Unconventional Christmas: Tokyo Godfathers

 

If you are like me, you are probably somewhat desperate for some fresh yuletide entertainment. Sure, The Hallmark Channel offers a seemingly bottomless bowl of copy-and-paste pottage that is their yearly Christmas lineup, but who can stomach that for long? How many times can we watch lazy iterations of the fem-fantasy of the girl boss who travels to the country to find the man of her dreams (who invariably arrives as a rustic but is later revealed to be a former doctor, lawyer, or reclusive entrepreneur)? In the world of Hallmark, love is only for professionals. Well, if you are tired of watching St. Valentine's Day romances thinly disguised as Christmas fare, here is an alternative: Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers.

Seeing that some of the all-time Christmas classics are cartoons (Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to name but a few!), it shouldn't bother anyone that Tokyo Godfathers is itself a Christmas cartoon, if of the Japanese anime variety. Even better, this treat of a yuletide tale was co-written by Keiko Nobumoto, the screenwriter of the rightly famed anime, Cowboy Bebop.

I was unaware of the Cowboy Bebop connection until I researched the movie afterward, but I can now see the similarities and why I responded so positively to it. As with Cowboy Bebop, Tokyo Godfathers is a noirish tale about ne'er-do-wells struggling to survive in a dog-eat-dog setting. In this case, it is a story of three homeless individuals: Gin, a former professional bicycle racer who hit the bottle and the skids after the death of his wife and child; Hana, a transvestite nightclub performer with a shadowy past; and Miyuki, a troubled teenage girl running from domestic strife. As with the proverbial iceberg, these descriptions are just the tip of much more that lies just below the surface, the details of which are teasingly revealed as the narrative plays out.

The story's heart is the discovery of a fourth character, Kiyoko, an abandoned infant found by Gin as he searches for a Christmas gift for Miyuki. Both Miyuki and Gin want to do the sensible thing and bring the infant to the police, but Hana begs them to allow her to keep the child for the night because she believes Kiyoko is a Christmas gift from God. They both reluctantly agree. Not surprisingly, Hana refuses to stick to the plan the next morning and insists that the three of them track down the parents and return the infant themselves. A locker key, found with Kiyoko, is the only thing they have as a lead to the parents. Pooling their meager resources, the homeless trio, with infant in arms, set out on a Christmastide quest to reunite the child with its parents.

What results is a tale worthy of Tolkien as the infant's fellowship travels the snowy cityscape of Tokyo, an area as dangerous to the homeless as Mordor was to hobbits. From juvenile thugs looking to beat up the dispossessed, to Yakuza-related assassins and kidnappings, not to mention Old Man Winter himself, the trio is never at a loss for foes to overcome. Together, this makes for a thrilling tale of survival and perseverance, one that ends with a car chase that wouldn't be misplaced in a Michael Bay film, no less!

But even in the frozen cityscape of Tokyo, there is some warmth. Threaded throughout Tokyo Godfathers are instances of what could be called Christmas magic. From the trio inexplicably finding formula and diapers in a cemetery to good people willing to help the noisome trio in their search, Tokyo Godfathers has moments of holiday cheer that remind the sardonic Gin that even if he doesn't subscribe to Hana's conviction in divine intervention during this holiday of miracles, there is always hope for a better day tomorrow.

What began on Christmas night ends on New Year's Eve, with the trio concluding their quest as an ersatz Three Magi, wise not just for the often clever sleuthing they engaged in, but also wiser about themselves, facing and slaying their demons instead of constantly running from them. While the movie makes no promises about a brighter future for the trio, it does show that their immediate future is a bit brighter because these broken individuals have formed a new family, and perhaps made Tokyo a better, more forgiving place through their efforts.

As with Cowboy Bebop, Tokyo Godfathers' artistic direction is wonderfully grounded. Ken'ichi Konishi is to be credited here, bringing his distinctive urban style as showcased in such anime as Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Innocence and Evangelion 2.0: You (Can) Not Advance. Tokyo is brought to life under his artistic direction, reminding me of Italian neorealism combined with mystical animism, making this snow-enshrouded vision of Tokyo both grounded and fantastical. As a film noir aficionado, I also greatly enjoyed Konishi's use of shadow and light to make the nighttime urbanscape suggest both warmth and menace.

I thoroughly enjoyed Tokyo Godfathers. In a seasonal landscape littered with classics so well-worn that most of us can recite the dialogue line-by-line by now, or with jejune copycats filling the lineups of boutique networks that are too lazy to try something fresh, Tokyo Godfathers offers a refreshingly original and thoughtful tale that conveys the "meaning of the season" more so than a hundred mass-produced Hallmark Christmas movies. So this holiday season, why not give the Hallmark Channel a break and unwrap the gift of Tokyo Godfathers? 

Tokyo Godfathers is available to stream on many services, including Prime, Pluto TV, and Tubi.