Tokyo Godfathers

Satoshi Kon's atypical holiday tale deals with our three main vagabonds and a choice deeply affecting them. Despite what level in life you find yourself, humans share similar basic emotions or feelings. For Gin, Hana, and the less than cheery Miyuki, an unexpected find makes them confront their past whether they like it or not. Memories flow bringing times of happiness, regret, pain, and questions of what could've been. There's a great character richness in this darker, grimier side of Tokyo, but Kon also manages to put in lots of random, humorous events especially by cameos from minor citizens. Plus, how could you not laugh with Hana's feminine wiles and that manly voice! There's a strong sense of karma here with "what goes around comes around". Doing nice things and you most likely will be rewarded. However, turn your back or refusing to help someone in need may come back to haunt you when you are stuck with no one to turn to. Hey, maybe it's never too late to learn a lesson, no matter how much it hurts.

Satoshi Kon's not presenting an Aesop's fable here, but like in life, sometimes doing a good deed is the best reward in itself.

No spoilers - you just have to see it. Satoshi Kon continues his directorial success with Tokyo Godfathers. Like Perfect Blue and Millennium actress, TG wows the watcher immediately with the attention to detail. The scenes are exquisitely painted - when it is snowing you can almost smell it and feel the stillness. And the characters expressions convey emotions expertly by subtlety or caricature as occasion demands. Leave behind your Hollywood ideas of what a movie or worse, a cartoon should be. And then go see his previous two films as well. Satoshi Kon's films are true works of art.

This is a Christmas story told from a different perspective, that is strangely familiar. The story revolves around 3 homeless people (a middle aged man name Gin, a homosexual cross-dresser name Hana, and a teenage girl named Miyuki) who discover a newborn baby in the garbage. The events follow the three as they decided what to do with the baby, trying to find the parents, dealing with their own pasts,etc (Christmas seems to be an introspective time - along with all holidays). After the first 30 minutes of the movie, everything becomes strangely predictable yet still moving and meaningful. The movie is laced with "coincidences" and tons of Christmas references. It touches on numerous subjects including family, guilt, redemption,etc. Satoshi Kon delivers another beautiful looking movie with a humanistic storyline. And in true Satoshi Kon fashion adds a touch of the bizarre to shake up the traditional story. This movie will be added to my Christmas holiday viewing list, which gets me into the XMAS spirit.

-Celluloid Rehab

Having suffered through the painfully pretentious and shallow, pseudo-Lynchian mess of Perfect Blue, I was understandably skeptical about watching another film by Satoshi Kon (I have not yet seen Millennium Actress, but am now quite intrigued to do so). Tokyo Godfathers (a title which at first struck me as belonging most probably to a pseudo-psychological mafia thriller) was not only a pleasant surprise; it was the best anime feature I've seen in many years, probably since Ghost in the Shell, excluding anything by Hayao Miyazaki. Like the classic Grave of the Fireflies, Tokyo Godfathers struck me as unusual in the fact that it draws much from European cinema – English, Irish, German or Italian – while most commercial anime features try to mimic American film-making. But while Grave of the Fireflies was painfully sad and bleak, Tokyo Godfathers is irresistibly charming, and manages to be funny and incredibly touching at once like few anime films – few animated films, at that – ever achieve.

Tokyo Godfathers is remarkably non-violent, as pacifistic perhaps as Miyazaki's films. You won't find any grand futuristic structures or fantastical creatures here; in fact, the animation may seem crude at first. But the characters are where the film really hits its mark. Kon triumphs, like in his excellent series Paranoia Agent, by not succumbing to the accepted prototypes and standards of how characters should look in an anime film; the lead characters in the film are all gorgeously ugly, in a way that even Miyazaki had not yet dared to do. Even the child character, Miyuki, is chubby, and not cute and beautiful in the way little girls 'should' be, by the unwritten laws of anime. Thus, Kon's characters are believable and true to life; they are three anti-heroes, outcasts from society, each running away from their pasts. Especially charming is Hana (AKA 'Uncle Bag'), the golden-hearted transvestite, who supplies much of the film's comic relief but also some of its most touching moments.

Tokyo Godfathers – despite some far-fetched but amusing plot twists and coincidences – is at its core a very simple story, a beautiful little story about family, love and friendship. Few anime films are so unpretending; and thus, few anime films manage to be so strong. Watch Tokyo Godfathers; you'll laugh, you'll cry. And believe you me, ten minutes into it you'll forget it was ever animated.

I was able to see "Tôkyô Godfathers" at its premiere in New York. Sadly, the film was not added to the IMDb until months later, so I've had to sit on my comments for some time.

I'm a big fan of director Satoshi Kon. Both of his previous films feature stories and issues not normally seen in animated films. "Godfathers" continues this happy trend and goes even further by covering subjects not normally associated with Japan, period. Homelessness, immigrants, and homosexuality all play key elements in this tale.

Perhaps the biggest difference here is the comedy, something Kon's previous films did not approach. "Perfect Blue" was a dark thriller and "Sennen Joyû" was more of a tearjerker. "Godfathers" is played for laughs, which for me weakened the movie a little bit. Some of the more outrageous moments made the other theatergoers crack up, but I felt it was a little too silly at times.

While I would describe "Tôkyô Godfathers" as the weakest of Kon's three films to date, that's hardly a knock since his first two are among my favorites. "Godfathers" was just missing something, but I still openly recommend it to anyone, regardless of your disposition towards anime.