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Tokyo Godfathers is a 2003 Anime movie directed by Satoshi Kon; the film is heavily based on the silent movie The Three Godfathers, which is about a trio of bandits who discover a foundling. This dramatic comedy is a stark departure from Kon's more mind-bending works, but it lacks none of his atmospheric touch, keen social commentary, and insight on the human condition.
Three homeless people — Gin (the Jerk with a Heart of Gold), Hana (a Transgender woman) and Miyuki (a runaway girl who doesn't fit any of the usual Japanese teenage girl tropes) — find an abandoned baby while digging through trash and spend Christmas Eve looking for its missing parents.
Contains a lot of contrived coincidences (miracles, really, but always within the realm of possibility), but that's kind of the point. In the meantime, viewers get a glimpse of a side of Tokyo that is rarely seen in anime.
- Arc Number: 1225 (which refers to December 25).
- Bilingual Dialogue
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Taken to extremes by Miyuki.
- Calling the Old Man Out: In Miyuki's flashback. It did not end well.
- Christianity In Japan: The fiery preacher seen in the opening credits may have been the same drunken slob who accosts Gin and Hana in a convenience store later on; if so, Hana is a better Christian than he is. Hana also invokes God on a regular basis in the same way that Westerners would.
- Christmas in Japan: Notable for being an actual Christmas drama in Japan, which focuses on the true meaning of Christmas according to the west...somewhat.
- Christmas Miracle
- Contrived Coincidence: Far too many to list here without spoiling the whole movie. It never feels cheap, though; it happens so often — and often in such hilarious and unexpected ways — that by the time it gets to the truly absurd stuff, the viewer is liable to just roll with it. Also somewhat justified; the characters speculate that the baby they are helping is under the protection of God — and if that actually is the case, then it would make sense that miraculous things would happen to assist them.
- Crazy Homeless People: None of the characters, really, except for the senile old man whom Gin comforts.
- Deus Ex Machina: The driving force of the movie, and proof that Tropes Are Not Bad.
- Do They Know It's Christmas Time?
- Door Step Baby
- Drag Queen: Hana's former vocation. She left the biz after getting married.
- Earn Your Happy Ending
- Ethnic Menial Labor: Hispanic in Japan.
- Fat Girl: Played as legitimate characters. There are four handsomely-built ladies in the movie: Kiyoko the yakuza 's daughter, Kiyoko the nurse, the kind Spanish-speaking mother, and Miyuki in flashback.
- Formerly Fat: Played for drama with Miyuki, who lost a lot of weight due to being homeless and not having enough to eat.
- Girly Run: Used by Hana.
- Gossipy Hens
- Happily Ever After: By the end of the movie, the baby is returned to her real parents, all three homeless characters have been reunited with their families, Sachiko and her husband have started over...and it turns out the trio have been carrying around a winning lottery ticket the whole time.
- Hitman with a Heart: The Hispanic assassin set out to kill the Yakuza boss at the wedding takes Miyuki hostage...to a kind Hispanic mother who breastfeeds Kiyoko and provides some comfort for Miyuki.
- In Mysterious Ways
- Infant Immortality: Of course baby Kiyoko will survive anything, including the Japanese winter.
- Interrupted Suicide: Never ones to be impolite, Japanese women take off their shoes before they plunge to their deaths.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gin.
- Long-Lost Relative: Hana and her "mother" (drag mentor), Gin and his daughter, and Miyuki and her father.
- MacGuffin Girl: The baby, to some degree.
- Mama Bear: Hana.
- Magic Realism
- Magnetic Plot Device: The baby again.
- Mission From God: Not exactly said, but with the underlying themes of Christianity, Hana's statements, and the Deus Ex Machina that seems to be everywhere, God might have had something to do with it.
- One Steve Limit: Averted hard. The trio meet (or already know) multiple Kiyokos by the end of the movie.
- Orphan's Plot Trinket
- Parental Abandonment: Not just the baby that they find, but Gin's abandonment of his own family.
- Queer People Are Funny: "I am a mistake made by God!"
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Hana compares the relationship between her and Gin to a story about them.
- Shout-Out: Akio Ohtsuka gets a brief cameo as a doctor.
- Much of the plot is taken straight from the John Wayne classic The Three Godfathers.
- The Tramp: all of them
- Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe — however, in this film, Tokyo is a city with a shady side just like any other.
- Tokyo Tower: Seen dancing, along with other Tokyo buildings, at the start of the closing credits.
- Transgender: Hana, the Team Mom homeless lady, who's portrayed in a very sympathetic way.
- Trashcan Bonfire
- Truth in Television: Some of the events in the movie were based on real-life incidents that occurred in Japan around the time the film was made. The scene in which Gin is beaten up by a group of teenagers was based on an similar incident involving a hobo being beaten up by teenagers. Miyuki's troubled backstory was based on an incident in which a teenage girl stabbed her father after getting into an argument with him about which TV channel they wanted to watch.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: It appears that Miyuki's father was perpetually cold and callous to her... from her perspective, anyway.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Inverted, as Hana deliberately plays the villain to draw two characters together.
- Yakuza