It’s Christmas Eve in Tokyo and miracles are about to happen in Satoshi Kon‘s characteristically offbeat and visually striking festive tale. This was the third and penultimate feature film from Kon whose death in 2010 at the age of just 46 robbed the world of animation of one of its most distinctive talents and he described it at the time of its release as “a sad story of happy accidents.” For most of its running time, Christmas cheer is in short supply though by the end, even in a film made in a culture where Christmas isn’t as important as it is in some other parts of the world, it develops an appropriately festive glow.

Like David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002), the opening titles appear over buildings and street signs, but the real reference point here would seem to be Peter B. Kyne’s 1913 novel The Three Godfathers and perhaps more pertinently 3 Godfathers, John Ford’s 1948 film version starring John Wayne. As in Kyne’s story, Tokyo Godfathers follows the exploits of a trio of reluctant guardians whose lives are impacted and bettered by their attempts to protect an abandoned baby.

On Christmas Eve, three homeless people – the alcoholic Gin (voiced by Toru Emori in the Japanese version and by Darren Pleavin and Jon Avner in American dubs), transgender woman Hana (Yoshiaki Umegami/Russel Wait/Shakina Nayfack), and teenage runaway Miyuki (Aya Okamoto/Candice Moore/Victoria Grace) – attend a nativity play before finding an abandoned baby in a rubbish tip. The trio decide to help get the baby – who they name Kiyoko – back to her parents, following a set of clues they find in a bag left with her. What follows is a kaleidoscopic journey through the underbelly of Tokyo as the down-and-outs, helped by a series of coincidences and by some very good luck. Along the way, the dodge a Latino hitman trying to kill a yakuza boss, confide their reasons for being on the street, experience family reunions and make a terrible discovery about Kiyoko that puts a whole new spin on their search for her parents – and adds a new urgency to their mission.

In contrast to Kon‘s other feature films (Perfect Blue (1997), Millennium Actress (2001) and Paprika (2006)) Tokyo Godfathers is an out-and-out comedy. The humour may sometimes grate (a lot of the gags are delivered in an ear-splitting screech) but there are moments that are genuinely funny and, at times, even moving. But there’s a darker undercurrent to the story too. It exposes the scourge of homelessness in Japan, particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis of the late 1990s, a topic rarely even acknowledged elsewhere. We first meet our down-on-the-luck leads as they scratch around for food in a garbage dump in a dismal corner of Tokyo which, at the start of the film, feels like a pre-apocalyptic dystopia. The harsh, snowy streets are as uninviting a place as anything seen in anime, more so perhaps for their being so true to a tragic fact of life experienced by far too many in Japan’s big cities (and around the world) in the wake of the seemingly increasingly frequent financial recessions and collapses. The eponymous “godfathers” are a shunned underclass eking out a meagre existence in the dank underbelly of Tokyo that cowers beneath the proud, hi-tech gleaming towers that most tourists – and even many locals – will see.

But it’s also a place of miracles. From the small scale but no less important (that these three damaged people can find others to bond with and create a new family with is itself nothing short of a miracle) to the larger but subtly handled intrusion of apparently supernatural forces. It’s often been said that Tokyo Godfathers is Kon‘s most naturalistic film, lacking the fantasy and science fiction of his other work, but this simply isn’t true. Kon was interested in the idea of “meaningful coincidence” and the film is so chock full of chance meetings and happenings that to accept it all, one can only read it as fantasy. At the climax, Hana and Kiyoko are saved by a miraculous gust of wind that blows up out of nowhere just as its needed and the characters keep on encountering figures from their past or new acquaintances that can help them on their quest seemingly by chance – fate is almost a character in Tokyo Godfathers, guiding the “godfathers” to not only find Kiyoko’s parents but also to find a way of the streets for all of them.

