Bakuman (Japan, 2015)

Moritaka, a junior high student, forgets his notebook in class. His classmate Akito notes Mashiro's drawings in it and asks him to become a manga artist to his stories. Mashiro declines. Takagi incites Mashiro to meet with Miho Azuki, Mashiro's crush, and tells her the two plan to become mangakas (manga artists). In response, Azuki reveals her plans to be a voice actress. Mashiro proposes to her that they should both marry when Azuki becomes a voice actress for the anime adaptation of their manga. The two then start creating their manga, under the pen name Muto Ashirogi, in hopes of getting serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump.

If you have any sort of interest in manga, Bakuman is definitely a movie you should check out. It started out as a manga series of its own, created by the same team behind Death Note, another amazing manga and later animated series. Bakuman follows two students behind the stressful scenes of drawing manga for a big publication, and have a lot of fun with it too. It was super interesting to learn exactly how a series is developed and finalized, and while there's also a story of rivalry and friendship going on was great. 

Genre: Comedy

Hana and Alice (Japan, 2004) & The Case of Hana and Alice (2015)

Upon entering high school, two best friends named Hana and Alice notice a boy a year older them while waiting for the train, and they both develop a pretty strong crush on him. One day while secretly following him home, Hana witnesses the boy walk right into a wall and pass out. When he wakes up, she lies and convinces him that he must have amnesia, because he doesn't remember the fact that she was his girlfriend. After this, hilarity ensues as the two girls attempt to run with the lie. Of course, complications soon arise.

Hana and Alice is directed by the wildly talented Shunji Iwai, who's given us fantastic films such as Love Letter (1995), April Story (1997 and All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001). With Hana and Alice, he perfectly captures the big and small events happening in Japanese school culture, and puts two teenage schoolgirls in the middle of love dramas and murder mysteries. In 2015 it was followed up by an animated prequel which had a bit more engaging story and an animation style which looked a little unusual. Two slice-of-life kind of films with two likeable main characters to befriend. 

Genre: Drama