibata Akiyoshi) does a certain something to the exhausted Misaki.