Summer Wars

There are some anime masterpieces which can be recommended as a must-see to virtually anyone, and not only fans of the genre. Movies like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, etc.

If you know them you will understand what I mean. In addition to being visually compelling these also have an original plot with some twists here and there, and will leave you with the feeling that you have just watched something really awesome.

Let's be honest: Summer Wars will not enter this eternal hall of fame, mostly because the plot is far too conventional and straight-forward.

On the other hand, a solid plot is not necessarily a bad thing, and makes this movie suitable for a broad audience. While a real fan of anime will probably be disappointed by the lack of weirdness and original ideas, Summer Wars might be a real good starting point for a newbie.

And if you are willing to excuse the fact that the plot won't knock your socks off, apart from that Summer Wars is a really good movie. It does quite an excellent job in introducing literally dozens of characters and still managing to give every single one of them a unique personality.

The story unfolds on parallel levels (the action part about saving the world, the part about the values of a family, the dangers of relying too much on technology, a little bit of teenage love story, ...) - while each level is too obvious and shallow on its own, they blend in together nicely. Reminds me of a virtual chop suey - nothing special, yet very tasty.

The visual presentation is quite good, too. The scenes in the real world are well done, and the cyberspace world is amazing.

In conclusion, Summer Wars is OK. Not really original and far from being excellent, but good nevertheless. No unique masterpiece, yet solid work, and if you won't set your expectations too high, you will enjoy it.

Summer Wars does a wonderful job of combining touching human Japanese animation with weird monster-fighting stuff. The former is the frame of the movie in which a young man finds himself caught in a friend's family drama involving a really cool old lady and a snarky black sheep. The latter involves a facebook-meets-second-life-meets-everything-else-on-the-internet entity that gets hacked. The two sections are beautifully integrated into a single, fantastic movie.

There are criticisms I could make if I really wanted to. The technology really makes no sense at all, and some remarkable idiocy has to happen in the real world to worsen things in the virtual one. But none of that bothered me, because the characters feel real and the animation in both worlds is absolutely gorgeous.

If you can imagine the easy going yet fascinating Hayao Miyazaki stories, with their kind heartedness and deep Japanese roots being mixed with Denou Coil, you will get Summer Wars. It has good animation, a really cute story and features a cyber battle between a Japanese family and a malicious A.I. inside something that can be seen as the future of Facebook.

What I found really nice in the film is that traditional family values are mixed with modern views of the world, a beautiful countryside scenery is mixed with the virtual cyber world of OZ. There are both moral values to be learned from the story as well as the excitement of a crisis and how giving your best can get one past it. I found brilliant the way the scenes of cyber battle were intertwined with scenes of Japanese baseball, birthday then dying rituals, the individual traits of all of the members of the family, all without losing anything, just adding more and more depth to each scene.

I highly recommend it for all anime fans and for people who might become so, after watching a masterpiece like Summer Wars.

'Summer Wars' is another excellent exponent of the Japanese anime genre, directed by Mamoru Hosoda, whose modest (so far) directorial cannon includes 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' (not to be mistaken for one of the Stieg Larsson trilogy!), which is also highly enjoyable. This film is a lively and colourful affair, nicely evoking the optimism and energy of the season, and its large cast of characters is well drawn in both senses, each one sketched with enough care and detail to be believable and interesting, and to make their own distinct contribution to the story, despite there being some twenty family members or so to deal with, no mean feat.

The plot is bedded in the technology of future, an almost ubiquitous theme for the genre, but the story's posit of a worldwide virtual network to which every financial institution, emergency service and government agency links, and indeed some cedes control of its systems, is hardly Science Fiction! Events take a turn for the worst of course, but despite the action being centred on a bright and colourful online world, and a plethora of cuddly personal avatars, Hosoda invests the conflict with a dark malevolence that is convincing, and delivers a real sense of threat.

'Summer Wars' may look at first glance like a kid's film, but don't dismiss it as 'some kind of Pokémon', the film delivers some emotional passages and a sweet central relationship that you will root for. All in all very satisfying for fans of the genre, and has something to offer those who are not. For me, the final note strays from the tone of the piece, but that is a minor quibble. Treat yourself to a dose of optimism.

