Empty Blue

Nitobe and Sakamoto are childhood friends who now work at the front desk of a capsule hotel. Nitobe has a particular fondness for philosophy and crustaceans. Sakamoto, meanwhile, is fixated on suicide. The capsule hotel draws a variety of guests, including a Finnish mother who has lost her child, a fugitive woman, and a researcher studying Daphnia. None of their lives ever intersect. They exist, but never cross, like cells in a capsule hotel. The themes of life and death are explored through a fragmentary view of the characters’ lives.

In Tsumugi's mind, a radio broadcast that only she could hear was playing. Around this time, she reunited with Koyori, her childhood best friend. Prompted by the voice on the radio in her head, Tsumugi plans to make Koyori happy.

Set at the Hotel Royal, situated in the marshland of Hokkaido, Japan, and follows the guests, the family that runs the hotel, and the hotel's staff. Masayo Tanaka is the only child of the family that runs Hotel Royal. She failed to enter an arts school and she now works at the hotel. She does not show her emotions to anyone.

Hibari leaves the house to go to the accident site where his son died months earlier. It's morning, it's raining, Hibari has brought her baby's umbrella with him. On the way he meets a man drenched in rain and helps him. And when he opens the umbrella, as in a vision, the memory of the son migrates to man.

Thirty-year-old, unemployed Kenji (Kaku Tomohiro) spends his days listlessly at his parent's home, which is set to be torn down any day now. He relives his childhood when a third grader out for summer vacation nails Kenji with a water balloon, and Kenji fights back.

One by one, everyone falls asleep forever.

Yusuke moves to a new house to create his dream audio room in a drab basement. His wife, Motoko, discovers an old video camera with footage of a strange woman talking. They realize the video is from their basement, taken at the time they've already moved in. To investigate, they set up a hidden camera and leave. Upon returning, they find more footage of the woman, confirming she has been in their home. As Yusuke calls the police, Motoko sees new footage showing themselves entering the room. Alone and scared, Motoko is confronted by the mysterious woman.

This anthology features three short films produced through crowdfunding, set in Tochigi, Miyagi, and Gifu prefectures. The three short films are: "ブースト" with You Hasegawa in the lead role, set in Mibu town, Tochigi prefecture, which depicts how a woman who has suppressed her emotions since childhood has her desires to manifest as another self; "星屑ステージ" with Taichi Fujii in the lead role, a road movie set in Sendai and Ishinomaki cities, Miyagi prefecture, which follows a protagonist who works in a show pub, on a journey back to his hometown after the death of his mother; and "柳ヶ瀬ダンジョン" with Mai Moritomi in the lead role, a sci-fi suspense film set in Gifu prefecture, in which the protagonist wanders into a strange world through a mysterious entrance found in a corner of a shopping street.

Ichikawa Shinichi, who actually participated as a scriptwriter in the tokusatsu series Ultra Seven, depicts behind-the-scenes stories from the filming of Seven and the youthful ensemble of its cast and production staff. He weaves in fictional elements introduced for the drama's structure, featuring the series' heroine, Yuri Anne, as the protagonist.