Jul 23, 2015
---Summer Wars is a movie directed by Mamoru Hosoda, who has also worked on other films such as Wolf Children (Ookami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki) and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo), both highly regarded movies.
--The story starts with two guys named Kenji and Takashi who work for an international internet service known as Oz that everyone uses. Oz is a multi-use system that controls pretty much everything in the modern world, including shopping services, water systems, and even electricity and such. Then a girl named Natsuki comes into their office and asks if one of them if they can
...
do a job for her. Kenji accepts the offer and goes on a ride to the countryside and gets to meet Natsuki's huge family. But why did she bring Kenji along? Natsuki wanted Kenji to pretend he is her fiance in front of everyone.
One night Kenji receives a mysterious message with a seemly impossible-to-solve algorithm. Kenji luckily is a math genius, and he finishes the problem in one sitting. Solving the math problem causes his Oz account to be hacked. His hacked account then wrecks havoc in Oz, causing problems in the real world, and Kenji is blamed for the issues. It's now up to Kenji, Natsuki, and the big family to try to stop this mess!
The story and setting is set-up perfectly in the exposition and the pacing is very nice. The events involving the family and their struggles were really intriguing. They felt genuine and were the most memorable parts of the movie for me.
I do have a complaint though. The relationship between the characters Kenji and Natsuki had loads of potential. That is something I would've liked to see more of. Though the interactions were believable, the two characters barely talk, and I wish Natsuki had more screen time than she got. She doesn't even do anything groundbreaking in the story until the very end.
With that aside though, I thought the story was good.
--I'm a huge fan of Mamoru Hosada's films in terms of artwork and animation. Character designs were great, and the background artwork looks downright gorgeous. The backgrounds are nearly lifelike. The animation is also something to marvel at. MADHOUSE did a splendid job on this film. I have a couple of nit picks on the use of the CGI, but it never drove me away from the experience.
In terms of art, the movie nails it perfectly.
--The sound in the movie isn't too much to talk about. There weren't any music tracks in the film that were memorable, but it's not awful. It is generic, and it may not be something that will stick out.
In terms of dubs, the english dub is also alright, so it won't be upsetting anyone who prefer subs over voice-overs. Both are fine for watching the film.
--There are a lot of characters in this movie. I'm one of those people who couldn't keep track of everyone's names during the whole film. That's actually one of my issues with the movie; there are a lot of characters that are ignorable and don't really advance the plot. There's one character who does nothing, but watch baseball through almost the entirety of the movie.
The character design for the main protagonist, Kenji, also seems very generic. He's your typical brown-haired-anxious-shy-white-t-shirt-wearing protagonist. His only known character trait in the film is the fact that he's a math genius, and that's all. Not that it's a problem, it's just something I've been seeing in more and more anime movies and shows.
By far the most popular character in the movie is the granny, Sakae, and with good reason too. I won't be explaining why, but just know that she is a strong character in the film and defines the core of the movie's message very well.
The characters, while many are seemingly uninteresting, are plausible.
--I call these kinds of movies 'snack movies'. It's a good quick movie to watch when you have some time to kill. It isn't anything that's going to be winning an oscar, but it's still great just the way it is. If you wanna watch a quick movie with some sci-fi stuff and action, then this movie is for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
