Tokyo Godfathers

2003. Movie. 90 min. Comedy/drama. dir Satoshi Kon. scr Satoshi Kon, Keiko Nobumoto. -bc

Tokyo Godfathers tells a heartwarming story about three homeless people who discover an infant girl in a dumpster on Christmas Eve and spend the next two days on the streets of Tokyo searching for the mother who abandoned the baby. Deeply etched characters, sharply realistic settings and design, and an exciting, suspenseful, and funny story make this one of the first great anime movies of the 21st century.

On Christmas Eve in Tokyo, a loosely knit family of homeless people, a middle-aged alcoholic named Gin, a faded transvestite named Hana, and a runaway teenage girl named Miyuki, find an abandoned infant in a dumpster. Over the course of three nights and two days, they follow various clues to seek out the baby’s mother and father. Their journey takes them all over Tokyo—from a Shinjuku shantytown to a yakuza wedding, an immigrant back alley, a drag club, a hospital, and a cemetery, among other picturesque sights. Help comes from unexpected sources and coincidences abound as each of the three sees their own life story reflected in those of the people they encounter and the people they are seeking. Eventually, just when it looks like the problem is solved, a new revelation turns everything on its head, endangering the baby and leading to a climactic life-or-death chase involving a truck, a cab, a bicycle, the police, an elevator, and an office building rooftop.

Satoshi Kon is one of the few directors in anime who insists on making his characters look Japanese and not Western. This is as evident here as in his two earlier features, Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress. All of the characters are, for the most part, very realistically drawn, while only Hana, the transvestite, is in any way cartoonish, with exaggerated features and gestures. But then “she” is also much more expressive of her emotions than the other characters.

The characters all travel through hyperrealistic settings in contemporary Tokyo, a living, breathing, snow-covered cityscape filled with streets, alleyways, skyscrapers, storefronts, taxicabs, parks, and public buildings that make viewers feel as if they’ve stopped for a visit in the real place.

Keiko Nobumoto cowrote the screenplay with director Satoshi Kon. She was chief writer for Cowboy Bebop and created and wrote Wolf’s Rain. She also wrote Macross Plus, and was scenario supervisor for the Kingdom Hearts video game.

Tokyo Godfathers is a story about reunion, going from homeless back to home, about how the circles of our lives go round and round and intersect with others’ circles before coming back around to our own. Every character’s story here, whether true or ultimately false, is reflected in another’s, as in a lie Gin tells about his family turning up as the true story of a character he encounters, and Gin’s own family history reflected in that of the couple the “godfathers” are seeking. The characters all have to confront the situation that led them to where they are and reflect on what they have to do to change it. There may be one improbable coincidence after another, but it’s all in the service of union and reunion.

When this film came out, many observers wondered why the story was chosen to be animated rather than filmed as a live-action comedy, given the highly realistic settings and characters. One can argue that the audience’s disbelief, when faced with such a pileup of coincidences, is more easily suspended through the aid of animation, which also allows for more far-fetched (and quite funny) bits of action in the final chase sequence and rooftop struggle, with Gin showing impossible endurance for a man in his condition. With animation, we can accept a deus ex machina moment such as the act of God that allows the miraculous rescue at the end and not feel like we’ve had to compromise at all. Such a resolution is beautiful and satisfying, but might have been too hard to swallow in live-action.

With Tokyo Godfathers, Satoshi Kon cemented his position as the newest great anime director to emerge at a time when even the best of the veterans in the industry were having trouble making innovative new theatrical films.

There are many notable scenes, but one which really stands out as something of a first in anime is the one in which Miyuki, having been taken hostage briefly by a Spanish-speaking hit man, winds up in an apartment with the hit man’s wife, who breastfeeds the abandoned baby Miyuki has been carrying, and the two try to communicate with a mix of Japanese, English, and Spanish.

The director and his staff took photos of locations all over Tokyo and then used those photos to help design the varied urban spaces that the characters pass through on their search. The homeless settlement in a public park is based on an actual homeless camp found at the foot of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. When Miyuki spends part of an evening with a Spanish-speaking immigrant mother, it’s in a back alley community based on one that actually exists in Tokyo.

Satoshi Kon has indicated in interviews that his inspiration for the film was the Hollywood Western Three Godfathers (1948), directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, in which three wanted outlaws who flee into the desert find a newborn baby in the wreckage of a wagon train attacked by Indians and decide to care for it.

profanity There is occasional profanity in the subtitles.