Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Tokyo Godfathers Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 12, 2019

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.

In what plays like a kind of bizarro world Christmas story, three haggard homeless people stumble across an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve, and set out on a “wisemen” (or in this case, wise gender fluid) quest to find the tot’s mother. A rather unlikely series of events ensues, including involvement in a gang war. The film has an undeniably gritty, even cruel at times, ambience, but it rather strangely ends up offering a story of hope and salvation, one perfectly in tune with the holiday being celebrated at least in the background of events.

Tokyo Godfathers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Tokyo Godfathers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Unexpected Tours (1080i; 25:50) is an interesting enough making of featurette, though it can come off as a bit self aggrandizing (not unlike many EPKs). In Japanese with English subtitles.


• Process of Animation: The Making of Tokyo Godfathers (1080i; 13:55) is basically more of the same and probably really didn't need to be split out into a separate featurette. This includes some goofy live action footage that was used as reference material. In Japanese with English subtitles.


• Animax Featurette (Big Apple Anime Fest 2003) (1080i; 21:57) has footage surrounding a screening in New York City in 2003. In Japanese with English subtitles.


• 5.1 Surround Sound Art Gallery & Interview with Music Director Keiichi Suzuki (1080i; 11:46)


• Japanese Trailer 1 (1080i; 00:58)


• Japanese Trailer 2 (1080i; 1:58)


• U.S. DVD Trailer (1080p; 1:38)

Tokyo Godfathers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.