Kon was inspired by the 1948 American film 3 Godfathers to make the film.[3] Unlike Kon's other films, Tokyo Godfathers is grounded more in realism.[4][5] However, as is typical of Kon's work, the film includes devices that are not straightforward, and Kon himself called it a twisted sentimental story.[6]
One Christmas Eve, three homeless people—a middle-aged alcoholic named Gin, a transgender woman named Hana, and a dependent teenage runaway named Miyuki—discover an abandoned newborn while searching through the garbage for presents. On the baby is a note asking the finder to take good care of her and a key, leading to a bag with clues to the parents' identity. The trio sets out to find the parents. Hana names the baby Kiyoko, based on the Japanese translation of "Silent Night" literally meaning "pure child". Outside a cemetery, the group encounters a yakuza boss trapped under his car. That day, his daughter will marry the owner of the club where Kiyoko's mother used to work. At the wedding reception, the groom tells them that the baby's mother is a former bar girl named Sachiko. He gives them Sachiko's address, but the party is interrupted when a Latino hitman attempts to shoot the bride's father. The hitman kidnaps Miyuki and baby Kiyoko, holds them hostage and takes them to his home. There, Miyuki befriends the hitman's wife, and they begin bonding despite their language barrier. During one of their talks, Miyuki confesses to fleeing her home after stabbing her controlling father when her beloved cat Angel went missing, believing that he had gotten rid of it.
Hana searches for Miyuki and Kiyoko while Gin takes care of an elderly homeless man who is dying in the street. After giving Gin a little red bag, the old man peacefully passes away. Some teenagers show up and beat up Gin and the man's corpse. Meanwhile, Hana finds the girls, and, looking for a place to stay, they go to Angel Tower, a club where Hana had worked at before assaulting a rude and intoxicated customer years ago. Gin, rescued by another member of the club, is also there. Here, it is revealed that Hana became homeless following a lover's accidental death. The trio later discover that Sachiko's house has been torn down. They are informed of the unhappy relationship between Sachiko and her husband, who is a gambling alcoholic. Miyuki then sees a message from her father in the newspaper informing her that Angel has returned home. Realizing her mistake, Miyuki attempts to call her father, only to panic and hang up before she can say a word. The group rests at a store until they are told to leave by the clerk. Hana collapses, requiring the group to stay at a hospital. There, Gin finds his estranged daughter, who is also named Kiyoko, working as a nurse. Hana berates Gin in front of his daughter and storms out of the hospital, with Miyuki following behind with baby Kiyoko in hand. Hana and Miyuki find Sachiko about to jump off a bridge. Sachiko insists that her husband got rid of the baby without her knowledge, and Hana and Miyuki return the baby to her.
Gin finds Sachiko's husband, who confirms that Kiyoko was stolen by Sachiko from the hospital. They chase after Sachiko and Kiyoko. Miyuki chases Sachiko to the top of a building. Sachiko reveals she became pregnant hoping it would bring her closer to her husband. When her baby was stillborn, she decided to kidnap Kiyoko from the hospital, thinking in her grief the baby was hers. Sachiko jumps off the building, but Miyuki manages to catch her before she falls, but then Sachiko accidentally drops Kiyoko. Hana jumps off the building, catching the baby and clinging to a banner on the side of the building. As the banner begins to give way, a gust of wind miraculously slows its descent, allowing Hana and Kiyoko to land safely on the ground. Hana, Miyuki, and Gin are taken to the hospital. During their reunion, Miyuki drops the old man's red bag on the floor, revealing a winning lottery ticket. Kiyoko's real parents want to ask the trio to become her godparents. When a police inspector introduces them, the inspector is revealed to be Miyuki's father.
