Tokyo Godfathers Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set (of 1)

By: Dani Moure
Review Date: Thursday, March 03, 2005
Release Date: Monday, February 14, 2005



What They Say
Meet the ultimate dysfunctional family!

From acclaimed director Satoshi Kon and Japan's leading animation studio Mad House comes this visually and emotionally stunning tale of adventure, love and redemption. In Tokyo, three homeless people's lives are changed forever when they discover a baby girl in a garbage dump on Christmas Eve. As the New Year fast approaches, these three forgotten members of society band together to solve the mystery of the abandoned child and the fate of her parents. Along the way, encounters with seemingly unrelated events and people force them to confront their own haunted pasts, as they learn to face the future together.

The Review!
It's three for three as acclaimed director Satoshi Kon serves up another sublime anime feature, and now you can get it in deluxe form.

Please note that portions of this review, including the content section, are taken from my original review of the single-disc release.

Audio:
I listened to the Japanese 5.1 track for my main review. It's a very good track and the sound effects and music come across very well, producing some great directionality. I noticed no dropouts or distortions during regular playback, and was fully immersed throughout the film, which is great as it has an excellent score. My biggest gripe is the lack of an English dub, but that is rapidly becoming a trend with CTHE releases (and big film distributors generally tend to not do dubs for foreign films). We do also get a Japanese DTS track, but as I'm not fully DTS enabled I will have to refrain from thoughts on that.

Video:
CTHE provide yet another gorgeous transfer in anamorphic widescreen. The film quality comes across really well, as there's a natural grainy feel in places, just as you'd expect. There are occasional nicks and scratches present from the source, but other than that it's excellent. I noticed no artifacting whatsoever during regular playback, and once again I felt like I was in the cinema watching the film as this DVD was playing. The subtitles are in a white font with a black border, but are quite large and easy to read.

Packaging:
This is definitely the first area where this set shines. Essentially, what we have here is a replica of the original Japanese limited edition Tokyo Godfathers deluxe box set, just for the European market. To start with, we have a gorgeous outer box, of the thick and sturdy variety, with original movie poster illustrations on either side (one side and the spine are the same image as the cover of the single-disc release of the film). As if that wasn't good enough, there's a second inner box, just as thick and sturdy, featuring an original illustration of the three godfathers, that wraps around all three sides of the box. As you'd probably expect, it's an excellent piece.


Inside the box we have the two discs, each in their own keepcase. The movie disc has a nice image of the godfathers holding the baby, with the Tokyo skyline in the background on the front cover, while the back cover contains a brief summary of the film over a bit of artwork featuring Miyuki. There're four screenshots here too. The bottom half of the back cover is taken up by the movie's credits and the technical specs of the disc.

The extras disc's cover features the same artwork used for the cover of the US release of the movie, again the three godfathers, but this time with Miyuki holding the baby, and the city of Tokyo buzzing just behind them.

Inside an envelope are ten deluxe sized illustrated postcards. Unfortunately none of them feature character art, and while some look nice and quite striking, a few look a but bland.

The other major draw to this release though is the 650 plus page book that is also housed by the box. It's really well-made and heavy, and across over 500 pages it features the entire set of storyboards for the film reproduced for its pages. These are followed by a series of "long interviews" and other features, which span over 150 pages themselves. The written interviews are with the likes of director Satoshi Kon, the art director and the sound director, and several more images are scattered about these pages. The only disappointment, though it's not surprising, is that while a few feature titles and people's names are translated into English, this is (I'm assuming) an exact replica of the book that came with the Japanese DVD box (printed in Japan), and as such it's all in Japanese. So for someone like me with only a basic grasp of Japanese, I'm mainly left to look at the pictures. While a translation would've been nice, it would've also been very costly, so I can't say I blame CTHE for not doing it.

Still, overall this is a gorgeous, stunning package the likes of which we've never really seen in the UK before.

Menu:
The main menu is completely static, with an image of Hana, Gin and Miyuki looking towards the camera in shock after finding the baby. The menu selections appear at the bottom of the screen, but no music plays over the menus at all. Each of the sub-menus also contain a shot from the movie, and all are static and silent. The images fit, but in general the menus are nothing to get excited about.

