REVIEW: Summer Wars

Kenji Koiso, a shy high schooler and mathematical prodigy is approached by his senior Natsuki about coming along with her to her family's home in Nagano for a summer job. Not wanting to turn down an offer from his secret crush, Kenji agrees to help Natsuki without a second thought. Natsuki's family, the Jinnouchi clan, have all come together in Nagano to celebrate to 90th birthday of the family's matriarch, and Kenji soon discovers that his "job" is to play the role of Natsuki's fiancé! During his stay, Kenji receives a unusual math equation via his cellular phone that he just has to solve. However, the solution to equation causes a hijacking of the popular social networking site "OZ" through which the majority of the world's social and business traffic flows. Kenji and his new-found "family" take it upon themselves to put the world back in balance by putting restoring order back to OZ.

Mamoru Hosoda first came onto the scene as a full-fledged anime director in 1999 with a 20-minute Digimon film entitled simply "Digimon Adventure." The following year, Hosoda directed a second, 40-minute Digimon Adventure film subtitled "Our War Game." It is worth nothing that the premise of Our War Game is strikingly similar to that of Summer Wars, though this should not come as any surprise to those who have already seen Our War Game, as Summer Wars' trailers make this fact very evident.

In Our War Game, a rogue Digimon is running rampant throughout the Digital World, threatening to take over the entire human computer network and potentially start a war in the Real World as well. In order to prevent certain disaster, Taichi and the rest of the Chosen Children must all work together with each other and their Digimon to defeat this rouge. The entire world watches on the edge of their seats as the Chosen Children essentially fight for the world's well-being.

Sound familiar? Well it should, as Hosoda has gone back to his Digimon roots, as it were, and refined his original ideas. In fact, at its core, Summer Wars is almost exactly the same as Our War Game in terms of scope, pacing, tone, and storytelling style. However, Summer Wars is nearly triple Our War Game's running time at 114 minutes, allowing for copious amounts of extra touches (like the high school baseball games that serve as a unique parallel to the main plot), characterization, and other refinements that would otherwise have been impossible to squeeze into 40 minutes. In the end, Summer Wars is a far more satisfying film, and arguably Hosoda's finest to date.

If one really thinks about it, the basic plot line of the film is not anything completely original. This kind of story has been done countless times before (hero or heroine gets thrust into some ridiculous situation and ends up saving the day in the end); but what really makes this film noteworthy is Hosoda's take the Internet reliance that has become commonplace in our culture. Rather than wagging his finger at it, Hosoda instead warmly embraces it as the way people go about there lives nowadays. Hosoda does have his own Twitter account (@hosodamamoru), so his acceptance of social networking really is not all that surprising; but having a director with such a youthful, technology-oriented perspective is really quite refreshing. This aspect alone makes Summer Wars easily relatable and highly enjoyable.

Amidst all of today's technology are many people who choose to remain disconnected from all the digital riff-raff, and Hosoda, understanding this, works it into the film beautifully.  Sakae, the Jinnouchi clan's charismatic matriarch has maintained her connections throughout the years through old fashioned means, but she certainly knows how to wield the power of her connections when she needs to. The montage of her doing that very thing is expertly executed, with little snippets of her numerous conversations with her acquaintances and extended family giving you just the right amount of information as to how she wields the tremendous power of her influence.

When it comes to the the Jinnouchi clan itself, their interactions are what one would expect: they have their own set of problems and can be quite dysfunctional to the point of things becoming chaotic. Hosoda juggles all of this chaos quite well, from the constantly pestering little children to the personality clashes of the adults, to the point of making the huge family an absolute blast to watch. Sure, things do get a bit over-the-top at times, but minor quibbles like that are easily forgiven when it all provides numerous moments of laughter. When it all comes down to it though; many of them do provide key roles in the fight against the AI-gone-bad Love Machine.

The production values are gorgeous, which is to be expected from the staff that produced The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. The world of OZ is done with Hosoda's trademark colorful, surreal look with orange outlines, and the simplistic "real world" character designs are easy on the eyes. The background art is also remarkably detailed, which is to be expected from Madhouse. The animation is vivacious and tremendously fluid as well, and Akihiko Matsumoto's solid, yet subtle score works respectably well. Top all of this off with taut, yet also playful direction from Hosoda and Summer Wars is a darn-near perfect film that will be remembered for years to come. Not to mention the optimistic and humorous ending is the perfect cherry on top.

With Summer Wars, Mamoru Hosoda has delivered another entertaining, intelligent, and very accessible masterwork and has fully cemented himself as one of anime's premier directors. He continues to improve his output from film to film, and the best part is that he still has plenty of years ahead of him. Where he will go next, no one knows; but what is known is that the future is looking extremely bright for this very complaisant man.


(out of 5)