[10][11] One Christmas Eve, three homeless people—middle-aged alcoholic Gin, transgender woman Hana,[12] and teenage runaway Miyuki—discover an abandoned newborn while searching through the garbage for presents, along with a note asking whoever finds the baby to take good care of her and a key leading to a bag with clues to the parents' identity.
The trio sets out to find the baby's parents, and Hana names her Kiyoko, based on the Japanese translation of "Silent Night" and literally meaning "pure child".
He gives them Sachiko's address, but the party is interrupted when a Latino hitman arrives and attempts to shoot the bride's father before kidnapping Miyuki and Kiyoko.
During one of their talks, Miyuki confesses to fleeing her home after stabbing her controlling father when her beloved cat, Angel, went missing, believing that he had gotten rid of it.
While Hana searches for Miyuki and Kiyoko, Gin takes care of an elderly homeless man who is dying in the street.
Looking for a place to stay, they go to Angel Tower, a club Hana had worked at before assaulting a rude and intoxicated customer years earlier.
As the banner begins to give way, a gust of wind miraculously slows its descent, allowing Hana and Kiyoko to land safely on the ground.
Japanese: Akiko Kawase, Akiko Takeguchi, Atsuko Yuya, Bin Horikawa, Chiyako Shibahara, Eriko Kawasaki, Hidenari Umezu, Kazuaki Itou, Masao Harada, Mitsuru Ogata, Nobuyuki Furuta, Toshitaka Shimizu, Tsuguo Mogami, Yoshinori Sonobe, Yuuto Kazama English (GKIDS):[15] Crispin Freeman, David Manis, Erica Schroeder, Jaden Waldman, Jamieson Price, Jordan Cole, Kirk Thornton, Lexie Foley, Gloria Garayua, Marc Thompson, Michael Sinterniklaas, Orlando Rios, Philece Sampler During the production of Millennium Actress, a producer from Madhouse asked Kon if he had any plans for his next film.
[6] Kon had previously asked Nobumoto to write the script for Perfect Blue, but she turned him down, citing her busy schedule.
[6][19] What Kon was conscious of in his direction was "meaningful coincidence", in other words, to create a chain of miraculous events to move the story forward.
[19] In other words, the idea of this film is that the "fiction" of "miracles and coincidences" can be found in the seemingly real life of the homeless in Tokyo.
[21] In fact, "landscapes that look like faces", in which the outdoor units of air conditioners and windows are used as eyes and mouths, are embedded in various cuts, which could be said to be the figures of the gods of the city staring at the main characters.
[21] This movie was released in North America by Sony Pictures on December 29, 2003, in an unsuccessful attempt to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.
[25] Announced on December 19, 2019, international animation licensor, GKIDS, in partnership with the original US distributor Destination Films, released the movie on March 9, 2020, with a brand new 4K restoration and a new English dub.
The website's critics consensus reads, "Beautiful and substantive, Tokyo Godfathers adds a moving – and somewhat unconventional – entry to the animated Christmas canon.
"[27] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.