Tokyo Godfathers: Gift Set

Tokyo Godfathers is a heart-warming tale, very much in the tradition of Western Christmas movies.

Set in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo on Christmas Eve, we follow the story of three homeless people – Gin, Hana and Miyuki; a middle aged alcoholic, transvestite ex-drag queen and teenage girl runaway.
It is unusual for homeless people to be the focus in anime and indeed films in general, though Tokyo Godfathers does not highlight their homelessness so much as deal with warm themes familiar to us all.

Incidently, creating this film is no doubt what led to director Satoshi Kon including a homeless character in his 2004 anime series (yet to be released in the UK) Paranoia Agent. Kon is also the director of the acclaimed Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, and writer of the Magnetic Rose segment from Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories, and this wealth of experience and talent shines through in Tokyo Godfathers.

One Christmas Eve during their usual quest for food, Gin, Hana and Miyuki stumble across an abandoned baby girl. Rather than hand her in to the police Hana decides to find the baby’s mother to find out what happened, which leads to a journey throughout Tokyo during the frosty days between Christmas and the New Year.
Throughout the film it is constantly emphasised that there is a surrogate family made up from Gin and Hana as the father and mother, and Miyuki as the daughter and it is these strange relationships that drive the story.

Tokyo Godfathers is a wonderful film, one of those contenders that can hold their own against any live action effort and reveals the true potential of anime. Both funny and moving, it succeeds in being a grown-up film whilst avoiding the sex and violence often associated with ‘adult’ anime.
I’d happily rate Tokyo Godfathers among my top ten anime films of all time, and I can’t wait to see what Satoshi Kon has in store for us next.

But it doesn’t stop there as this is the “Deluxe box set” so we need to see if the extras justify the substantial price tag.

The bonus disc is comprised of four featurettes:

There is an art gallery featuring some of the highly detailed backdrops set to a 5.1 surround sound montage from the soundtrack. Lasting over ten minutes, halfway through it features an interview with Suzuki Keeichi who is responsible for the music and discusses his work on the film.

The Process of Animation clocks in at just under 14 mins and dips into the filming process, how the production progressed from live action shots to storyboards to animatics, and contains commentary from the art director and a number of the artists discussing the differences in each others work.

The Animax featurette seems to be typical promotional material made for Japan. In 22 minutes it features snippets of interviews with the principal three voice artists, more of Keeichi Suzuki who talks of the use of Beethoven’s Symphony number 9 (much more light-hearted here than in NG Evangelion) and Satoshi Kon talks with Miyuki’s voice actor about her role, discusses the use of homeless characters and the reaction to the film abroad.

But it is the Unexpected Tours featurette that stands out here.
In just over 25 minutes it covers the development of the film’s visuals, firstly the detail of the setting and then the look of the characters, which brings us nicely to the voice artists talking about their experience. Then we learn about how they came up with the sound design to give the film the authentic feel of Tokyo, backing up the detail of the visuals with realistic ambient sound, and then lastly it looks at the premiere of the film and various awards and nominations.
It is clear that this is made up from footage filmed at the same time as that of the other featurettes, but nothing is ever repeated and this ‘making of’ digs much deeper behind the scenes of the movie and actually makes you appreciate it more, pointing out some aspects I had missed when watching the film the first time around. Please note, it does give away some of the key scenes and so should be saved until after you have seen the film.

All the featurettes are in Japanese with English subtitles.

Whilst the other three extras are things you’re only likely to watch once, the Unexpected Tours is a great example of how such DVD extras should be handled and has to be seen if you decide to buy the box set.
On both discs there are trailers for the other Animax releases, including the delayed Astroboy, Cyborg 009 – another Osamu Tezuka series – and more importantly SteamBoy. It seems that Columbia Tristar will be behind its UK release, which at least means the possibility of a cinema run.
The box itself is excellent, using the promo material and original art from Satoshi Kon, it is beautifully made and a decent benchmark for future special editions.

Aside from the two discs, inside the box we have an envelope containing 10 postcards featuring some of the aforementioned detailed backdrop artwork, and a hefty 650+ page book containing the storyboards for the whole film. The problem here is that it is all in Japanese and while this doesn’t matter for the actual storyboards, there are around 150 pages of interviews, articles and commentary on the storyboards that are unfortunately undecipherable and it is a shame that after making all this effort to create such a special package, the Animax wing of Sony didn’t go the extra mile to provide a translation for this text.

In Summary

It is hard to recommend the Tokyo Godfathers box set above the standard version of the film. The packaging is beautiful but as the extras don’t really stand up to repeated viewing and the book is a curiosity rather than engrossing I would advise going with the ‘vanilla’ disc and saving quite a bit of money, though either way I think that as someone with an interest in anime; you owe it to yourself to see this film.

Film: 10 out of 10 / Box set: 7 out of 10