During the production of Millennium Actress, a producer from Madhouse asked Kon if he had any plans for his next film. After completing the film, Kon took two months to write and submit a brief proposal, which was immediately accepted by Madhouse.[15]
The original story and screenplay were written by director Satoshi Kon, and co-written by Keiko Nobumoto, known as the screenwriter of the TV drama series Hakusen Nagashi and the TV anime Cowboy Bebop, and the creator of the TV anime Wolf's Rain.[6] Kon had previously asked Nobumoto to write the script for Perfect Blue, but was turned down at that time, citing her busy schedule.[16] The animation director was Kenichi Konishi, who had worked on My Neighbors the Yamadas while at Studio Ghibli, and the Studio director was Shogo Furuya.[6]
While the previous two works focused on the progression of the story, this work prioritized the theatricality of the characters and their presence above all else in both the scenario and storyboarding.[6] Although the story and theatrics are quite comical in appearance, the film was created not to return to the old-fashioned manga interpretation, but to aim for a manga interpretation that lies ahead after going through real-oriented animation.[6]
The film was produced in digital technology, and all of Kon's subsequent works are digital animation.[17]
Themes
The motif of Tokyo Godfathers is "coincidence" and "family," and the rough plot is about "three main characters who are not related by blood but live together as if they were a real family, and through a miraculous coincidence triggered by a baby, each of them recovers the connection with their original family that they have lost.[4]
Tokyo Godfathers does not adopt an overt "mixing of fiction and reality" motif, but a careful look reveals that the relationship between "fiction and reality" is conscious in this film as well.[6][18] What Kon was conscious of in his direction was "meaningful coincidence", in other words, to create a chain of miraculous events to move the story forward.[3] Kon writes in the press sheet, "This film is an attempt to restore in a healthy way the 'miracles and coincidences' that have been pushed into the other world by the weapons of scientific logic," and just as that sentence says, "meaningful coincidences" and "impossible events" happen one after another in Tokyo Godfathers .[18] In other words, the idea of this film is that the "fiction" of "miracles and coincidences" can be found in the seemingly real life of the homeless in Tokyo. The director's aim is to portray a series of events that could never happen in reality with a sense of reality and persuasiveness that makes it seem possible.[18]
Kon said: "Homeless people, as the term implies, 'have no home,' but in this film, it is not just 'people who have lost their homes,' but also 'people who have lost their families,' and in that sense, this film is a story about recovering lost relationships with families."[4][19] Kon chose homeless people as his protagonists because he had long been interested in the lives of homeless people.[20] One of the triggers for Kon to come up with Tokyo Godfathers was the idea that they are born even in times of affluence, and at the same time, they are supported because the world is affluent, so they may be said to be kept alive by the city. The other idea was the idea of animism in the city, that even the buildings and alleys of the city may have a soul, and that the main characters step into the other world that overlaps the city. Based on a story in which three homeless people living like pseudo-families pick up a baby and try to return it to her parents, Kon imagined a story in which the trio enter a "different world" where strange coincidences occur in succession, and they recover their relationship with their families and society through their adventures, while another protagonist named "Tokyo" is watching over them.[20] In fact, "landscapes that look like faces," in which the outdoor units of air conditioners and windows are used as eyes and mouths, are embedded in various cuts, which could be said to be the figures of the gods of the city staring at the main characters.[21] These "faces" are not visible from the perspective of the characters, and only the audience can notice them.[21] Kon has also created a fiction here. The film's background is a trick of overlapping two layers of information: "the city scenery = reality for the characters" and "the scenery with faces that only the audience can see = a kind of fiction", even though it is the same single picture.[21]
The setting of the three main characters, who are not blood related, had the condition that they look like a family.[20] It was not so much an exaggeration as a suggestion of a "new image of the family in the future," but simply a suggestion that Kon's idea of a family with this kind of relationship might be acceptable. Kon's idea was to suggest that it is necessary to find a way for each person to have their own family, rather than a standardized model of what a new family should look like.[19] Kon said that he did not intend to portray homeless people as representatives of weakness and unhappiness, or as a hindrance to society, and that the three are symbols of everyone's weaknesses and regrets rather than real homeless people.[20] He also said they are unhappy not because they are homeless, but because their lives have lost their former glow, and that happiness lies in the process of recovery, which is the story of this work itself.[20]
Release
This movie was released in North America by Sony Pictures on December 29, 2003, in an unsuccessful attempt to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.[22] The movie was released on sub-only DVD on April 13, 2004,[23] and they planned to use DTS for the DVD, but was ultimately scrapped.[24] Announced on December 19, 2019, international animation licensor, GKIDS, in partnership with the original US distributor Destination Films, released the movie on March 9, 2020, with a brand new 4K restoration and a new English dub.[25]
Reception
The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 92% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 76 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The critics consensus states, "Beautiful and substantive, Tokyo Godfathers adds a moving – and somewhat unconventional – entry to the animated Christmas canon."[26] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[27]Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "harrowing and heartwarming."[28]
Susan Napier points out that Tokyo Godfathers is part of a trend in anime and manga as depicting families in an increasingly dark fashion, showcasing the problems with traditional families, and attempts by people to construct a "pseudo-family" out of an increasingly fragmented and isolating modern Japanese society.[29] Despite its seemingly traditional ending, the film offers a more radical version of family. Throughout the story these three homeless vagabonds unknowingly form a "pseudo-family" to protect themselves from the outside world and to overcome their personal demons.[29]
Perfect Blue is a 1997 Japanese psychological horror-thriller anime film directed by Satoshi Kon. It is loosely based on the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, with a screenplay by Sadayuki Murai. Featuring the voices of Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shiho Niiyama, Masaaki Okura, Shinpachi Tsuji and Emiko Furukawa, the plot follows a member of a Japanese idol group who retires from music to pursue an acting career. As she becomes a victim of stalking by her obsessive fan, gruesome murders take place, and she begins losing her grip on reality. The film deals with the blurring of the line between fantasy and reality, a commonly found theme in Kon's other works, such as Millennium Actress (2001) and Paprika (2006).
Satoshi Kon was a Japanese film director, animator, screenwriter and manga artist from Sapporo, Hokkaido, and a member of the Japanese Animation Creators Association (JAniCA). He was a graduate of the Graphic Design department of the Musashino Art University. He is best known for his acclaimed anime films Perfect Blue (1997), Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), and Paprika (2006), and the TV series Paranoia Agent (2004). He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 46 on August 24, 2010.
