Tokyo Godfathers

Tokyo Godfathers
Directed by	Satoshi Kon
Written by	Satoshi Kon Keiko Nobumoto
Produced by	Masao Maruyama Masao Takiyama Shinichi Kobayashi Taro Maki
Starring	Aya Okamoto, Toru Emori, Yoshiaki Umegaki
Music by	Keiichi Suzuki Moonriders
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Entertainment Destination Films (USA)
Release dates	29 December 2003 (Japan) 16 January 2004 (USA)
Running time	92 minutes
Language	Japanese
Budget	?

Tokyo Godfathers (東京ゴッドファーザーズ, Tōkyō Goddofāzāzu) is a 2003 anime film by Japanese director Satoshi Kon.

Tokyo Godfathers is Kon's third animated movie, which he wrote and directed. Keiko Nobumoto, noted for being the creator of the Wolf's Rain series and a head scriptwriter for Cowboy Bebop, was also involved in the film's production.

Tokyo Godfathers received an Excellence Prize at the 2003 Japan Media Arts Festival.

Storyline

One Christmas eve, three homeless people–Gin (ギン), a gruff, middle-aged hobo, Hana (ハナ), an okama, and Miyuki (ミユキ), a runaway girl–discover an abandoned newborn while searching in some trash for Hana's Christmas present for Miyuki. Deposited with the baby is a note asking the finder to take good care of the unnamed baby and a bag containing clues to the parent's identity. Using pictures of the baby's parents and a club's card found in the bag, the trio set out to find the baby's parents, even though Hana wants to keep the baby since it makes her feel like a mother. Gin, an alcoholic, knows that they can never give the baby a good life and insists that they return it. Hana eventually agrees and they set off to the address on the card with the baby, whom Hana names Kiyoko (清子), "pure child," as Christmas Eve is the purest night of the year.

Along the way, Gin tells Hana that he used to have a wife and daughter, before he was an alcoholic. He made money by racing bicycles, but when his daughter became ill, he threw a race to get the money for her medicine. He was disqualified, and his wife and daughter died. The group, after some time, come across a high-ranking yakuza man who is trapped under his car. After they free him, he gratefully agrees to take them to the club, where his daughter (also named Kiyoko) is getting married to its owner.

The baby begins to cry and Miyuki takes her into the bathroom to change her diaper. Gin becomes angry when he sees the groom and tells Hana that the groom was the one who convinced him to throw the race. The groom, meanwhile, tells them that the woman in the picture (the baby's mother) was someone who used to come to the club named Sachiko. He gives them Sachiko's address, but the party is interrupted when a maid is revealed to be a Hispanic hitman in disguise.

After unsuccessfully attempting to shoot the bride's father but hitting the groom instead, the hitman kidnaps Miyuki and Kiyoko and takes them back to his home where he leaves them with his much warmer wife. While there, Miyuki shows the wife some pictures of her family including her policeman father, religious mother, and her favorite cat, named Angel. Miyuki then begins to cry and tells the wife that she ran away from home after stabbing her father.

Meanwhile, Hana and Gin have an argument over what to do next. Hana wants to follow the hitman to rescue the kidnapped girls. Gin wants to call the police. Hana yells at him and calls a taxi and tells the driver to take him where he drove the hitman. Gin, meanwhile, finds a very old homeless man dying in the street. The two of them rest in a park for a while, while Gin examines the picture of Sachiko and her husband. The old man dies, and just as Gin recognizes the background of the picture, some teenagers show up and beat him and the deceased old man severely.

Miyuki, meanwhile, has a dream that begins with her stabbing her father and accusing him of getting rid of Angel. Her father then turns into Gin, her mother turns into Hana, and "Angel" is shown as the baby Kiyoko. Hana in the taxi drives up to the place where the hitman, Miyuki, and Kiyoko were dropped off. While running through the neighborhood looking for the girls, he is seen coughing up blood. Hana finds the girls and they go off to find a place to stay the night. Hana takes them to a club he used to work at, where he is warmly greeted home by his "mother" (another drag queen who raised him.) Gin, who was found by another member of the club, is also at the bar. Hana and his mother talk about the death of Hana's boyfriend. Her "mother" asks if it was AIDS. Hana tells her that he slipped on the soap. Hana then reveals how he left the club after attacking an especially rude customer.

