8 | / 10 |
Users | 2.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 2.8 |
Three homeless people find a lost baby girl and start seaching for her rightful parents on Christmas Day in Tokyo. Along the way, they must confront their own haunted pasts, and learn to face their futures.
Starring: Aya Okamoto, Toru Emori, Satomi Koorogi, Inuko Inuyama, Yoshiaki UmegakiForeign | 100% |
Anime | 73% |
Drama | 13% |
Holiday | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Japanese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
If you live in an at least relatively urban environment, you may well have noticed what has become an almost shocking uptick in the amount of homeless people “camping” on the streets of many major (and even mid-sized) American cities. Judging by the fact that Satoshi Kon’s anime Tokyo Godfathers , a film which prominently features a gaggle of homeless folks, was released in 2003, Tokyo has evidently had a “homeless problem” for at least a decade and a half or so. The homeless aspect is just one of several provocative elements to this "adult" anime, a piece which owes at least a bit to the venerable old John Ford opus, 3 Godfathers, though in this case the foundling is "anonymous" (i.e., the mother initially isn't known), and the three people doing the finding are about as far from Wild West desperadoes as you could possibly imagine.
Tokyo Godfathers is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. I think this is
the first Umbrella Entertainment release I've personally reviewed, and so I can't state with any authority about what their releases "typically" offer,
but
as can be clearly seen in the screenshots accompanying this review, the 1.85:1 aspect ratio is achieved via windowboxing, a perhaps unusual gambit
this
far into the Blu-ray era. Whatever element was sourced here has a few intermittent signs of age related wear and tear, mostly in the form of white
speckling, but there's nothing that I considered overly problematic. The entire transfer is a bit on the soft side, but there's an appealingly organic
appearance, with generally decent densities and a good accounting of the grain field, and line detail tends to be precise looking. The palette looked
just slightly faded to my eyes, with tones often skewing toward the brown side of things.
Note: While this is officially a Region B release, it played fine in my Region A player and on my PC drive.
Unfortunately, there's only a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix included on this disc. The surround activity is noticeable courtesy of the glut of outdoor material, where ambient environmental sounds can dot the side and rear channels, but there's a kind of lackluster quality to the sonics in lower frequencies that a lossless track may arguably have at least improved. Dialogue is presented very cleanly and clearly throughout.
Tokyo Godfathers is a really interesting piece that is rather uncompromising in its indictment of a class based society in Japan (something it shares in common with some other "adult" anime like The King of Pigs, albeit in that case the class struggle takes place in Korea). The technical presentation here could stand some improvement, but the film itself is commendable on several levels, for those who are considering a purchase.
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