
Karia Nomoto
2021Shell and Joint
Isamu Hirabayashi
Mariko Tsutsui, Keisuke Horibe
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.
Shell and Joint
ロクロク
Yudai Yamaguchi
Miho Nakanishi, Shiho
A quiet woman receives a social media request from a middle-school friend, who she doesn’t remember fondly. The two meet at a hotel’s restaurant where they find a room numbered 666 containing Rokuroku, a long-neck woman wearing a red kimono.
Rokuroku: The Promise of the Witch