Gin tells Hana where the picture was taken and they go to Sachiko's old house. They find out that Sachiko's marriage with her husband was not a happy one, and Miyuki finds a piece in an old paper from her parents, asking her to come home. Miyuki tries to call her father, but is too scared to speak to him. The group is resting at a store and told to leave by the shopkeeper. While arguing in front of the store, a runaway ambulance goes out of control and rams into the store where they had been sitting a moment before. Hana attributes their escape to the baby's luck. Despite being uninjured, Hana collapses and spits some blood. She is taken to the hospital where it becomes evident that Hana has a very weak body. It is suggested that she is suffering from AIDS (her mother asked if her boyfriend died from AIDS earlier, so Hana may be HIV-positive). While at the hospital Gin finds his daughter (also named Kiyoko), who is alive and working there as a nurse. From their conversation together, Hana realizes that Gin lied to him and was never a motorbike racer. Instead, he owned a bicycle shop and ran out on his family when his gambling debts grew too large to pay back. Hana becomes angry and tells Gin's daughter about her father's lies and storms out. Miyuki follows with Kiyoko.

As they consider taking the baby to the police, they find Sachiko, standing at the edge of a bridge about to commit suicide. They stop her and angrily yell at her for abandoning her baby. Sachiko insists that her husband got rid of the baby without her knowledge; they return it happily to her. Meanwhile, Gin sees a "missing" notice at the hospital for a baby that looks exactly like Kiyoko. He finds Sachiko's husband and realizes that Sachiko stole Kiyoko from the hospital. He finds Hana and Miyuki and together they chase down Sachiko.

They find her in a children's park attempting to breast feed Kiyoko, but the baby refuses and cries. Sachiko panics when she sees the trio heading after her and steals a truck as Gin steals a policeman's bike and the other two chase after her in a taxi cab. Gin tries to take Kiyoko back through the truck's passenger seat but Sachiko deliberately crashes into a building, knocking Gin off with the baby. When Sachiko takes the baby back with her, she races toward the building roof. When Miyuki and Hana manage to catch up with Gin, but seperate so that Hana stays behind with Gin (who was still alive fortunately). Just before the baby thief's second attempt at suicide, Miyuki screams for Sachiko to stop and tries to pressure her into not commiting suicide.

Sachiko finally confesses that her own baby had died before it was born and when she saw a healthy baby in the hospital, she wanted it to be hers and took it. She said she believed that her husband could cope with it. Sachiko again tries to jump off, but her husband comes out of his apartment and screams at her to stop, telling her that they can start a new life. Ignoring the shouts to stop, Sachiko mutters that she needs to restart hers first and jumps off. Miyuki manages to get a hold of her, leaving Sachiko's legs dangling from above as the people down below watch in fear. Miyuki tells Sachiko she is ruining Kiyoko's life. When Sachiko looks down upon the stolen baby, Kiyoko says very quietly "I want to go home."

Miyuki accidentally loses her balance, but Gin and Hana arrive atop the building in time and catch her. Sachiko, startled by all the happenings, accidentally drops the baby off of the building and Hana jumps after Kiyoko. She is able to catch the baby, but was left dangling from a banner hanging loosely from the side of the building. She loses her grip and falls, but a light appears and a strong godly wind blows Hana with Kiyoko in her arms down to the ground safe and sound.

Hana, Miyuki, and Gin are taken to the hospital, where Kiyoko's parents ask them to become Kiyoko's godparents. The police inspector in charge of finding Kiyoko lets them in and is extremely surprised to see Miyuki. She stares back at him and whispers, "Dad."

The story is patterned and partially named after the 1948 John Ford Western film Three Godfathers, in which a trio of thieves come to be responsible for a newborn baby.

Cast

• Toru Emori - Gin (voice)
• Aya Okamoto - Miyuki (voice)
• Yoshiaki Umegaki - Hana (voice)
• Shōzō Iizuka - Ōta (voice)

Trivia

• In one scene, three women are heard saying "Of course not, of course not!". In Satoshi Kon's TV series Paranoia Agent, the three women star in the episode "ETC" with the same catchphrase.
• There are innumberable recurring instances of the digits 12-25 (i.e., the date of Christmas), such as on license plates, in phone numbers, on taxi meters, and on lottery tickets.
• The name "Kiyoko" appears at least three times in the film. The first being the child, the second being the daughter of the Yakuza boss, and the third being the daughter of Gin.
• In one scene, two movie posters are visible one of Millennium Actress and the other of Perfect Blue. Both of the films were directed by Satoshi Kon.

External links

• Tokyo Godfathers ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Tokyo Godfathers at IMDb
• Tokyo Godfathers Review at Anime+ Podcast
• Tokyo Godfathers Review at Animeworld
• "東京ゴッドファーザーズ (Tōkyō Goddofāzāzu)" (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-07-21.