Does the Flower Bloom?

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

Takao, who is training to become a shoemaker, skipped school and is sketching shoes in a Japanese-style garden. He meets a mysterious woman, Yukino, who is older than him. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other. But the end of the rainy season soon approaches.

Hiroko attends the memorial service of her fiancé, Itsuki Fujii, who died in a mountain-climbing incident. Although Itsuki's mother says that their old house is gone, Hiroko records the address listed under his name in his yearbook and sends him a letter. Surprisingly, she receives a reply, and discovers it came from his old classmate, a girl who also happens to be called Itsuki Fujii.

Two people meet each other after missing the last train home, leading to a beautiful relationship over five years.

At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...

When Juli meets Bryce in the second grade, she knows it's true love. After spending six years trying to convince Bryce the same, she's ready to give up - until he starts to reconsider.

Toru recalls his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, and another woman, the outgoing, lively Midori.

In middle school, Futaba Yoshioka was madly in love with Tanaka Kou but he moves away with his mother. She is reunited with him later in life but he is not the same person anymore.

With dreams of diving abroad, Tsuneo gets a job assisting Josee, an artist whose imagination takes her far beyond her wheelchair. But when the tide turns against them, they push each other to places they never thought possible, and inspire a love fit for a storybook.

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

Mio is a girl in high school who slacks off. She and her childhood friend Arata and best friend Madoka spend their after-school days in Ikebukuro hanging out. One day, Madoka tells Mio that she loves Arata, and Mio realizes that she loves Arata, too. But she’s scared of their relationship falling apart and lies, saying she’ll help them. Mio deliberately acts coldly to Arata, and they get into a fight. She decides to work things out with Arata, but gets into a car accident on her way to meet him. She wakes up in a mysterious world. It's the Ikebukuro she knows, but something’s different...

An artist dumps her longtime boyfriend, but her attempt to take a break from dating ends when she quickly finds herself in two passionate romances.

When a woman's first love suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with a charming, but abusive neurosurgeon is upended, and she realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future.

Haruki secretly had feelings for Akihiko for years, but Akihiko was still in a relationship with his roommate, the violinist Ugetsu Murata. Haruki, Akihiko, and Ugetsu's love clashes and starts to move forward.

An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.

Upon being sent to live with relatives in the countryside due to an illness, an emotionally distant adolescent girl becomes obsessed with an abandoned mansion and infatuated with a girl who lives there - a girl who may or may not be real.

Yokohama, 1963. Japan is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics—and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the young generation struggles to throw off the shackles of a troubled past. Against this backdrop of hope and change, a friendship begins to blossom between high school students Umi and Shun—but a buried secret from their past emerges to cast a shadow on the future and pull them apart.

After an outburst at school involving her son, a concerned single mother demands answers, triggering a sequence of deepening suspicion and turmoil.