Summer Wars – Makes You Love Your Family

Article by Chet Royer


Being an anime and manga fan for over a decade, I have seen many different kinds of stories being told over and over again. So much to the point that originality is hard to come by. However, the thing I appreciate about anime and manga, in present time, is that authors add or re-imagine concepts that have been done to make it interesting and refreshing once again. This is what Summer Wars has accomplished. This is Chet a.k.a. Ninja101 and here is my review on the movie.

The animated film, Summer Wars, was directed by the person who directed The Girl That Leapt Through Time, Mamoru Hosoda. I did not really watch any of his films before, but Summer Wars sure does make me want too! It is set in a world where everything is done via a popular online gaming community known as Oz. When I say everything, I mean everything! Gaming, shopping, controlling instruments for travel, monitoring, business meetings, anything you can think of! During his stay at his “part time job,” Kenji, a super math wiz, is sent an odd email of numbers in the night. Shinji figures out the numbers and replies back to the email. What he did not know was that the numbers were a code to break into Oz. Now a rogue artificial intelligence, known as Love Machine, is wreaking havoc on Oz and by extension the real world. Kenji then teams up with the awesome samurai family that he is staying with to stop Love Machine. I'm sure you all have seen similar scenarios before in anime and manga (Digimon, Megaman battle network and a few others I can't remember at the moment). However, Summer Wars does it in such a heart-warming and interesting way. There are themes of family, forgiveness, hope and helping people in need.

There are so many good things about this film! Where to start? Characters perhaps! Well, there are plenty of characters in this film. The funny thing is that the majority of the characters are from one large family. Each of the characters are unique and have memorable personalities. Too bad I still can't remember all of their names! Also, the children act just like children. One of the cute things that caught my eye was when you see the children playing with their Nintendo DS's. They are glued to the screen and will not let anything distract them. Another nice thing that is hard not too notice are how the avatars within the world of Oz look. They are very simple creatures. There are some more complicated looking avatars in the game world, but the majority of them look simple. Also, I love how you can tell who is the owner of certain avatars. King Kazma, the unofficial protagonist avatar, does not look much like its owner until later in the film, but the majority of the family's avatars look or very much relate to their users. For example, there is a fisher man who fishes for squidsa lot. His avatar is a squid that can transform into a ninja!

In speaking of character, the fluid animation also helps bring out the character even more. Again, the children run and crawl about just like actual children. The art style is simple but good enough to keep it interesting and allowed the animation to be fully dynamic. There are a few fight scenes that are very well choreographed and animated. The nice thing about the fight scenes are that they are not the main focus of the story. The film would actually be just fine without them. It just makes it all the more awesome that they are included.

After watching the film, you are filled with this happy feeling. At least, I felt lighthearted after watching it. The way how the film was directed gave it an excellent pace, and also, it conveyed these themes to you that gradually make you feel warm inside. Honestly, the only way to really see what I'm talking about is to watch the movie! It is available on dvd and blu ray right now ^_^.
© 2011 Linda Thai

Image Credit:
©2009 SUMMERWARS FILM PARTNERS. Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Thank you Eric Beckman and Dave Jesteadt from GKIDS for their help!