(2003) On Christmas Eve a trio of homeless people, who share a cardboard shelter, discover an abandoned infant in a Dumpster. "Uncle Bag" Hana, a gay transvestite, says to the other two, the geezer Gin and the runaway girl Miyuki: "This is a Christmas present from God."

Directors Satoshi Kon and Shôgo Furuya's animated feature is crammed with over-the-top action - a shooting at a gangster's daughter's wedding (the homeless three present after rescuing the father of the bride), the kidnapping of Miyuki and the baby by a Mexican disguised as a maid, a gang of kids beating up Gin after he's saved an old bum in the street, a wild car chase including Gin on a stolen bicycle, a woman's attempted suicide from a bridge and again with the baby from the top of a building - and melodrama.

Claiming to be a former professional cyclist, Gin sobbingly tells Hana how 20 years ago he threw a race in an effort to make enough money to save his desperately sick baby daughter Kiyoko, but daughter and mother perished.

Resisting the urgings of the other two to take the baby to the police, Hana, who says he never knew his real mother but moved from one foster family to another, insists on keeping the foundling, naming her Kiyoko, until the mother can be found. Using a key to a train-station locker that they'd found with the baby, the three bums find a bag of items, including more keys, business cards, and a photo of the presumed parents.

Six months before, Miyuki recalls through flashbacks her running away from home after stabbing her father, a policeman, in an argument over her cat Angel.

After a series of improbable events, including Hana's reluctantly going to the Angel Tower bar, run by his mother (they've told one another lies about themselves), where Hana ("All I ever wanted was love") and Miyuki are reunited with battered and bandaged Gin, they find the remains of the house to which the keys belonged.

After an ambulance crashes into a store, Hana is taken to the hospital where a nurse coincidentally has the name Kiyoko. This and several more coincidences, like a sugary dessert with layers of sweets, add up to a fantastically sappy-happy New Year.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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