Director Kon keeps this winning streak alive with Tokyo Godfathers. Photos courtesy of Destination Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Satoshi Kon has certainly skyrocketed into prominence among the ranks of Japan’s leading anime directors. Perfect Blue, his 1997 first theatrical feature as director, was a global critical success on the international film festival circuit. Its American limited theatrical release also won rave reviews. (It goes without saying that so did its video release to the anime market.) Kon’s second feature, Millennium Actress, got the same results starting with its 2001-2003 tour of the international festivals, its 2002 Japanese release and its late 2003 release in America. As of this writing, it is expected to be a 2003 Academy Awards finalist in the Best Animated Feature Film category. Now, right on the heels of the latter comes Tokyo Godfathers. This had its world premiere at NYC’s Big Apple Anime Fest 2003 on Aug. 29-31, 2003 (where it was personally introduced by Kon who was a Festival Guest of Honor). It had a limited release in December 2003 in Los Angeles to qualify for 2003 film awards (its Japanese release was on December 29), and its American art-theater release begins on January 16 in Berkeley, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, San Diego and San Francisco, spreading to other cities over the next few weeks. Glowing reviews have already begun appearing in trades like Variety and the Village Voice, as well as throughout the anime fan community.

Since this is only Kon’s third feature (as director), it may be stretching a point to describe it as a startling change of pace for him. In one respect, each of his films has been different from the previous ones. In another, each of them feature similar themes. But it should be safe to say that audiences who saw Perfect Blue (a Hitchcockian thriller) and Millennium Actress (a romantic melodrama combined with a historical overview of the Japanese movie industry) would not expect a film like Tokyo Godfathers to follow them.

Tokyo Godfathers has a Hollywood pedigree being based on John Ford’s 3 Godfathers. Photos courtesy of Destination Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Kon has acknowledged that Tokyo Godfathers was inspired by John Ford’s offbeat Christmas 1948 Western melodrama, 3 Godfathers, in which three hard-bitten outlaws find a dying mother with a baby in the desert and undergo a moral redemption as they try to save the infant. Kon had been considering homeless people as a subject for a feature, and the idea of substituting modern street people for Western outlaws gave him his hook for a sociological commentary on modern urban homelessness which swings back and forth between serious drama and exaggerated comedy.

Tokyo Godfathers opens on a beautifully snowy, but freezingly cold Christmas eve in Tokyo’s fashionable Shinjuku district. The Christmas spirit is both thick and superficial at charities for homeless street people. The Odd Trio who share the same shelter at night are Gin, a despondent alcoholic ex-bicycle racer; Hana, an ex-drag queen transvestite who manically complains about being a woman trapped in a male body; and Miyuki, a cynical mid-adolescent runaway. As they rummage through dumpsters for “Christmas presents,” they find an abandoned newborn baby.