Extras:
Originally when I reviewed the single disc release, I pondered where the extras listed on the original press releases had gone. Well, now I know, as the main draw aside from the packaging and "real" extras, there's a bonus disc with over an hour of additional video content, some of which never even made it to the US disc.

The first extra is the "Process of Animation" featurette, and it's a really in-depth look at the creation of the animation of the film. It starts all the way at the beginning, showing Satoshi Kon and a couple of others dressed up as the "godfathers" and being filmed walking along with a baby, for the animators to use as a guiding point. They then move on to the animation director (Kenishi Konishi) talking about several different scenes from the film, as original storyboard sketches, animatics and the final film play alongside his comments. There are several scenes he talks about in some detail, from some funny ones to more moving ones, and how they approached the animation and layout, and he also discusses how each different artist approached the characters at certain points. It's a really intriguing extra that I wish we saw more of, as Konishi really has a lot of interesting things to say.

Next up is the Animax featurette, which is your standard promotional featurette that appears on all the CTHE movie releases (and indeed, the only extra here to appear on the US release). It's enthusiastic and contains a lot of information, from the premiere at Big Apple Anime Fest in the USA, to interviews and recording clips with the three main voice actors. Then there's a nice interview with director Satoshi Kon, who talks about how he originally came up with the characters and how he approached casting the voice actors. They then briefly go behind the scenes at animation studio Madhouse, before reverting back to an interview with Kon just after the premiere in the US, where he talks about the story and how the film itself isn't restricted by cultural barriers.

The other major featurette is called "Unexpected Tours", is a more in-depth look at the film's creation. It's split into several sections, the first being "Art". In this [art the art director talks at length about how the team went about recreating the city of Tokyo, by using pictures as a reference and using things like realistic lighting, all to create an atmosphere that would almost smell of Tokyo. In the "Characters" section, the voice actors for the three main characters talk in-depth about how they approached their roles and what of their own characters they put into it. We also get to see some of the first recordings of lines, and Satoshi Kon chips in a bit too. The "Sounds" segment has the sound supervisor talking about all the different effects that had to be used to make the film feel real, and he particularly stresses one point where he had to persuade everyone to just use the sound of wind to build up the scene, rather than inserting music. The final segment is on the "Premiere", where we visit the Tokyo International Film Festival and see some comments around the film from there, as well as a nice list of awards the movie won.

The final feature on this disc is the 5.1 channel surround sound photo montage. Basically, this is a set of still images put to some original tracks for the movie for about 5 minutes, followed by an interview with Keichi Suzuki, the music composer. He tells of how Satoshi Kon made notes on what he wanted the music at certain stages to sound like, as well as how they approached a few pieces of music like the ending theme.

All in all, this is a really good set of extras for any fan of the film, who wants to get a bit more background depth on the creation of the film. If you're anything like me, you'll also relish at the opportunity to hear the comments of Satoshi Kon about his work at various stages, though the other staff members interviewed do give plenty of knowledge. It's a shame that these extras couldn't have formed part of a two-disc special edition of the movie, rather than being exclusive to this box set, I am glad to have had the chance to see these extras.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Tokyo Godfathers is perhaps not the sort of film you'd expect from Satoshi Kon. After Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, two fine anime features, you'd be forgiven for thinking this film is a little straightforward. And more so than his past films, it is. But despite the more straightforward storytelling, with an absolutely superbly written script and sense of style, as well as some fine animation that you'd expect for this sort of film, Tokyo Godfathers is a masterpiece in its own right.

After watching each of Kon's previous anime features, the story and events stayed with me for a while after my first viewing, while I was left to contemplate what had happened, and I think the same will be true of this film. At it's core, Tokyo Godfathers is a hugely uplifting film that goes a considerable way to show that things can turn out right in the end, and that often fate, or divine intervention, will be on your side.

The movie opens with a group of three homeless people finding an abandoned baby. They all have different personalities and quirks, but they're friends by virtue of their situation. With the arrival of the baby, they are split on what exactly to do with it. Hana, the cross-dressing man who desperately wants to be a woman, wants nothing more than to keep the baby and raise her as his own, since he'll never be able to have a baby himself. Gin, the old man who lost his own wife and daughter, is adamant that they should take the child to the police. As for Miyuki, the young girl who left her home, she thinks it should go back but is more willing to follow what is decided.

