Summer Wars – A Movie about “Family VS A.I Hacker” on epic scale.

There are no spoilers in this entry.

Eva 2.0 might not be enough to actually push me to write a full review about the movie, and I thought Eva 2.0 is great enough to go for a run on any sort of award that the movie deserves.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann : Lagann Chapter was a movie I thought surpasses everything I’ve enjoyed in the cinema so far (save for Lord of the Rings series but that’s merely personal, I’m not too much of a movie guy).

But Summer Wars is different. Summer Wars is unexpected – Summer Wars is/was a hit, Summer Wars is a movie where it unexpected thrown at my face with a lot of “seen before” elements yet still come out with a totally satisfying, touching, and enjoyable story to watch. My words might not weigh much, but I can say this : If Pixar has “Up” as their 2009 hit title, then Madhouse definitely has “Summer Wars” to compete with this.

The director of Summer Wars, Mamoru Hosoda (best known as the director of “The Girl that Leapt Through Time”, has a message to the people who watch “Summer Wars” :

“A story about a family that is the descendant of a warrior clan, fights off a world-level crisis that takes place in the world of the Internet (network). No matter how high tech or how modern technology has become, The bond that is “family” is stronger than any existing network. As a work of entertainment, regardless of young or old, male or female, I have taken in mind to make a story that is acceptable and easily taken in by the audiences, an adventure that can be enjoyed even by family, and have always wanted to make a suitable, lively, and refreshing summer movie for the audiences.”

He certainly made it : Summer Wars ranked 7th and grossed almost 127,000,000yen during its opening weekend, and in South Korea, the film debuted in 8th place and earned the equivalent of $369,156 on 118 screens.

Summary
The story takes place in July 2010. Where the world is totally dependant on an epic scale digital world (Possibly an epic multipurpose version of Gaia Online) called OZ, OZ is a large scale social networking site that allows the user to ultilize their online persona and communicate, as well as enjoy their digital lifestyle in the world of Internet – sports, shopping, e-commerce, business, you name it. And the main character of the story, Kenji Koiso, is an introvert, shy and low confident 17 year old high school student who spends time doing part time job in maintaining OZ’s online security system with his friend Sakuma Kei. He is a child prodigy in the field of maths, and has a crush on his senpai Natsuki Shinohara. But one day Natsuki approched the both of them for an unknown 4 day part time job which requires only one person of the two to participate. Kenji won Kei on a rock-paper-scissors battle and managed to get a break off his job as a maintainer, and to join Natsuki on her journey.

But little is known to Kenji about the part time job. And when both of them arrived at Ueda of Nagano Prefecture, everything became clear to him after a series of “huh”s and “wha”s. Kenji’s job is to act as a fiancee to Natsuki who she planned to lie on her grandmother, Sakae Jinnouchi, a 90 year old healthy and kind head of the Jinnouchi family. Much to Kenji’s surprise – he initially was reluctant until Natsuki begged him to stay on and act as it is until the end of  the job, and much to his reluctant actions, he actually enjoyed the night with the big Jinnouchi family that is of close to 30 people, until the night where he suddenly recieved a mail from an unknown person which contains a mathematic puzzle of 2000 numbers and a message.

“Solve me”…

—

Summer Wars may contain many elements that are not really new, but the execution is what it makes it interesting. a story that deals with family drama mixed with adventure elements that requires the combined powers of a family to solve. Summer Wars keeps me interested from the start to the end, and waste no time trying to tell the story in a proper pace. Every part of it is enjoyable, and each character has their respective focus, despite being one anime show of a large cast. It is often very hard to divide focuses on a show where it has about 30 – 40 characters in it. But even so, being a show about family ties, it brings all the characters into one solid group to face and solve a crisis when it’s needed, making the show entirely dependant on each of it’s cast to complete the story. There is no such thing as who gets the most and who gets the less – and with that, the characters are shinny : Shines through the end through the power of bonding.

Character wise, plenty of developments are seen. Kenji can be seen from an introvert, shy and low confident type and develop himself into a man slowly as the movie progresses. Natsuki is a spirited, cheerful young girl who develops a change of heart as the movie progresses. And these can be done and properly developed in mere 114 minutes of the show. Jinnouchi family is large but each and everyone has their different personalities that can be weird, serious, bad, eccentric, but still work themselves together as a big family. Then you have Sakae who, the head of the family, brings them together as one. Sakae is easily my most favourite character. How I wish I have a grandmother like her. (My current grandmother passed away long time ago)

The animation is clean and sleek, but the movement itself deserves it’s worthy praise. Being a combination of 2D and 3D, the whole animation itself is presented in a convincing and eye candy way to keep the audience captivated – especially the last half of it. Even the emulation of Windows 7 (LOL) and Mac (oho, rich family is rich), and the drawing of Dell XPS laptop is enough to proof it to be convincing – After all, this takes place in a real life Japan setting. As an animator in practice myself, I find the actions and the movement of the characters itself to be wonderfully well animated, and nothing “QUALITY” is presented. Though, truth to be told, that cannot really be guaranteed under one watching. Character designs* are quite common, as the fact it’s very befitting the movie that takes place in real life, which doesn’t actually require any fancy or flashy designs saved for their digital personality in OZ world, which I find them to be cute and suitable.

*Character designs are done by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, of Evangelion fame.

Hence personally I’ll buy myself a Blu-Ray version of this movie for collection and viewing purposes. Still it’s a good material to learn.

Soundtrack is kind of above average, it’s not as spectacular nor grand/epic as Gurren Lagann movie or Eva 2.0, but it’s very fitting to the movie, It’s hard to make a definitive review on the music since I actually spent myself more on the visual than music. But I can say that none of it actually, personally disturbs, nor it felt out of mood for me throughout the show. But the main theme of the movie “Bokura no Natsu no Yume” performed by Tatsuro Yamashita is actually memorable and soothing enough to keep me looping the song for days.

The only gripe I have on Summer Wars would be the seiyuu for Kenji (Sakuraba Nanami). While all the casts performed quite well for the show, I still think they should find a better person for Kenji. He sounded a little bit dead and low energy at times. For a person that is easily panic at times, I expected a little bit higher on pitch. Other that that Sakuraba performed an up and down performance on Kenji, while Natsuki is alright, and others are fine too.

Considering all things in, Summer Wars is one of the best movies that I’ve seen as of yet. Personally I’d nominate Summer Wars for a run on any award that it can deserve than Eva 2.0 or TTGL Gurren chapter. But Summer Wars is one you should never pass up for a watch. If you like the recent animated movies like “Up” (which it is not in Japan cinemas yet), then “Summer Wars” is a good movie to watch as a summer blockbuster movie.

That also means, you know what to do when this movie is released on DVD/Blu-Ray…

Tags: Anime, Madhouse, Summer Wars

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 11:40 pm and is filed under It's all about entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.