If you liked 2006's "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," you're going to absolutely love "Summer Wars." Mamoru Hosoda's new film is an oddball mix of science fiction, cyber-punk, teen romance and family comedy/drama, all rolled up into one beautiful, lavish-looking Anime' that also somehow manages to throw in a pretty chilling end-of-the-world fight for the future of humanity. This has to be the best animated film to come out so far this year, or was it last year (I honestly can't remember). All I know is, I would have passed this film had I not read "The Washington Post's" "Style" section early one morning.

Regardless of how you feel about Japanese animation, "Summer Wars" is one film that the whole family can enjoy. Unlike most family films, however, this one doesn't insult the intelligence of the audience, nor does it treat its characters in a half-a**ed, perfunctory fashion. Every character in this film is alive and brimming over the top with personality, poise and humor, a rarity in most films these days - whether they be animated or live-action. But you know how most American audiences are here: they're pathologically afraid of anything foreign (i.e., not American). And then there's also all those negative stereotypes that Japanese animation is violent and full of sex.

Not true here.

It all just shows the marvelous degree of attention to detail that Hosoda paid to this project. It definitely has the makings of a labor of love for the Japanese filmmaker. "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" was an enjoyably light-hearted sci-fi/comedy romp in its own right. I liked it well enough (I rated it a 10/10), yet I still something felt missing from it. I didn't find anything missing from "Summer Wars," a brilliantly inventive and highly original movie that combines elements of the online virtual world Second Life, "The Social Network" (2010), "The Matrix" (1999), "Meet the Parents" (2000), and "The Simpsons" together with a bunch of other stuff I can't really remember.

17-year-old high schooler Kenji Koiso is a mathematical genius who like most high school geniuses, is shy, uncoordinated, and inarticulate in the area of girls and love. Things become even more complicated for him when the girl of his dreams (and fellow classmate) Natsuki Shinohara "hires" him out to be her fake fiancé to please her ailing great-grandmother at an upcoming family reunion. Cue the family dramatics. Cue the crazy and/or obnoxious relatives. Cue all-out familial craziness!

Sakae Jinnouchi is the 90-year-old family matriarch of this motley bunch of oddball relatives. The Jinnouchi clan fought bravely against the army of the Tokugawa shogunate that ruled all of Japan for nearly three centuries. The spirit of the Jinnouchi clan lives on to the present day, as poor Kenji finds out first-hand. His feelings for Natsuki will have to take a backseat when he receives a random text message one night that contains a 250-character algorithm. Kenji solves it with little difficulty.

The next day, Kenji finds out that he is responsible for bringing down Oz, the film's online equivalent of Facebook combined with MySpace combined with a world-wide chat room/business center. Additionally, when Kenji solved the algorithm, he also gave a malevolent A.I. (artificial intelligence) called "Love Machine" instant access to pretty much everything in the online world. And it isn't long before "Love Machine," using Kenji's online avatar to hack into accounts and steal information, sets its sights on also conquering the real world, even if it means killing all life on Earth as we know it. This apocalyptic showdown between man and A.I. unfolds amidst the family drama at Sakae's hilltop estate - Will Kenji get the pretty girl Natsuki? Will Natsuki return the affection? Who will stop "Love Machine's" online rampage?

"Summer Wars" is very easily one of the greatest Anime' films ever made. The film is a dazzling display of vibrant, pretty colors, computer-generated backgrounds/scenery, and lively three-dimensional characters. I honestly haven't been this in love with a group of characters in animated form in a very long time. Every single member of the Jinnouchi family is alive & well and have their time to shine with familiar family theatrics in carefully written scenes of family comedy/drama. And the battle scenes in cyber-space are brilliantly animated and executed, and are appropriately edge-of-your-seat thrilling.

You have to give praise to a movie that starts out like something off "The Brady Bunch" and ends with an apocalyptic showdown like in "The Matrix." Now in today's filmmaking industry on both sides of the ocean, that's what I call originality.

10/10