The ever versatile Kazuki Kitamura stars as masterless samurai Kyutaro Madarame, a feared swordsman who has fallen on hard times in old Edo. Caught between two warring gangs in an epic battle of cat lovers and dog lovers, he begrudgingly accepts the canine faction's offer to assassinate the opposite leader's beloved pet: an adorable white cat. Yet upon raising his lethal sword, he cannot bring himself to go through with the act, and the cat melts his ronin heart. But before finding peace as a newly minted cat person, the still fearsome Madarame will have to take on both gangs in a classic samurai street brawl.

Taro is a 12-year-old into baseball and radio, especially "Music Express," a song-request show. Sound quaint? But it is 1977 and a small town in Hokkaido, a more innocent, pure-hearted time and place, we are told. Taro, however, has a blood disease that lands him in the hospital where his aunt is a nurse. Rounds of tests, transfusions and injections sap his spirit, despite the kindness and dedication of his young doctor and the Doctor's hospital-director father. The latter, a music buff who broadcasts classics over the hospital's PA system, asks Taro to relieve him as DJ — and soon the boy is ensconced in the hospital director's well-stocked library-cum-studio, spinning popular J-Pop tunes. He also becomes acquainted with Tamaki, a girl he first calls "the mummy" because of her bandages and full body cast — she was injured in a traffic accident. He later changes his tune when she is revealed as a cute 13-year-old — for him, an older woman...