Tokyo Godfathers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Tokyo Godfathers

Film poster
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Produced by Masao Maruyama
Masao Takiyama
Shinichi Kobayashi
Taro Maki
Written by Satoshi Kon
Keiko Nobumoto
Starring Aya Okamoto
Toru Emori
Yoshiaki Umegaki
Music by Keiichi Suzuki
Moonriders
Cinematography Katsutoshi Sugai
Editing by Takeshi Seyama
Distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment
Samuel Goldwyn Films (USA)
Summit Entertainment (re-release)
Release date(s) Japan:
December 29, 2003
United States:
January 16, 2004
Running time 92 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese

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.[citation needed]

[edit] Plot

 This article's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (December 2008)

One Christmas Eve, three homeless people – Gin (ギン?), a gruff, alcoholic, 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 him feel like a mother. Gin 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 for a get-rich-quick scheme to get the money for her medicine. The venture failed, and his wife and daughter died. The group boards a light train, but Miyuki escapes through one of the windows after seeing her father in a passing convoy, they begin to wander in the streets. They enter to a graveyard looking for something to feed the baby; luckily, they find an offering of baby supplies, further convincing Hana that the baby is blessed by God. Outside the cemetery, they find a high-ranking yakuza man who is trapped under his car. After they free him, they ask him about the address of the club shown in the card they found with the baby, and 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 hit man in disguise. After unsuccessfully attempting to shoot the bride's father, (hitting the groom instead), the hit man kidnaps Miyuki and Kiyoko (the baby) and takes them back to his home, where he leaves them with his much warmer wife, who was also a mother. There, Miyuki shows the wife some pictures of her family including her policeman father, religious mother, and her cat, Angel. Miyuki 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 hit man and rescue the kidnapped girls, while Gin wants to call the police. After reprimanding Gin, Hana calls a taxi and tells the driver to take him where he drove the hit man. Gin, meanwhile, finds a very old homeless man dying in the street. Gin examines the picture of Sachiko and her husband. The old man dies after giving Gin a little red bag and, just as Gin recognizes the background of the picture, some teenagers show up and beat him and the deceased old man and trash the old man's home as a form of "clean-up". Hana is driven to the place where the hit man, 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 there. Hana and his "mother" talk about the death of Hana's boyfriend, and how Hana 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 of newspaper with a message from her parents, asking her to come home. Miyuki tries to call her father, but is too scared to speak to him. The group rests at a store until they are 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. Hana attributes their escape to God just before collapsing and coughing up blood, and then he is taken to a hospital. While at the hospital, Gin finds his daughter (also named Kiyoko), who is alive and working as a nurse. Hana realizes that Gin lied to him and was never a bike racer. Instead, he owned a bicycle shop but ran off when his gambling debts grew too large. 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 about to jump off a bridge. They stop her from doing so and yell at her for abandoning her baby. Sachiko insists that her husband got rid of the baby without her knowledge, and 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 park attempting to breastfeed Kiyoko, but the baby refuses and cries. Sachiko panics when she sees the trio heading after her and flees by stealing a nearby truck, leading to a car chase across the city. Upon crashing into a tall building, Sachiko races towards the building roof with the baby at tow. Miyuki follows Sachiko to the top of the building, where Sachiko finally confesses that her own baby had miscarried, and when she saw a healthy baby in the hospital (one that smiled at her), she took her, believing that her husband could cope with it. Sachiko tries to jump off the building, but her husband comes out of his apartment (just across the street) and screams at her to stop, telling her that they can start a new life. 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 quietly states "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. He is able to catch the baby, but is left dangling from a banner hanging loosely from the side of the building. He loses his grip and falls, but the first sunlight appears and a strong wind blows Hana with Kiyoko in his arms down to the ground safe and sound.

Hana, Miyuki and Gin are taken to the hospital. Miyuki hands Gin his cigarettes (even when Miyuki reminds him that smoking in a hospital is forbidden) and drops the old man's small red bag on the floor, revealing a winning lottery ticket. Kiyoko's parents want to ask the trio to become Kiyoko's godparents, so 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".

[edit] Cast

  • Tōru Emori as Gin, a homeless bicycle shop owner who claims to be a professional cyclist. He left behind his wife and daughter when his gambling debts became too large, and claimed they were dead to gain sympathy. His daughter, Kiyoko, shares the same name as the baby he and the others find.
  • Yoshiaki Umegaki as Hana, a homeless drag queen. He never knew his actual parents, and thus feels the most sympathy for "Kiyoko", the baby he finds and names. Because of his upbringing, he is the kindest out of the three main characters, but is also the sickliest, which he hides from the others.
  • Aya Okamoto as Miyuki, a runaway senior high school student. During a family dispute concerning what seems to be her missing cat named 'angel', Miyuki stabbed her father (believing him to be responsible for the disappearance), and has stayed away from her home since, losing a substantial amount of weight. She found a personals ad in an old newspaper in the course of the film that hints that her father wasn't responsible for the disappearance of her cat, and that the cat seems to have come back. That ad is the reason why she decided to call her father again.
  • Satomi Kōrogi as Kiyoko, a newborn infant that was deserted in a dump. She is found by the three main characters on Christmas Eve, and is named after the Japanese title of the traditional Christmas song "Silent Night" by Hana.
  • Shōzō Iizuka as Ōta, a Yakuza boss who is found and saved by the three main characters when he becomes trapped under his car. As thanks, he invites them to his daughter's wedding, which leads to Miyuki's and Kiyoko's kidnapping at the hands of a Hispanic hitman. His daughter, coincidently, is also named Kiyoko.
  • Seizō Katō as Mother, the proprietor of a gay bar that Hana used to work at.
  • Hiroya Ishimaru as Yasuo, Sachiko's husband and the one who left behind Kiyoko.
  • Ryūji Saikachi as The Old Man, a fellow homeless. He is discovered lying on the ground by Gin, and gives Gin a mysterious red bag before dying.
  • Yūsaku Yara as Miyuki's father, a police officer. He unexpectedly finds Miyuki, his daughter, at the very end of the film.
  • Kyōko Terase as Sachiko, the self-proclaimed mother of Kiyoko. When Kiyoko is abandoned by her father, Sachiko falls into despair and prepares to commit suicide before Kiyoko is returned to her. In a strange turn of events, it is revealed that Kiyoko is not Sachiko's biological daughter.
  • Mamiko Noto as Gin's daughter, a nurse. She is on the verge of being married to the Doctor by the time she is rediscovered by Gin, her father. Her name is also Kiyoko.
  • Akio Ōtsuka as The Doctor, a doctor who takes care of Hana when he collapses. He is the one Gin's daughter plans on marrying.
  • Rikiya Koyama as The Groom, the son-in-law of Ōta.
  • Inuko Inuyama as Kurumizawa
  • Kanako Yahara as Yamanōchi
  • Rie Shibata as Nekobaba, a person who lives in Sachiko's neighborhood.
  • Kōichi Yamadera as The Taxi Driver, a chauffeur who aids Miyuki and Hana during the climatic car chase.

Additional voices by Hidenari Umezu, Mitsuru Ogata, Eriko Kawasaki, Chiyako Shibahara, Akiko Takeguchi, Kazuaki Itō, Nobuyuki Furuta, Atsuko Yuya, Toshitaka Shimizu, Bin Horikawa, Yūto Kazama, Masao Harada, Tsuguo Mogami, Yoshinori Sonobe, and Akiko Kawase

[edit] External links

v • d • e
The works of Satoshi Kon
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Godfathers"