Defining Favourites: Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

Satoshi Kon's Christmas-set comedy emphasizes the reality of the holiday for the impoverished.

Photo: Madhouse

Welcome to my Defining Favourites, a section dedicated to essays about films that I feel confident in calling favourites in some way or another - akin to Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” reviews. These essays are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to read more beyond the free preview, please consider subscribing.

Directed by Satoshi Kon
Screenplay by Keiko Nobumoto, Satoshi Kon
Produced by Shinichi Obayashi, Masao Takiyama, Taro Maki
Starring Toru Emori, Yoshiaki Umegaki, Aya Okamoto
Premiere Date: August 20, 2003
Running Time: 92 minutes

Tokyo Godfathers feels like a particular oddball in Satoshi Kon’s relatively short body of work, perhaps because it’s the most straightforward of his four features. Despite this, it also might be the easiest one to attach yourself to – because its central trio are among the most likeable leads that any animated movie, or just any movie could ever feature. But that’s only part of the appeal that has led Tokyo Godfathers to become an unusual perennial Christmas classic. It’s a movie that captures how the holiday season ends up leaving some people in the dark, showing that the most wonderful time of the year is simultaneously the saddest for the poorest people.

It doesn’t take too long within Tokyo Godfathers to paint a picture of the very world which its trio of protagonists occupy, but Satoshi Kon is also not expecting the audience to take simple pity for them. They’re doing everything that they know is necessary in order to survive, especially when the circumstances are working against them in every possible way. Every single one of its leads all found themselves in a particular predicament because of their own circumstances. For the viewers, it’s an adventure in and of itself, but for Satoshi Kon it’s also his own ways of reckoning with the fact that the audience would never want to imagine themselves in this position.