Summer Wars

Summer Wars was last years summer blockbuster for the ever-growing Japanese Blu-Ray market selling over 50,000 copies and topping even the much anticipated re-release of Evangelion that came out not long before it.

The movie is set in the beautifully realized countryside of the Japanese city Ueda, located in the prefecture of Nagano.

The story is simple enough; a girl, Natsuki Shinohara, recruits another boy from her school, Kenji Koiso, to come on vacation with her to her families house in the country to serve unknowingly as her fiancee before her historically prominent family, the Shinohara clan.

Now, this is where the movie takes a turn for the better. Where most shows would have taken this situation and exploited the typical wacky hi jinks and over-played love story, Summer Wars introduces a refreshing plot to the tired scenario. In this world, there is a massive social networking site known as "Oz" that functions akin to programs like Second Life and the Japanese social networking site, Mixi, and it is used by virtually everyone who uses technology. it can be accessed by phone, computer, TV, GPS, or even the Nintendo DS Lite that makes many a shameless cameo in this movie. Through the program you can do virtually anything you like; shop, play games, even pay your taxes.

The movie starts out with the protagonist, Kenji, doing part-time work as a code monkey on the social networking site Oz due to his unheard of skills in mathematics, is sent a cryptic text message of rows and rows of numbers forming a mathematical code. He of course solves the equation and sends it back. The next day, Oz is found to be extremely corrupted and no one is able to access their accounts anymore, and Kenji is plotted as the criminal of the whole fiasco. I won't get into too much more detail, as it really is a movie that one has to experience, but the rest of the movie is spent describing the family drama that unfolds as well as defeating and discovering the true purpose of the infection in Oz.

The well executed story and directing aside, this movie is simply beautiful. The attention payed to every detail is astonishing, from the countryside all the way down to a recognizable remote for one of the TV's. The animation style is very reminiscent of "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" due to the overlap in one of the major animators, and the cg elements come from the same vein as those seen in shows like "Eden of the East", where instead of having animated objects on solid backgrounds, every element of the background is animated and interacts individually with one another.

The character designs are also beautiful, while not typifying any age or over-stylizing any body type, the characters are real and believable. What makes that fact so amazing is that the Shinohara clan is no small family. There are a total of 26 characters, notwithstanding the main characters, who all feature unique personalities, many lines of dialogue, and interact with the plot. This is another example of the extra effort that has been put into realizing the story to its fullest potential, and it shows.

While the story and movie have been designed and marketed as a kids movie, the story leaves something for the older crowd as well. It speaks to the dangers of over-reliance on technology and the social networking sites of today, as well as the current state of Japanese culture where the old way of life is quickly being dissolved into the modern era. The film does a great job of showcasing how Japan must hold onto it's traditions while continuing to advance in all the facets of modern life.

All in all, the movie delivers on all fields; very well choreographed action scenes, beautiful landscapes and settings, a great message that couldn't be more relevant, and most importantly, it is one of the more accessible films that i have seen come from the land of the rising sun in a while. For anyone considering getting into anime, or merely wanting to watch a good movie, Summer Wars is definitely worth the watch.

~Black Macgyver~