Anime Club: Tokyo Godfathers

Hello everybody! For this most festive anime club, we have the Christmas anime film Tokyo Godfathers.

TOKYO GODFATHERS

 

STARRING: Tōru Emori, Yoshiaki Umegaki, Aya Okamoto

DIRECTOR: Satoshi Kon

GENRE: Drama

YEAR: 2003

COUNTRY: Japan

Christmas in Tokyo, Japan. Three homeless friends: a young girl, a transvestite, and a middle-aged bum. While foraging through some trash, they find an abandoned newborn. Hana, the transvestite with delusions of being a mother, convinces the others to keep it overnight. The next day, using a key found with the baby, they start tracking down the parents, with many adventures along the way.

Tokyo Godfathers has moved up the shortlist of anime films not created by Miyazaki almost to the top. The film is a fantastic outlook on urban life, specifically being homeless in Tokyo. The characters are so out there and unique that I actually cared what happened to them. That’s out there even for me in an anime film. The animation isn’t anything special, but its incredibly traditional and it works.

Tokyo Godfathers is a very slow film, so be prepared to sit through what feels like could be a three hour film but with only a one and a half hour run time. While the characters are unique, I feel that some of their adventures could have been cut for some more plot related ones. Nonetheless, Tokyo Godfathers had become one of my favorites.

PROS:

•  Characters.
• Story
• Urban life outlook.

CONS:

• Pacing
• Non-plot related tangents

 SCORE: 7.0 / 10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q6mcx2qF4Q

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