What A Cartoon Movie! - Tokyo Godfathers
Added 2022-12-24 17:00:05 +0000 UTCLet's celebrate the holidays with one of the best animated films set between December 25th and January 1st, Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers! After covering the late artist's career in-depth last year with Millennium Actress, we return to his tale of heroic people society often ignores in this remake of a John Ford western. Not only that, but we dig into the career of the film's co-writer, the late Keiko Nobumoto, and check out Tokyo Godfathers' recent English dub. All that and a few miracles too in the final movie podcast of 2022!
Comments
I'm really glad that the new dub has an actual trans woman voicing Hanna, cause woah boy watching this blind for the first time really struck me with some of the poorly aged transphobia that's present in the movie. Obviously, it's of the era, but it still bummed me out for what is otherwise a really fun and often wholesome movie, so reading about Shakina's involvement made me happy. -- Also, for what it's worth, of the three Kon movies I've seen, I'd rank them (favourite to least) as Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, and then Millennium Actress.
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2023-01-10 16:28:06 +0000 UTCThere are a lot of unhoused folks in shinjuku, especially nishi shinjuku, typically under bridges. There was a bit of enforcement happening to “get rid” of them before the Olympics but that didn’t really go anywhere in the end for obvious reasons
Adam Esat
2023-01-01 15:49:20 +0000 UTCAbout a year ago, I was walking around Shinjuku Central Park (where a lot of the tents were pitched up) and hearing you guys talking about this movie on the cartoons 101 podcast. It was wild watching the movie after and basically seeing the neighbourhood I was living in portrayed in that movie. Though there are pretty much no unhoused folks in the park these days, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen snow, but the feel of Tokyo was utterly spot on.
Adam Esat
2023-01-01 15:42:47 +0000 UTCMaybe I’m amazed at the way an anime WAC podcast is explicitly using dub clips when 80 percent of them are clipless. And maybe I’m amazed at the way it took so long for a dub of Tokyo Godfathers to happen
Alex Irish
2022-12-29 17:02:51 +0000 UTCThank you so much for doing this. The podcast itself was such a fascinating listen, and if this hadn’t been the movie for this month, I probably wouldn’t have watched it, but my husband and I did, on Christmas, and it was one of the best movies either of us have ever seen. You literally gave us our favorite Christmas gift!
Kat Heagberg
2022-12-29 05:02:16 +0000 UTCGreat podcast! Man I really wish I could've sat in on this convo because I have lots of little Japanese cultural notes/explanations/corrections and there are way too many to list. For example, Miyuki can be written as 美雪 "beautiful snow" -- this is the most common way to write it -- but it can also be written as 美幸 "beautiful fortune" or 三幸 "three fortunes." I think they don't reveal which kanji her name uses on purpose. (Incidentally my Japanese name, Sachie 幸絵, means "happy/lucky picture" which is cool considering I became an artist -- especially since using 絵 is an unorthodox way of spelling it -- but sadly the meaning gets lost here.) Another one is: yes, that is mochi that Hana tries to bite into at the cemetery, specifically kagami-mochi, the type you display for New Years. It's rock-hard even without it being out in the snow. You might have seen it in Japanese media before, in a small stack with a mandarin orange on top. It's mostly for decoration, but traditionally you also break it into pieces with a mallet on New Year's Day to be grilled and eaten (kagami-biraki). A big one I wanted to bring up though is I don't think Miyuki's mom is Christian. I guess the English dub decided to have her going "Jesus" but in the Japanese dub, Miyuki is definitely approximating a Buddhist prayer (compare with this: https://youtu.be/nmrTWeDzdt4?t=55), and the way her mom is posed in the flashback is a Buddhist prayer pose too. I know the movie never strictly says what religion she is but I'm pretty sure about this.Making her Christian is an interesting choice though. Also, I was very happy the new localization translated "kusojiji" better. Hana does indeed get riled up at being called "jiji" (grampa/geezer), so the old subs making that "fart" takes away from her being angry at being misgendered. "Pops" is way better. Bob is right that you miss a few things if you can't read Japanese. It's kinda frustrating when I watch this with someone else, knowing they don't understand some of the important text on-screen (and I'm sure a lot of people miss the fact that the signs at the beginning are rolling out the credits, which is a brilliant touch). Similarly, I never missed the fact that the paper at the end is the winning lottery ticket --it's a shame that it gets missed by people even after multiple viewings, because it's so important to the ending. See? I have WAY too many notes, so I'll shut up now or else I'll go on forever P.S. I agree that we need to stop with the "WHAT? YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ___?!" reactions to people not having seen classic films, as someone who hasn't gotten around to watching many movies (including The Godfather). I always try to respond like "ooh cool, then you're in for a treat when you watch it for the first time!" or "let's watch it together sometime then!"
nina matsumoto
2022-12-25 19:09:02 +0000 UTCCan't wait to listen to this once the festive chaos has subsided- had my 18th annual watch of Tokyo Godfathers only last night
Adam Elmahdi
2022-12-25 00:40:30 +0000 UTC
