Tokyo Godfathers: My New Favorite Christmas Movie

Christmas time marks a period where gifts are exchanged, meals are shared, and movies are watched. Some movies are comedies, adventures, tragedies, and horror, while others are about love and family. Satoshi Kon’s 2003 Tokyo Godfathers is all of them and everything in between. What is surprising and admirable is how much it has to say with a short run time of 92 minutes. Tokyo Godfathers feels like a passion project regardless of its influence by the 1948 American film “3 Godfathers”. In this project, Kon explores a thematic world that is best transmitted through his fantastic work in animation. 

The movie follows 3 people who might look physically homeless but when put together, under one of many wide shots, they have found a home in each other, like a second family. During one of their searches through pyramids of trash hoping to find food or useful loot, on Christmas Eve they find a baby with a note telling them to raise the baby. For Hana - an ex-drag queen trans-woman - thinks it’s a Christmas miracle, and embraces the baby like her own. Gin - an ex-family man now turned drunk - sees the baby as an inconvenience yet his paternal instincts become more evident as the baby becomes a new member and lastly, Miyuki - a home runaway thinking she can never go back - is torn; half of her connects with the baby and the other is disappointed that another child is a victim of its parents’ neglecting. Ultimately each of them belongs or belonged somewhere else therefore, the central theme is not really about losing a home (hence, homeless) but finding a way back to it. Such a powerful unlying theme that the baby’s journey serves as a catalyst.

Instead of raising the child themselves, the gang of 3 decides it’s best to find the parents of the baby and give it back; find its way back home and give the parents a chance at redemption. This is where the comedy and heartwarming echoes play in. Through some snowy and chilly Tokyo days, the 3 (and a half) go through the subway, a cemetery, an unexpected wedding with a rouge Latino, the hospital, and a house with a sweet mom. However, about else, the comedy hits home due to the cut edits, the out-of-place dialogue, the facial expressions, and the spontaneous haikus from Hana. Finally, they all pull their weight to decipher the clues they have however, things aren’t as simple as they appeared and the plot thickens. But really what drives the movie is the plotlines of each character and the emotional delivery of all of them. 

Aside from the emotional delivery of a robust plotline and witty screenplay, the feature is delivered in a humble and almost raw animation style. It is not polished or strictly detailed and that is not said as a bad thing. Watching it in 2024 feels almost nostalgic. For the most part, the background is blurry and hazy while the magic of the animation is visible in the close-ups of the characters and objects. There is a great extent of facial expressions to show the great range of emotions experienced by the characters. From a viewer's perspective, the surprised facial expression is one of the most notable ones. Almost every character has one and it greatly adds to the viewing experience as it makes the viewer invested in what is about to be revealed.

Like Kon has suggested, our homeless characters aren’t unhappy because they’re homeless and have a certain lifestyle, there’s nothing wrong with that and that shouldn’t be seen as a burden for society but rather they are unhappy because of the life they once had and lost. Something that anybody, regardless of their lifestyle, can relate to. Something that many people who aren’t categorized as “homeless” have experienced. So we are homeless to some extent, we’ve all lost something along the way but what Kon explores here is we find happiness, when we find our way back to family and to a life where we were happy. 

“I’m told they are homeless… Who cares?”

If we choose to find happiness and accept the good and the bad, we will find our way back home.