Anime Column] 100 Anime to Watch by Keyword! 100 Anime to Watch No.24 "Tokyo Godfathers" etc.

Drinking parties among anime fans tend to be a game of association. Whenever someone says, "XXX has XXX scene," someone else replies, "Speaking of XXX scene, don't forget XXX. Anime and animation are connected by invisible threads like this. Let's follow the "anime to watch" using keywords as clues.

This article will be published around Christmas. So, as usual, I have selected four works with Christmas as the keyword.
However, Christmas-related episodes have appeared in TV anime quite often. Whether it is "Santa Claus' Red is the Color of Blood" in the 200th episode of "Gintama" or the 19th episode of "Toradora! episode 19 "Holy Night Festival" of "Gintama", or "Ping Pong" episode 6 "You love table tennis more than anyone else! it is rather difficult to choose the best one. Therefore, I decided to choose from non-TV series this time.

The first one is "Tokyo Godfathers.
The main characters in this film are three homeless people. They are Gin-chan, a self-proclaimed former bicycle racer, Hana-chan, a former drag queen, and Miyuki, a runaway. The story begins when these three pick up a baby on Christmas night. They name the baby "Kiyoko," and after convincing Hana-chan, who insists on raising the baby herself, the three set out to find Kiyoko's real parents.

The three set out to find Kiyoko's real parents, following the few clues they have, and the various coincidences that occur along the way are exquisitely chained together, sometimes ironically, sometimes gently, to enhance the film.
The one-week period between Christmas and New Year's is a special time of religious mix-ups, where festive moods and solemn feelings coexist. This film is a story of a "miracle" that could happen during such a period.

One of the movies this film is based on is "Three Named Parents. It is the story of three misfits who are entrusted with a baby, travel through the wilderness, and arrive in a Christmas town. Although it is a western, it is at the same time a biblical drama, and it is clear that Christmas is a special time of year for Christians. This "specialness" is a part of Western civilization and is taken for granted even by non-Christian Japanese.

On the other hand, the Christmas party in this film is a symbol of "happy everyday life. The movie is "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. It is a theater version of "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

On December 17, the main character, Kyon, and the other members of the SOS group were preparing for a party to be held on Christmas Eve. However, when they arrive at school on the 18th, they find that their classmates, who were fine until yesterday, have caught colds and are acting very differently. In fact, it was a different world than the one Kyon had been in until yesterday. The biggest difference was that Haruhi Suzumiya, the leader of the SOS group and a troublemaker, was not at school.

On the 19th, Kyon receives a message from Nagato, a member of the SOS Dan who was in the original world, and begins to take action to restore the world without Haruhi. ......
Kyon is caught up in Haruhi's activities, and in a sense, he is working for the SOS-dan in a way that is inevitable. He shows Kyon the "world with Haruhi" and the "world without Haruhi," and makes Kyon proactively choose the former. One of the main focuses of the film is to show how Kyon proactively affirms the former world (the other is to show how this divergence of worlds came about and the inner life of the character who caused it).
The Christmas party that eventually comes is a symbol of the daily life that Kyon has chosen.

On the other hand, the OVA "Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" takes place during Christmas in the year 0079.

The main character, Al, is an elementary school student on the neutral side "Side 6. Al meets a Zeon soldier named Bernie by chance, whose mission is to capture and destroy a new Gundam that is being secretly tested on Side 6.
Since this is an inside story of TV's "Mobile Suit Gundam," many viewers know that the war between the Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation, which unfolds in the background of the work, will end on December 31. Thus, the characters struggle with reality without knowing the time schedule that has already been set for them. This creates a similar taste to the various war movies that take real wars as their subject matter.

Bernie survives a failed mission.
He repairs a broken and abandoned Zaku and attempts to take on the Gundam. To compensate for the lack of firepower, he acquires an ad balloon in the shape of Santa Claus and uses it as a decoy. The battle between the Zaku and the new Gundam takes place on Christmas Day, the 25th.

Looking overseas, there are, of course, far more animated films based on Christmas than in Japan. The Nightmare Before Christmas," a fantasy film featuring the residents of Halloween Town who long for Christmas, is probably the first of these.

From among such works, we would like to recommend "The Snowman" this time. It is a 26-minute short film based on a picture book. A boy builds a snowman. After midnight, the snowman starts to move, plays with the boy, and leads him to the land of snowmen. Then the boy meets Santa.

There is not a single line in the story, but it is a charming depiction of a dream that any child would have. If you like the scene in "My Neighbor Totoro" where the sisters Mei and Satsuki watch a big tree grow up in the middle of the night with Totoro, you will be moved by this straightforward Christmas fantasy.


(Text by Ryota Fujitsu)