Kimika Yoshino Movies

At a yakuza gathering, Ozaki (Shô Aikawa of the Dead or Alive films) unsettles the boss (Renji Ishibashi) when he claims a small dog outside the restaurant is a "yakuza attack dog" and viciously smashes it to death. Minami (Hideki Sone) is assigned to drive the apparently unstable Ozaki to a remote location and kill him. Minami considers Ozaki a "brother," and feels ambivalent about this assignment. After several odd incidents on the road, Minami ends up in the small town of Nagoya, where things get even odder. Unable to get a signal on his cellular, Minami goes into a restaurant to use the phone, and Ozaki, whom he thought to be unconscious, promptly vanishes. When Minami finally contacts the boss, he's told to get in touch with the local Shiroyama crew. Minami doesn't know his way around, and the weird locals seem more interested in animated, interminable arguments about the weather than in helping him find his way. Eventually he runs into Nose (Shôhei Hino), who seems relatively sane, and offers to help him find Ozaki. Minami spends the night at an inn, where the innkeeper (Keiko Tomita) possesses a strange lactating power (which she's eager to demonstrate), and mistreats her mentally challenged employee (Harumi Sone). After another frustrating day searching for Ozaki, during which he encounters the decrepit Shiroyama crew, Minami finds a note from his "brother," and travels to the town dump to meet him, only to find Ozaki (now played by Kimika Yoshino) in a transformed state. Gozu was directed by the prolific Takashi Miike from a script by Sakichi Satô, who also wrote the script for Miike's Ichi the Killer. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

This follow-up to Shimako Sato's cult favorite Eko Eko Azaraku is in fact a prequel. An undercover witch-cum-high school student in the first installment, Misa Kuroi (played again by Kimika Yoshino) is a fresh-faced normal teenager. One night, while returning to a party after a beer run, she discovers all of her friends hacked into a bloody pulp by a murderous creature dressed in white. His intended victim was Misa, however, and soon he is hot on her trail. Just as this otherworld assailant is about to get the schoolgirl in his bloody clutches, she is saved by a shadowy character in a black trenchcoat (Wataru Shihodo). Though she does not initially trust her savior, who seems just as otherworldly and weird as her would-be murderer, Misa warms up to him a bit after he saves her a second time (from a gun-toting zombie) prompting him to divulge some dark secrets. Saiga, as the man in black calls himself, is the sole survivor of a family of magicians from the 1880s. Not long before the murders, a team of archaeologists unearthed their burial grounds, accidentally freeing the spirit of an evil witch, who is intent on possessing the body of Misa to gain enormous occult powers. Only Misa, with her trusty magical pendant, can save herself and stop the witch. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Shimako Sato directs this school-themed horror flick featuring Satan worship, lesbian orgies, and buckets of blood. Misa Kuroi (Kimika Yoshino) is a doe-eyed transfer student with a shadowy past. She soon finds a friend in the class president Mizuki Kurabashi (Miho Kanno), and a suitor in hunky soccer star Shina (Shuma). Little do her newfound friends know that she is an itinerate witch who travels from school to school dispelling the work of the devil. When Kurabashi tries to tell Misa about the rumored lesbian encounters between their homeroom teacher Ms. Shirai (Mio Takaki) and various classmates, the lass is suddenly struck down by a blinding pain. Misa immediately suspects black magic. As the film progresses, Misa and eleven of her classmates find themselves locked in school as some malevolent force kills them, one by one, until the film's final fiery clash between the forces of good and evil. This film was based on a popular horror Manga by Shinichi Koga. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide