Tokyo Godfathers is far too odd to become a new American Christmas classic, but if you want some decidedly different holiday fare this season, you could do far worse than this animation from the head script writer of Cowboy Bebop and something called Wolf's Rain. I believe both of those things are very popular, but to be perfectly honest I'm not all that up the Japanime and I think it's quite likely that big time fans of the genre will probably tell you that Tokyo Godfathers is actually far tamer and much less strange than I'm making it out to be… still it's no White Christmas.
The story, loosely based on the western 3 Godfathers, follows three vagrants (a young runaway, a gruff failure, and a dramatic tranny) who find an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve. Truths are revealed, heart strings pulled, and miraculous coincidences abound.
It's a movie teeming with bulging eyes, derogatory language, video game music, surreal dream sequences, sassy angels, periodic haikus, ancient stories about devils, mafia assassinations and, to top it all off, dancing skyscrapers. In short, it's chock full of wonderful, wonderful Japanese strangeness with a heartfelt plot and some nice artwork.
But what do you think?