Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Christmas is often stylised as a magical time of the year, and although ultimately that’s the case in the 2003 outing Tokyo Godfathers, the lead characters probably would not agree at the outset. Three homeless people have banded together into a loose, argumentative family unit, the teenage runaway Miyuki, gruff alcoholic and apparent victim of nominative determinism Gin, and maternal former drag queen Hana, whose stretched sense of togetherness is tested further when they find an abandoned newborn baby in the garbage on Christmas Eve.
While Gin’s looking to immediately go to the authorities, it seems Hana is looking on this as something of a miracle and wants to keep the child – after all, the previous parents clearly weren’t parenting correctly. This soon fades, and over the course of the Christmas holidays they seek to care for and ultimately reunite the kid with their family. The investigation itself will, however, uncover more about their own characters and pasts than that of the kid, often prompted by moments of such extreme coincidence that maybe thinking of it in terms of miracles is not completely unfounded.
I certainly don’t have anything negative to say about Tokyo Godfathers – the closest I can get to that is thinking that the final revelation about the true parents of the newborn makes for a bit of a last act dramabomb that ultimately I don’t think is needed, because the the primary reasons to enjoy the film, aside from the usual Kon table stakes of it simply being a beautiful thing visually and audibly, is the interplay between Miyuki, Gin and Hana, which is rarely less than delightful.
That said, Tokyo Godfathers is perhaps a more straightforward narrative than you’d have come to expect from Kon, at least inasmuch as while it does provide a few revelations and twists, they come through good ol’ fashioned character development rather than through smashing realities together and having surprises fall out. It’s not exactly Kon’s take on The Straight Story, but it’s at least a straighter story than his others.
As such, there’s probably an argument to be made that this is Kon’s least interesting work, at least narratively. However, there’s an equally valid counterargument to be made that the absence of world-bending frippery has allowed the characters the time and space to be a more rounded and well-realised ensemble than in any of this other films. I suppose you pays yer money and takes yer choice.
However, as mentioned previously, the only valid choice is to watch all of Kon’s films, as they, Tokyo Godfathers included, come with our seal of huge enjoyability. Well, figuratively speaking. We couldn’t get distribution for the actual seals. With its roster of colourful characters, in both personality and design sense, and a delight to spend ninety odd minutes with.