Kon‘s characteristic blending of reality and fantasy surfaces only in one scene, a gorgeously shot sequence in which Miyuki’s past and present merge. Add to this the folk belief that it only snows in Tokyo once every ten years (the gap between falls has often been much longer) and the fact that the film bursts into a much brighter and more colourful palette as dawn breaks on Christmas Day and the film is as fanciful as any western heartstring-tugger set during the Christmas period (you could, at a pinch, make the analogy that the “godfathers” are the three wise men but you might be pushing things a bit there).

The film is full of the positive messages that a seasonal film demands but of course they’re delivered in very different ways. The trio may argue and fight and may in fact know very little about each other (they learn each other’s backstories as the audience does) but they prove that working together, even if often in a fractious manner, they’re better than when they’re struggling alone. It talks a mostly sympathetic stance on mental illness (the reason for Kiyoko being abandoned is heart-breaking). It also features a trans woman as one of the main characters, an unusual move at the time. Attitudes and expectations have moved on since 2003 and some might find fault with Hana’s treatment and portrayal, but she’s treated with the same mix of dignity and irreverence as any other of the characters and despite a few cross (and potentially offensive) words, the other “godfathers” clearly adore her. Initially, the English subtitles aggravated the transphobia of some of the characters she meets who frequently misgender her, but in 2019 GKIDS and NYAV Post did a second dub of the film, casting trans actress Shakina Nayfack in the role, seemingly as an acknowledgement of the hurt the subtitles had caused to some (in both the Japanese original and an earlier English dub, the voice actor was male).

At times, Tokyo Godfathers can be a harrowing watch (life is hard and brutal for the three main characters) but it can also be very funny, very touching and even unbearably tense. The final race across the city to find Kiyoko is brilliantly done and the climactic transformation of the city into a cheerier and more colourful place stays just this side of sentimental. At the fade out, a brighter future awaits our “godfathers”, but it’ll be entirely up to them what they make of it. It’s a rare film where you positively want a sequel to find out if they did OK or not.

Sadly Kon‘s early death from pancreatic cancer in 2010 at the age of just 46 mean that would never happen. Which is just as well. It’s another perfectly formed little gem from Kon, a gorgeous, typically distinctive emotional roller-coaster that may even challenge some of your preconceptions about everything from anime to sexuality to Japanese culture to the nature of families and beyond. And all of this wrapped up what seems at first seems to be a knockabout comedy. One can only wonder what marvels Kon would have given us if he’d lived. The world of animation is a poorer place for his absence.

Cast
Directed by: Satoshi Kon; Co-director: Shôgo Furuya; Tokyo Godfathers Committee, Columbia TriStar, TriStar Pictures; Executive Producers: Shinichi Kobayashi, Masao Takiyama, Taro Maki; Developed by: Masao Maruyama; Co-producer: Satoki Toyoda; Screenplay by: Keiko Nobumoto, Satoshi Kon; Original Story by: Satoshi Kon; Director of Photography: Katsutoshi Sugai; Animation Studio: Mad House; Animation Director: Kenichi Konishi; Editor: Takeshi Seyama; Music by: Keiichi Suzuki; Sound Director: Masafumi Mima; Art Director: Nobutaka Ike; Character Design: Kenichi Konishi, Satoshi Kon

Voices
Toru Emori (Gin); Aya Okamoto (Miyuki); Yoshiaki Umegaki (Hana); Shôzô Îzuka (Oota); Seizô Katô (mother); Hiroya Ishimaru (Yasuo); Ryûji Saikachi (aged man); Yasuku Yara (Miyuki’s father); Kyôko Terase (Sachiko); Mamiko Noto (Kiyoko, Gin’s daughter); Akio Ôtsuka (doctor); Rikiya Koyama (bridegroom); Satomi Koorogi (Kiyoko, the gangster’s daughter); Mitsuru Ogata (Hidenari Ugaki); Chiyako Shibahara (Eriko Kawasaki); Kazuaki Ito (Akiko Takeguchi); Atsuko Yuya (Nobuyuki Furuta); Jin Horikawa (Toshitaka Shimizu); Masao Harada (Youto Kazama); Yoshinori Sonobe (Tsuguo Mogami)