General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Always: Sunset on Third Street '64 (ALWAYS 三丁目の夕日'64)

Always: Sunset on Third Street '64 (ALWAYS 三丁目の夕日'64, romanized Always Sanchome no yuhi 64, released internationally as ALWAYS -Sunset on Third Street- 3) is a 2012 Japanese drama film directed by Takashi Yamazaki, the third entry in the film series adapted from Ryohei Saigan's manga San-chome no Yuhi.³ It was released in Japan by Toho on January 21, 2012, and was the first film in the series produced in 3D.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	January 21, 2012, distributed by Toho¹
Director and script	Directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who also handled VFX; screenplay by Yamazaki and Ryota Kosawa³
Source	Ryohei Saigan's manga San-chome no Yuhi, serialized in Shogakukan's Big Comic Original³
Setting	Showa 39 (1964), the year of the Tokyo Olympics, five years after the previous film³
Format	First film in the series shot and screened in 3D; CinemaScope (1:2.35), Dolby 5.1ch²^•¹
Runtime	142 minutes per the Japanese Film Database, Pia, and JustWatch; eiga.com lists 144 minutes¹^•⁴^•⁵
Music and theme song	Score by Naoki Sato; theme song "Good Luck" (グッドラック) by BUMP OF CHICKEN, as with the previous film³

Spoilers

Story and cast

The story is set in the fictional downtown district of Yuhi-cho Third Street as Tokyo fills with construction of buildings and expressways ahead of the Olympics, described as the first Olympics ever held in Asia.³ The novelist Ryunosuke Chagawa (Hiroshi Yoshizawa) has married Hiromi (Koyuki), and the two live with the now high-school-aged Junnosuke; Hiromi is pregnant, and a corner of the Chagawa shop has been converted into the izakaya "Shin Yamafuji" that she runs. Chagawa, the lead writer for the boys' magazine Boken Shonen Book, is losing readers to a new writer, Akira Midonuma, and slipping into a slump. Across the street, the Suzuki Auto repair shop run by Norifumi Suzuki (Shinichi Tsutsumi) with his wife Tomoe, son Ippei, and live-in employee Mutsko (Maki Horikita) is expanding, and Mutsko is courting the young doctor Kikakutaro Kikichi. News of the death of Chagawa's father Rintaro reaches him, and the two plotlines drive the film.³^•⁹

The principal cast returned from the earlier films: Hiroshi Yoshizawa, Shinichi Tsutsumi, Koyuki, Maki Horikita, Masako Motai, Hiroshi Abe's fellow regulars Yu Aoi's colleagues aside, the returning ensemble included Hiroshi Miura's screen peers Takako Matsu's contemporaries Hiroko Yakushimaru and Tomohiro Miura's namesake Kenji's world, with Ken Mitsuishi, Hiroshi Omori, and others joining. New cast members included Masaki Suda's contemporaries Masaki Suda's seniors Moriyama Mirai, Omori Nao, Atsuko Takahata, and Kikakutari Yonekura's peer Naoto Takenaka's colleague Kiyoshiro Imawano's generation actor Mikijun Yonekura.³^•⁴ Because the same actors carried the roles across the trilogy, the child actors' real growth is reflected in the story, with Ippei and Junnosuke now written as high school students, a change the original author approved.⁷^•⁹

Place in the series

The film closes a trilogy. The first film, Always: Sunset on Third Street, opened in November 2005 and became an unusually long-running hit, sweeping awards including the Japan Academy Prize; the sequel Always: Zoku San-chome no Yuhi followed two years later and outgrossed it.³ In Japanese box-office terms, the sequel earned 4.56 billion yen against the first film's 3.23 billion yen.⁶ The 2012 film was positioned as the concluding chapter, set in 1964, the year the Tokyo Olympics were held.⁷

While the first two films stayed close to the source manga and depicted the downtown Tokyo of Showa 33 to 34, the third film moves the story five years forward into an original screenplay. A reviewer for eiga.com described the result as landing cleanly as the trilogy's final chapter and called it the series' best work, while noting that the script retains the convenient plotting and heavy-handed direction of the earlier films.⁸

Production and technology

Yamazaki, who directed, co-wrote, and supervised the VFX, worked again with the production company ROBOT and the visual-effects house Shirogumi. The film recreates the high-growth-era Tokyo cityscape with CG, inserting period items such as the jet contrails of the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony and the newly opened Tokaido Shinkansen.³^•¹⁰ It was shot in the real 3D method used for Avatar, and the production adopted the 3ALITY TECHNICA 3D camera system, the same system later used on The Amazing Spider-Man.¹¹^•⁹ Shirogumi's production team introduced a color management system for the film's workflow.¹²

The production committee behind the film comprised Nippon Television, ROBOT, Shogakukan, VAP, Toho, Dentsu, Yomiuri Telecasting, Shuji Abe's office, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Shirogumi, and the NTV-affiliated regional stations STV, MMT, SDT, CTV, HTV, and FBS.³

Reception and festival showings

The film screened in the Spring Showcase section of the 2012 Hawaii International Film Festival, the Japan Film Week section of the 2012 Shanghai International Film Festival, and the Vision Express section of the 2012 Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival.¹ It was also the opening screening work of the 2012 Beijing/Shanghai Japanese Film Week.¹³ On the Japanese review aggregation site Kinenote it held an average reader score of 77.8 out of 100 from 940 users, and eiga.com users rated it 3.9 out of 5 across 86 reviews.¹⁴^•⁵ A 2025 survey on which films convey family love placed the Always series first, with 91 responses.¹⁵

Home viewing

As of an October 2026 survey, all three films in the series share the same distribution status in Japan: flat-rate streaming on U-NEXT (monthly 2,189 yen with a 31-day free trial) and Hulu (1,320 yen), per-title rental on Amazon Prime Video (HD 400 yen), FOD Premium (400 coins), Lemino and TELASA (440 yen), and YouTube, plus DVD mail rental from TSUTAYA DISCAS at 110 yen per disc for older titles. Netflix, DMM TV, d Anime Store, Disney+, ABEMA, and TVer did not carry the films.⁶ JustWatch's check of 79 services in September 2026 likewise found the film streaming on U-NEXT with rental on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and FOD, and no free option.¹⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026