Genre: Drama/Comedy

Creator/Studio: Satoshi Kon/Madhouse

Company: Columbia/Tri-Star

DVD Info: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Summary: In the slums of Tokyo, three homeless people--a widower named Gin, a drag queen named Hana, and a teenage runaway named Miyuki--find an abandoned baby on Christmas Day. They realize they must work together to find a home.

The Good: The humor between the tree protagonists is well done. The animation is very nice, and made me wonder why Madhouse doesn't do light-hearted stuff more often.

The Bad: The subtitles didn't work in some scenes, but this may be more of a translator error than anything else.

Offensive Material: Hana's a homosexual drag queen, and his orientation is not frowned upon. We also see two babies nursing on full breasts in one scene. Gin has an extremely filth mouth.

Overall: This is a nice change of pace if you can stand the homosexual references (the Japanese culture is rather ambivalent about homosexuality, neither condoning nor condemning it). For a culture that is not grounded in Christianity, it's actually a good Christmas story.

My review: 4.0

Category: C (Caution)

Comments: This movie is only subtitled. It is loosely based on the American movie Three Godfathers. Satoshi Kon also created Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Paranoia Agent. Other titles created by Madhouse include: Boogiepop Phantom, Cardcaptors, Gungrave, Gunslinger Girl, and Ninja Scroll. They also created the Animatrix shorts "Program" and "World Record".