‘Twas the Night before Christmasby Johnine Dalangin Tokyo Godfathers(2003)D: Satoshi Kon S: Yoshiaki Umegaki, Toru Emori, Aya Okamoto With tender irony, Satoshi Kon tells us a lesson about family through three homeless people – Gin, an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler who traded his family for his ego; Hana, a homosexual who never knew his real parents; and Miyuki, a runaway who stabbed her father believing he was responsible for the disappearance of her cat. In an attempt to look for the whole set of World Literature for Children through neatly sorted trash, a Christmas present for Miyuki, the three homeless Tokyo residents instead find a beautiful baby girl. With a few arguments, they decide against leaving the baby to the police and set out to find the parents on their own. Hana, desperate to have a child as he is a homosexual, gets easily attached, prompting him to name her Kiyoko (pure child; they, after all, found her on the purest of nights). The baby’s presence triggers off magically realistic events making the characters susceptible to the emotional baggage they’re trying to escape. Tokyo Godfathers is primarily an optimistic portrayal of the nature of man. This comedy, cleverly melodramatic at times, succeeds in conveying its message sans the didacticism. Its treatment of man’s fundamental attributes (life, love, and family), albeit conventional (worthless drunkard husband, prodigal daughter, foster child), is so effective in its simplicity. Quite refreshingly, the use of deus ex machina in the film does not undermine its integrity; it serves as comic relief to emotionally dragging scenes, and may be aptly interpreted as part of the message Kon is telling us. However, the real strength of the film lies in its universally transcendent characters, Gin, Hana, and Miyuki. Seldom do we see films that have concretely concocted character dynamics. While character development may be easy in prose, this is not the case with films, and I deeply admire Satoshi Kon for his work on Tokyo Godfathers (it is roughly an hour and a half) because of this. Whereas subplots for each of the characters’ history may have been given quite a number of frames, there is not a second in the film when one protagonist overshadows the others. Not only that, each individual character is carved with his own distinct characteristics (like Hana randomly composing haikus, Gin’s feigned apathy, and Miyuki’s infectious love for cats), which make them so genuine, so human, so real. At the end, the baby turns out to be the compass (or guiding star) that leads them through their journey to the actualization of what it is to be human. —This is Kon at his most humane. I extremely encourage you, dear reader, to watch this Satoshi Kon creation so that I may share the metaphysical consolation I felt at the end of the most well spent ninety minutes of my uneventful life. 

‘Twas the Night before Christmas
by Johnine Dalangin

Tokyo Godfathers(2003)
D: Satoshi Kon
S: Yoshiaki Umegaki, Toru Emori, Aya Okamoto

With tender irony, Satoshi Kon tells us a lesson about family through three homeless people – Gin, an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler who traded his family for his ego; Hana, a homosexual who never knew his real parents; and Miyuki, a runaway who stabbed her father believing he was responsible for the disappearance of her cat.

In an attempt to look for the whole set of World Literature for Children through neatly sorted trash, a Christmas present for Miyuki, the three homeless Tokyo residents instead find a beautiful baby girl. With a few arguments, they decide against leaving the baby to the police and set out to find the parents on their own. Hana, desperate to have a child as he is a homosexual, gets easily attached, prompting him to name her Kiyoko (pure child; they, after all, found her on the purest of nights). The baby’s presence triggers off magically realistic events making the characters susceptible to the emotional baggage they’re trying to escape.

Tokyo Godfathers is primarily an optimistic portrayal of the nature of man. This comedy, cleverly melodramatic at times, succeeds in conveying its message sans the didacticism. Its treatment of man’s fundamental attributes (life, love, and family), albeit conventional (worthless drunkard husband, prodigal daughter, foster child), is so effective in its simplicity. Quite refreshingly, the use of deus ex machina in the film does not undermine its integrity; it serves as comic relief to emotionally dragging scenes, and may be aptly interpreted as part of the message Kon is telling us.

However, the real strength of the film lies in its universally transcendent characters, Gin, Hana, and Miyuki. Seldom do we see films that have concretely concocted character dynamics. While character development may be easy in prose, this is not the case with films, and I deeply admire Satoshi Kon for his work on Tokyo Godfathers (it is roughly an hour and a half) because of this. Whereas subplots for each of the characters’ history may have been given quite a number of frames, there is not a second in the film when one protagonist overshadows the others. Not only that, each individual character is carved with his own distinct characteristics (like Hana randomly composing haikus, Gin’s feigned apathy, and Miyuki’s infectious love for cats), which make them so genuine, so human, so real.

At the end, the baby turns out to be the compass (or guiding star) that leads them through their journey to the actualization of what it is to be human.

—
This is Kon at his most humane. I extremely encourage you, dear reader, to watch this Satoshi Kon creation so that I may share the metaphysical consolation I felt at the end of the most well spent ninety minutes of my uneventful life. 

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