Tokyo Godfathers - Movie Review

This bundle of joy is a Christmas present sent from God. She's our baby now. Well it sounds a lot weirder the fact we have a crying baby in here. I'm not saying you're wrong, but what can we do about it? Find her parents. You want to find her parents? You're trying to play house when we're three good-for-nothing bums who can't even look after ourselves. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, season's greetings, all of that. If you don't celebrate, I hope you're having a good time off from work or school. I'm excited to talk about a film called Tokyo Godfathers today. This was directed by the late Satoshi Kon, a master. Honestly, when it comes to anime, Satoshi Kon was my favorite filmmaker. Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, the show Paranoia Agent, and Paprika showed a versatility unseen in most filmmakers. He had a knack for Hitchcockian suspense, drama, comedy. This is a Christmas movie, for God's sakes, and Paprika is a cerebral science fiction film about dream technology. The guy knew no bounds when it came to filmmaking. His loss is a true tragedy to people who love art everywhere. But I want to talk about happy things. Tokyo Godfathers is a beautiful, beautiful film. This film's about three homeless people, Gin, Hana, and Miyuki. One night during the Christmas season, while dumpster diving, they find a baby thrown out in the trash. With just a handful of clues pointing them to this baby's parents, they set off on an adventure to find them. Christmas-themed anime is rare, and Tokyo Godfathers is probably my favorite. There's not that many, and this is easily the best of the bunch for me. This film is not just heartwarming, it's very realistic. The film doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the depiction of three homeless people who are trying to do something that's pretty much impossible. Each of these characters are fleshed out considerably. Gin is a former bicyclist who fell into alcoholism and gambling. Hana is a trans woman who dreams of being a mother and sees this baby as a blessing. And so for her, it's really difficult that they're on a journey to find the baby's parents, because this is what she's always wanted. And the fact that she found this baby on Christmas seems like it was destined. But she also knows that she has a responsibility to get this baby to its real parents, unless, of course, her real parents really did just dump her in the trash. Which provides some really great arguments amongst the three of them throughout the film, because they all have different viewpoints about what should happen to this child, even though they all have the same goal. Miyuki is a younger girl who's run away from home after a violent altercation with her father. So none of them are related, and they don't really have that much in common, except for the fact that they're homeless. Something over the course of all of their lives has led them to get away from society. And for this reason, they have a family unit. It's a dysfunctional family. It's certainly not a traditional family, but it's the family that's going to save this baby's life on Christmas. The film also deals with coincidences a lot. For instance, they find a very large man trapped underneath his car, because he forgot to put the parking brake on, and he's trying to keep this car from crushing him. After helping him out of the situation, it turns out that he's a Yakuza boss, which leads them to an extravagant party where they can eat a ton of food, get access to things that are extremely necessary for this baby to survive, as well as get in the middle of a hostage situation, which wouldn't have happened had they not run into a crime boss. This leads Miyuki to a house where the baby can be breastfed. And this is early in the film. I'm not going to get into any spoilers for those who have not seen Tokyo Godfathers. But the film continues with series of events that feel coincidental, that feel sort of like movie logic, and that I would say, well, that's not going to happen in real life if the entire film wasn't about Christmas miracles. You can tell that Satoshi Kon perhaps wanted to make a film about coincidences and chose a Christmas-themed narrative to strengthen that, because that's one of the few things in films where you can kind of be like, all right, they're doing a Christmas miracle thing. Let's deal with it. It's heartwarming, and it makes you feel good. Just let it happen. The film is also really funny. These three characters have excellent banter with one another, and they're extremely likable. And again, I must reiterate that they're all so fleshed out. It's easy to understand why they're in this position, and it's easy to comprehend why they all fled their former lives. As is similar with all Satoshi Kon work, the film is animated gorgeously. The characters are so expressive and instantly recognizable as part of Satoshi Kon's filmography. I also love how there's a few moments in the film where it seems like a Christmas miracle is taking place. Someone shows up wearing an angel costume, and they appear to be glowing, but later you realize that's not exactly the case. So there's moments in the film that play with your perception of a Christmas miracle, or if someone nice is just helping someone out. And the film also doesn't backpedal from showing what is a daily occurrence for many homeless people, when a group of kids beat Gin up and even drag the body of a dead homeless man out of a tent, which is actually really disturbing, and where other films might show those kids in handcuffs later because they're being reprimanded for what they did, this film does not give those characters any repercussions, because that's an everyday occurrence for many homeless people. Satoshi Kon was in every way ahead of his time. It is a true tragedy that he died as early as he did, and I often just dream about what else he could have made. But Tokyo Godfather stands as an excellent anime film and a really fun Christmas movie, if you've never seen it, I would recommend it highly. I'm gonna give Tokyo Godfathers an A. Guys, thank you so much as always for watching. I hope you guys have a really great holiday. If you missed my review for Jingle All The Way, a considerably different Christmas movie, that one's on my channel right now, and I hope you check it out. Guys, thank you again for watching. Have a great rest of your year, and as always, if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.