Dr. Coto’s Clinic Movie Deluxe Edition Blu-ray

And still, we live here.

The film Dr. Coto’s Clinic comes to Blu-ray to mark the twentieth anniversary of the television drama’s debut. Remembered as a defining medical human drama, the original 2003 series reached a peak audience rating of 22.3%; the 2006 season surpassed it with 25.9%. Sixteen years after the previous series, the long-awaited new film became a major hit in 2022.

The clinic’s familiar world welcomes a novice doctor and a nurse who follows in Ayaka’s footsteps, bringing a new breeze to its long history. The film depicts Dr. Coto’s Clinic as it is today.

The deluxe edition includes extensive, exclusive making-of footage and interviews, along with a special photo book. Look out for the overwhelming beauty of Yonaguni Island in Okinawa, which once again provided the filming location after the television series.

Shikina is a beautiful, isolated island at the western edge of Japan, six hours from the mainland by ferry. Nineteen years ago, Kensuke Goto—Coto—arrived there from Tokyo. Ever since, as the island’s only doctor, he has shouldered responsibility for every resident’s life.

Over many years, the islanders have learned to trust Coto, and Coto has learned to trust them. He has become irreplaceable to the island: part of its family. A few years ago, he married Ayaka Hoshino, the nurse who had supported him for so long. Now seven months pregnant, she will soon make Coto a father.

Coto runs the clinic with Ayaka, Wada, novice doctor Hanto Oda, and Nami Nishino, an island-born nurse who joined a few years earlier. But in 2022, as in many parts of Japan, Shikina faces a shrinking and ageing population.

A plan emerges to integrate medical services with neighbouring islands struggling financially. Coto is asked whether he would leave the island to work at a regional hospital. That would mean departing the place he has called home for so many years. Although he understands that the plan may benefit the island’s future, he cannot bring himself to answer.

Then a typhoon approaches. Shikina lies in the path of many typhoons each year, but reports reaching the local office describe damage beyond anything imagined.

Emergency patients arrive at the clinic one after another. Forced to cope with limited resources, it becomes a field hospital. Once again, Coto and his colleagues must confront the kindness of the islanders they consider family, the preciousness of human life, and the conflicts these bring.

Nature can be cruel. New life grows with the passage of time; other things fade away, and reality stands in the way. The island embraces it all, and its people live there.

Extras include trailers, television commercials, event footage, the release special Dr. Coto’s Clinic: A Reunion After Sixteen Years, the special making-of Sixteen Years and the Bonds Between Us, and interviews.