Cult Corner: ‘Tokyo Godfathers’ enters the Official Christmas Movie Canon

We’re not debating the status of “Die Hard” as a Christmas movie anymore. A few years ago, sure, but, as of 2023, it’s cemented in the Official Christmas Movie Canon, or OCMC.

Need proof? Millennials are now middle-aged, that lucrative cultural driver’s seat, and they’ve crowned the winners from among the nominees. Need evidence? Etsy is full of Christmas ornaments depicting Bruce Willis’ John McClane in various stages of laying siege to Hans Gruber and his band of terrorists in Nakatomi Tower. Yippee-ki-yay, indeed.

Traditionally saccharine and draped in manufactured warmth, the OCMC needed some unconventional entries. “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Gremlins,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Batman Returns” all have been added in recent years.

Entries into the “unconventional” or “alternative” section of the OCMC do have some specific requirements. They can be odd, dark, even violent, but, in addition to taking place at least partially around Christmas, they need to have a happy ending of some sort.
Case in point: “Gremlins” ends with a movie theater explosion, (toy) car chase and a gruesome Gremlin death, but ultimately sees everything put back in the end. The hero even gets the girl. “Edward Scissorhands” has its Frankenstein-esque climax, but leaves viewers with the beauty of winter snow and the knowledge that Edward is now safe, albeit alone.

While millennial nominations are still open, I submit 2003’s “Tokyo Godfathers” for canonization.

Set on Christmas Eve in the titular Tokyo, the film finds a trio of homeless people discovering a crying baby in a pile of garbage, thus setting them on a quest to care for and eventually attempt to return the child to its parents. Emotionally, the film yo-yos between comedy and tragedy while mixing in moments of meaningful coincidence for a blend that invokes seasonal magic and sentimentality such that even the most Scrooge- and Grinch-like among us can smile and shed a tear. At times, it feels like an animated “Raising Arizona” (1987) in the best of ways.

The film’s three protagonists — a runaway teen girl, a cynical middle-aged man and a transgender woman with a flair for the dramatic — each deal with the appearance of the infant in their own ways. Even as they grapple with what led them to their lives on the street, the action never flags. Don’t think a story about caring for a baby keeps the violence at bay. Miraculously, the story never loses sight of its goal and is a marvel of sadness, sentimentality and humor with a touch of hope. With its PG-13 rating, the film is largely family friendly, too.

Director Satoshi Kon, among whose four films are two masterworks of Japanese animation — the surreal “Perfect Blue” and equally surreal, but less dark, “Paprika” — died of cancer in 2010. “Tokyo Godfathers” is a standout among his works and his most accessible to general audiences, by far.

Fans of Christopher Nolan, David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock would do well to check out Kon’s other works. Don’t sleep on the single series he directed, too — the cerebral and cathartic “Paranoia Agent.”

Thompson, VHS.D, holds a doctorate of cult media in pop culture from University of Maine at Castle Rock. He delivers lectures on movies and other pop culture topics under the moniker Professor VHS. Find him on Instagram as @professorvhs, and find more of his work at professorvhs.substack.com.