by Rollin Bishop

Somehow, despite everything, I'd not actually seen Tokyo Godfathers until this week. I, of course, am and have been aware of the 2003 animated movie's reputation. I know it's a Christmas movie, and frequently recommended around this time of year. I've known that the late Satoshi Kon directed it, and I've seen several other Kon projects. (Paranoia Agent defined a specific Texas summer for me after I rented it twice in a row from the now-defunct Vulcan Video.) I've even owned it for a couple of years now, and just hadn't gotten around to watching it.

This year, with some encouragement from my re:frame co-conspirators, I decided to finally rectify this oversight. And now that I've done so, my one and only question is: why did you all let me wait so long?

The basic plot of Tokyo Godfathers follows three homeless people — middle-aged alcoholic Gin, trans woman Hana, and teenage runaway Miyuki — on Christmas Eve after they discover an abandoned baby while rummaging through the trash. Rather than simply take the child, which they name Kiyoko, to the police, the trio ultimately decide to try and track down her parents in order to return her.

From that point on, things are less off the rails than they are vaguely familiar with the concept of rails, having never actually seen them. (If you're squeamish about spoilers, this is the point to go somewhere else.) There's a mob hit gone wrong, a homeless man dies in the street, and a bunch of young men beat the shit out of one of the main characters and a corpse with all the energy of a nonchalant weekly ritual. Multiple vehicles full-on crash into buildings, there's a shocking amount of blood overall, and more than one suicide attempt.

You know, a typical Christmas movie.

But it's this unflinching intrusion of reality that makes the rest of the film work. There's nothing truly supernatural here, nothing that can't be explained away at least, and despite the fraught situations throughout the one and only death within is tragic, certainly, but peaceful and even respectful to some extent. Mannerisms and facial features are often exaggerated to punctuate — Hana specifically gets a lot of opportunity for good faces due to yelling at Gin and generally being the most enthusiastic of the bunch — but the animation is otherwise almost entirely grounded.

Which makes the serendipity, the Christmas spirit if you will, of Tokyo Godfathers truly shine through. Despite the setting, there's relatively little in the way of traditional holiday flair. The opening happens to include a nativity play followed by a sermon, but once that's over it's just… Christmas time. It is that time of year, and nothing more. With the core plot being the return of the baby, Tokyo Godfathers leans on that initial kindness and sentimentality to spread more of the same instead without ever absolving anyone.

Entirely because the group decides to return the kid, Gin reconnects with the daughter he himself abandoned. Hana returns to a club she used to work at and realizes that her support network is still there, still willing to support her. Miyuki comes to unearth her own continued desire and need for family before discovering that her father (who she stabbed and believes would arrest her on sight) only wants her to come home — to the point that he's taken out a newspaper ad to let her know he still loves her. A well-timed gust of wind saves the day, and a gifted lottery ticket earned through entirely unprompted generosity and compassion looks to change the lives of all three for good after the film's end.

All of the terrible things that happened to the three of them as well as all of the terrible things that they did, still happened and were done. But they've done good here, and good has been done to them, and what is that if not hope, the resonant core of Christmas?

/out of frame

🎄 Rollin: Speaking of serendipity, our pals at Animation Obsessive also just put out an excellent piece on the backgrounds in Tokyo Godfathers. Well worth a read!

🗳️ Kambole: I've been catching up on 2025 films for both London Film Critic's Circle voting and also my own pleasure, a long process as film viewing has gotten a little too tied up in commissions for me lately. Mixed feelings on Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest (though A$AP Rocky is excellent and is the recipient of a fantastic patented Spike Lee Dolly Shot moment). Also very much enjoyed Wake Up Dead Man, both a massive improvement on Glass Onion and also a real red flag regarding Netflix's promise to maintain status quo in their acquisition of Warner Bros – if this only gets a week in theaters, what will get more?

😃 Toussaint: I will never get tired of seeing and sharing fan art and fan animation of Smiling Friends. Case in point: Boston-based animator Alexander Cornwell's brilliant, beautiful Ghibli-inspired animation of Pim, Charlie, and Glep exploring an enchanted forest. We've technically featured him here on Re:Frame before, as he also contributed a similar Ghibli-inspired shot in Punch Cat Studio's recent Over the Garden Wall Reanimated short.