Millennium Actress is a 2001 Japanese animated drama film co-written and directed by Satoshi Kon and produced by Madhouse. Loosely based on the lives of actresses Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine, it tells the story of two documentary filmmakers investigating the life of a retired acting legend. As she tells them the story of her life, the borderline between cinema and reality gradually becomes blurred.
Paprika is a 2006 Japanese adult animated surrealistic science fantasy psychological thriller film directed by Satoshi Kon. The film is based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Japanese author Yasutaka Tsutsui. It is Kon's fourth and final feature film before his death in 2010. The script was co-written by Kon and Seishi Minakami, who also wrote for Kon's TV series Paranoia Agent, the character design and animation director was Masashi Ando, the music was composed by Kon's frequent collaborator Susumu Hirasawa, and the art director was Nobutaka Ike, who worked on all of Kon's works. Japanese animation studio Madhouse animated and produced the film. The Japanese voice cast featured Megumi Hayashibara, Tōru Emori, Katsunosuke Hori, Tōru Furuya, Akio Ōtsuka, Kōichi Yamadera and Hideyuki Tanaka.
Masao Maruyama is a Japanese anime producer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Madhouse, as well as the founder of MAPPA and Studio M2 animation studios. He is the current Chairman of MAPPA and President of Studio M2 and Board member of N LITE Japan.
Takeshi Honda is a Japanese animator, designer, and animation director.
Yumika Hayashi was a Japanese AV idol and pink film actress. She earned the title of "Japan's Original Adult Video Queen" during a 16-year career in which she starred in nearly 200 AVs and appeared in over 180 films. Hayashi was also a prominent pink film actress; she was the subject of a 1997 documentary and the recipient of the Best Actress award at the Pink Grand Prix ceremony in 2004 as well as receiving the Special Career Award the following year. Her death on June 28, 2005, one day after her 35th birthday, ended one of the longest careers in the AV field and made front-page news in Tokyo. Following her death, Hayashi was awarded a second Special Career Award at the 2006 Pink Grand Prix ceremony and became the subject of several theatrical retrospectives and a 382-page biography.
Yōko Tsukasa is a Japanese actress. During her 60 years spanning career, she worked with directors such as Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Akira Kurosawa. For her role in The Kii River (1966) she was awarded the Blue Ribbon Award, Mainichi Film Award and Kinema Junpo Award for Best Actress.
Sakura Ando is a Japanese actress. She is best known for appearing in critically-acclaimed films such as Sion Sono's Love Exposure, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters (2018) and Monster (2023), and Takashi Yamazaki's Academy Award–winning kaiju epic Godzilla Minus One (2023).
Eri Fukatsu is a Japanese actress. She won the award for best actress at the 18th Yokohama Film Festival for Haru and the best actress award at the 2010 Montreal World Film Festival for her performance in Villain. She also received acclaim for her role in the Japanese TV series Bayside Shakedown and the subsequent spin-off films of the series. In 1988, she starred in "Christmas Express" commercials for the Central Japan Railway Company.
Masashi Ando is a Japanese animator, character designer and filmmaker.
Haru Kuroki is a Japanese actress. She gained international recognition by winning Silver Bear at Berlin International Film Festival in 2014, for her performance in Yoji Yamada's film The Little House.
World Apartment Horror is a 1991 Japanese comedy horror film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, with a screenplay by Otomo and Keiko Nobumoto from a story by Satoshi Kon. The film stars Sabu as a yakuza henchman who encounters the language barrier and evil spirits in his attempts to evict a Tokyo apartment full of foreigners.
Takahiro Miki is a Japanese film, television and music video director.
Nana Komatsu is a Japanese actress and model. She is best known for her roles in The World of Kanako, Destruction Babies, Drowning Love, The Black Devil and the White Prince, My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday, After the Rain, Farewell Song, Threads: Our Tapestry of Love and Sakura. She made her Hollywood debut role in the film Silence.
Suzu Hirose is a Japanese actress and model.
Hana Sugisaki is a Japanese actress who was previously signed to Stardust Promotion. Her former stage name was Hana Kajiura.
Hokkaido Kushiro Koryo High School is a high school in Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan, founded in 1912. Hokkaido Kushiro High School is one of high schools administrated by Hokkaido.
Sunao Katabuchi is a Japanese animation director, screenwriter, and storyboard artist. He is director of Contrail Co. Ltd. He has been a part-time lecturer at Nihon University College of Art since 2006, and a Project Professor at the college of Art of at the same university since 2018. He has also served as a part-time lecturer at the Graduate School of Tokyo University of the Arts since 2013. He is married to a fellow director of anime Chie Uratani.
"One" is the thirteenth single by Japanese singer Aimer, released on October 11, 2017 under SME Records. Written by Aimer and Rui Momota, the single peaked at No. 2 on Oricon's singles charts and No. 3 on Billboard Japan's Hot 100.
1 2 Napier, Susan (2008). "From Spiritual Fathers to Tokyo Godfathers". In Akiko Hashimoto; John W. Traphagan (eds.). Imagined Families, Lived Families. New York: SUNY Press. pp.33–49. ISBN978-0-7914-7578-2.
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