Tigers and Cranes

as a general rule, i’m not a big fan of anime. it’s not that anime isn’t a fine form of art, it’s just that i like to see my action scenes and whatnot performed by actors rather than on cellulose sheets.

i can’t quite rememebr where i’d gotten a hold of this movie called the “tokyo godfathers”, but it’s been kicking around my movie bin for a good year and a half now, and i finally decided to give it a watch. the reason i hadn’t watched it sooner, was somehwere along the way, i had the impression that this anime was about cats. yeah, there are cats, but it’s really not what i thought it’d be.

it’s the story of hana(a homosexual dude who longs to be a woman), gin(a middle aged homeless dude), and miyuki, a young girl who is a runaway and now lives with hana and gin. the three unlikely trio live in heart of tokyo, and although the film doesn’y specifically say so, i’d guess they live somewhere in yoyogi park or its vicinity. the film is well rendered, and small details such as the cardboard hovel that the three live in(which looks pretty nice and cozy), and the tokyo cityscape are well represented.

gin and miyuki

there’s nothing that keeps the trio together save for the fact that despite their constant fighting with each other and verbal abuses(which is fantastic and is constant through out the film), but for whatever reason, they live together, scrounge for food together, and as unlikely as it may seem, are a type of dysfunctional family.

gin, hana, and miyuki

the three are fighting and arguing as usual one christmas evening, when in a dumpster they discover a crying baby. hana, who’s always had a fantasy of raising a child as a mother, wishes to “adopt”the child, whom he(or she, i guess) names kiyoko, but because of gin and miyuki’s vehement protest, decides to find the parents and confront them as to why they’d abandoned this baby.

the search takes the trio all across snowy tokyo landscape, and from this point on, the film becomes a hilarious comedy of ludicrous coincidences after another. in all, i think there may have been 50 or more unlikely coincidences that push the plot along, and though many of them are totally preposterous, the film’s charm is in convincing the viewers that all these unlikely events are possible because the baby is a precious gift from God and on christmas day, anything is possible.

the viewers are also treated to revelations of the three transient’s history, as to why they’d end up as homeless people in of all places tokyo. and as much as the film is about the quest for the baby’s parents, it’s also about resolving each of the three’s past with their family, of course, all occuring through miraculous coincidences.

the animation is superb, the colors are muted yet fantastic, and the action at times rivals fluidity of “ghost in the shell”. but the thing that is probably most enjoyable about “tokyo godfathers” is its offbeat and unexpected humor, without which this film would be nowhere near as enjoyable.

i don’t know how popular this film is compared to other really great animes compared to, for example, miyazaki’s works, but in my mind, it ranks up there with some of the best animes i’ve seen. highly recommended.

9 out 10