Summer Wars [DVD]

Coming from the creators of 'The girl who leapt through time', which was one of the best pieces of anime to come out in the past few years, I had high hopes for Summer Wars and thankfully, it delivered on all my expectations and more. It is every inch the animated marvel it has been hyped as.

Telling the tale of Kenji Koiso, a high school computer whiz who is approached by Natsuki, the girl he is in love with and is duly tricked by her into accepting a "job" posing as her fiancee on a vacation to her summer home with her huge extended family in full attendance. Out of his element around the eccentric characters that make up Natsuki's relatives and the various dramas that are causing friction among them, Kenji finds distraction in decrypting a mysterious code he receives on his phone... little realising that in doing so he is helping a rapidly evolving AI program to take control of the world's largest online community, setting in motion a chain of events that sees him, Natsuki and her wacky family become the only ones capable of saving the entire world from nuclear armageddon.

Summer Wars functions as both a moving character piece in it's exploration of Natsuki's family, and the problems caused when their mass summer vacation is disrupted by an estranged "black sheep" member of their family reappears after a number of years and also as a sci fi thriller showing the colourful online world that represents the world's biggest online networking site in a completely different visual style from the real world scenes, utilising cel shaded CGI to show an impressively huge universe filled with unique 'avatars' as it slowly comes under attack/invasion by the raging AI. It's a visually striking movie, switching between it's two distinct styles effortlessly and offering a real visual treat that you don't usually get with most anime movies which adopt familiar studio set styles and play it safe. It looks fantastic.

Voice work (In the Japanese version I saw at least) was top notch, with effective cast choices doing a superb job in a cast of a really large number of characters which could easily see some get lost in the crowd. The soundtrack work is equally effective, most especially during the "action" scenes in the online segments.

This is a fantastic film however you wish to take it, as it really has something for everyone and doesn't disappoint for a moment even when it slows down in the more drawn out character centric scenes. It is well written and effectively executed in a way anime movies rarely manage so flawlessly. If I had to pick out a problem with the movie, it would be(And this won't mean anything to most of you I'm sure) that Summer Wars bears a LOT of similarities to ten year old anime movie 'Digimon: Our War Game'(Which was actually created by many of the staff of Summer Wars) in terms of visual style, plot, and themes. The online sections in particular are very similar in the two movies, but it's probably irrelevant as pretty much none of you will have seen the older movie.

Some minor quibbles about unoriginality shouldn't take away from what an enjoyable film Summer Wars is to watch and one which easily stands alongside the likes of Studio Ghibli's offerings in terms of how accessible a watch it is for those who don't normally watch anime movies. It is just a fun movie. Give it a try.

Wow... my mind has literally been blown away, something I haven't felt for a long time since first watching some of my now favourite Hayao Miyazaki's films such as Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away & Laputa, Castle In The Sky + more.

The storyline is fantastic and whilst based on technology that is superior to our own at the moment, it's actually something that could happen in the future if social networks keep growing and people give permission for them to access even more personal details, maybe not in the exact same way, however as we live in a totally internet/computer dependent society, the idea isn't as far-fetched as some may think.

One thing that you will certainly love about this film is how much emotion it pumps through you; I was laughing, crying and biting my lips in suspense all the way through the film, not once did I feel that the film was dragging on, there was always something there to keep your attention towards the film right from the beginning to the very end.

One thing I must point out is that the film is in BOTH English & Japanese audio for your own choosing, Amazon currently states it's Japanese audio only with English subtitles, so for those that are wary of buying this product because they struggle reading subtitles like I do, I can assure you that this is in English audio.

If you loved The Girl Who Leapt Through Time which was also directed by Mamoru Hosoda, then just wait until you get your hands on this!

Madhouse have made a name for themselves by producing quality animation for TV series, their films have recently been applauded for their story and artwork. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a critically acclaimed release and Summer Wars sees a continuation of Science Fiction themes and a little bit of romance.

The film opens with a promo for a virtual online world called "Oz", where users create an Avatar and then play, communicate, even work in a cyber alternate reality, it's a service that Japan has come to rely on as the main source of information, email, and online recreation.

Kenji, a mathematical genius, student and part time programmer for the Oz website is asked by fellow student Natsuki to spend a few days away with her family to the country for a part time job. More than happy to go along he is surprised when he discovers the `job' is to pretend to be her fiancé so that her aging great grandmother can see her fictional husband-to-be while she still has time. It's a friendly family so it's not too hard to fit in, but there are family politics and long personal histories making him feel a little like an outsider. However events following a random email received on his phone are set to make his trip very eventful.

The anonymous email contains a mathematical puzzle Kenji can't resist solving, though he is surprised to find his face on the news the next day when it turns out he has unwittingly aided the hacking of Oz security and rendered the entire website useless. Now wanted by the law and with Natsuki's family less than impressed with him, Kenji is left to reflect on the extent of the Oz collapse - the various accounts on Oz are linked into so many other systems that almost any electronically controlled device is open to outside control.

The film follows the family unit as they deal with the Oz issues, they uncover a revelation concerning the initial cause of Oz being hacked and using all their resources they attempt to defeat the virus and prevent any further cataclysmic events. It really is a matter of life and death on both a national and domestic scale for the Jinnouchis.

An ancient family home in a countryside setting lends an old fashioned charm to the film. There's no doubting that this is set in the modern age though. With a social networking website being at the core of the film and cultural references such as iPhones and light-sabre fights, this is something that a contemporary audience can relate to.

Visually, Summer Wars is incredible. This Blu-Ray release shows an amazing depth of colour and the beautiful landscapes are lush, bright and full of detail. The detailed hand drawn animation contrast well with the less detailed representation of Oz itself which uses more CGI. Particularly towards the end there are some very impressive scenes set in Oz which involve epic collections of objects combining to create a massive figure, they look superb and successfully convey a disconcerting menace.

The Japanese soundtrack is excellent, and for those wanting to watch the English language dub the voices match the characters well. The dub is quite Americanised, but that's to be expected these days. The subtitles thankfully aren't 'dubtitles' so presumably they are closer to the Japanese translation rather than the American dub. There are a few additional features on this disk but not as many as I was expecting. They consist of a few interviews, the most interesting of which is with director Mamoru Hosoda.

Summer Wars is slow paced which may put some viewers off, especially those who were hoping for lots of action scenes taking place in the cyber-world of Oz. I personally enjoyed the pace of the film (but I'm 30 and not 11) but found some flaws which took away from the story a bit. The "Love Machine" virus which is spreading through Oz and having such a big effect on the real world seems to be dealt with a little too easily. I wasn't convinced either by the staggering coincidence that the key players involved in the release of the artificial intelligence (who have never met before) happen to end up together in the same room, it felt like a lazy plot device in a film which had the potential to me much more.

In a nutshell: A film which encourages us to think about our reliance on the internet and the potential for abuse if a system everyone trusts comes under threat. Summer Wars is also a gentle romantic drama about two students straddling years of family history and the age of modern technology.