Christmas is exclusively a time for re watching special Holiday movies and shows. The grinch just doesn’t feel right any other time of the year, this is a fact, but finding new stories to watch can be as exciting as watching the classics. Family, comedy, solidarity, friendship, we all want to feel warm inside during the cold winter.
Tokyo Godfathers is an animated Japanese movie which finds the Christmas spirit in an unusual setting. The story follows three homeless characters: a middle-aged alcoholic man, a former drag queen, and a teenage runaway girl. Sounds fun right? Quite the unusual cast which after finding an abandoned baby on Christmas eve decide to return her home. Directed by the acclaimed director Satoshi Kon, this movie follows the troubles which the trio confronts in order to find out who is the baby’s real parents and why was she abandoned. The movie presents a Christmas miracle full of unexpected plot twists but with a heartwarming ending.
Throughout the movie you get to learn the background story of each character, and what let them to their current living position. They are portraited fairly based on their personalities, the negative along with the positive. Not only does the viewer enjoy the beautiful environment of Tokyo on a Christmas night, they also get the chance to subtly learn about the issues relating to homelessness and each characters’ ideas of what family and Christmas means to them.
A family friendly tragicomedy which beautifully embodies the trope of “a Christmas miracle,” narrated from the perspective of a not so typical family bound by circumstance and solidarity rather than blood. Tokyo Godfathers can be heartwarming and nostalgic, as well as refreshing and thought-provoking. A Holiday gem if I may say so myself which you should definitely add to your watchlist this year.