Hana wants the baby to have one happy memory, as he knows what it's like to feel unloved, and its Christmas Eve. So after holding on to the child for a night, the three set off to find the baby's parents and uncover the mystery of its abandonment. But the journey leads to so much more than just finding the parents, as the events that transpire as they search force each of them to face their pasts and the reasons why they are living how they live, and the events have a profound impact on each of them in their own way.

The fantastic thing about Tokyo Godfathers is that the journey that the three characters go through really changes them and the way they look at their lives. The events are random and there are several coincidences and chance meetings, but each one serves a specific purpose to flesh out the character's past or to show why things are the way they are. The story really builds upon itself bit by bit, as events unfold and it keeps things interesting as we find out the true story behind each of the characters and then get to see how they will probably go forward in the future. It's a story-telling technique that could be very tiresome if overused, but Satoshi Kon manages to pull it off perfectly every time, making it a really gripping tale.

The three characters are really well thought out, too, each being completely different and having a totally different story. Seeing Gin's story as he tells it initially is really quite sad and makes you feel sorry for him, but after following his journey for much of the film that leads up to a chance encounter in the hospital, it makes you think about his actions, and simultaneously managed to make me feel he was totally wrong and yet feel very sorry for what he put himself through. Hana's story is also very sad, and more through the actions of the other characters and his reactions to them, as well as his interactions with baby Kiyoko, we really get to see how he feels and his own tragedy in a way. As for Miyuki, well her reactions to certain events and often her child-like attitude are expected, but her own story holds a bit of tragedy itself, and there's one point when she phoned her father but couldn't speak that really made me feel quite sad, but thankfully things have a way of working out, and that's what this film shows.

Despite the sad histories of the characters, as I mentioned, the story itself is actually very uplifting, as we see the three characters really pull together around the child and work out their own lives, while events that transpire actually lead to some happiness. There are also some interesting religious overtones, as the movie opens on Christmas Eve and ends at New Year, and there are a few little nuggets that refer to the child as a an Angel from God and the like. It's not heavy and doesn't bash you over the head, but there's definitely a bit of a religious theme in there, moreso than you usually see in anime.

Tokyo Godfathers also has a really strong family theme throughout, naturally with the arrival of the baby, but also because of the relationships between the characters. They argue all the time, but there's very much a mother/father/child role with Hana, Gin and Miyuki that is prevalent throughout, as they also band together when needed and work together like a family would. It really helps give the film a nice heart-warming feel.

In Summary:
Tokyo Godfathers is another gem from Satoshi Kon. It's a straightforward story told with coincidences and chance encounters rife throughout, but it works so well in the context of the film and in fleshing out the characters present that it doesn't make any difference to the enjoyment of the movie. It's a heart-warming tale, tragic at times, but at its core it is wholly uplifting and completely fulfilling. Tokyo Godfathers is an anime masterpiece, and I would recommend it to absolutely anyone, as it's difficult to imagine anyone not getting some enjoyment from this film.

The deluxe box set is really only for really big fans of the film or Satoshi Kon himself, but for those (like me), to get not only a great disc of extra features, but also the storyboard book, the likes of which are rarely released outside Japan, was a real treat and I am overjoyed that Columbia TriStar decided to take the leap and release this box here. Yes, it's harsh that the only way to get any extras on a UK disc, but it's not surprising given the set's price tag. So while it's for fans only, I'm sure those fans will love it.

Features
Japanese Language (5.1 & DTS),Spanish Language (5.1),English Subtitles,Additional subtitles in Arabic; Croatian; Czech; Danish; Dutch; Finnish; Greek; Hebrew; Hindi; Hungarian; Icelandic; Norwegian; Polish; Portuguese; Slovene; Spanish; Swedish and Turkish,Deluxe Collector's Box featuring illustrations by Satoshi Kon,Unexpected Tours featurette,Animax "Making Of" featurette,Photo Montage 5.1 Ch Surround & Art Gallery,The Process of Animation featurette,10 Deluxe Postcards,650 page "Storyboard Book" featuring over 500 pages of complete storyboards for the film and 150 pages of additional interviews and material

Review Equipment
Philips 28" Pure Flat Widescreen TV, Pioneer DV-464 code free DVD player, JVC gold-plated RGB SCART cable, standard stereo sound.