However, Summer Wars, in my opinion, is one of the more relatable and realistic animes to cross my view. If you have a particularly large family, chances are your family has a lot of depth and history, with their own specific and particular stories to tell. If you have ever been to a large family meeting, chances are Summer Wars may be somewhat relatable to you. Summer Wars tells the story of a gathering of an extremely large Japanese family from all different branches of society, and they paint traditional family member views extremely well. The older family members are headstrong in their traditional views they grew up with, the children are curious in everything that they do and pretend the world is ruled by them, etc. The characters that are portrayed in Summer Wars are almost spot on to an old fashioned traditional family, as their personalities almost completely replicate real life family members that you meet at these type of gatherings (particularly if you're Asian I think, as I have met many many personalities similar to the ones in Summer Wars).
Summer Wars, alongside with showing family values, also shows a fight between traditional views and modern views of the world. It is near impossible in this 21st century to be kept up to date without using the world wide web, and older members of families may not or never understand that fact. In Summer Wars, the net is represented as a world titled "OZ", in where the net is shown as both your average browser, and as a sandbox-styled world. As in the real world, society revolves around the success of OZ, as lives, families, and power in society all lie in OZ. However, older members of society do not seem to understand the strength of OZ, treating it more so as a game rather than real life.
The story revolves around a hacking program taking over the precious little world of everyone on the planet, as with power of the web comes power over the world. With the net taken over, older adults still treat the hijack as a game rather than a potential real threat, and the battle emerges over traditional views of life or modern views of life. Without revealing too much, the battle will continue to rage throughout the movie, as it still goes in throughout the lives of many people today. The portrayal of this fight is a somewhat unique plot, as this is one fight that most anime do not touch on, rather portraying a standard romance or the such for realism. Although the story begins to get a little cheesy at about the halfway mark, this fight is one of the anime's main strengths, as it is extremely realistic and relatable to the world today.
This anime is further boosted by the artistic way they decided to portray the story. The OZ hub is animated with amazing skill, as the world is a mix of all different type of avatars that people would create, with a stunning 3D world portraying them. The music also complements the animation, as the music sets the mood well to complement the anxiety of the next scene.
Overall, I would give this movie between a 9-10. The realistic story that is portrayed in the movie is a new and unique one that brings real world issues to face, and even though the story does become cheesy at about halfway, it is still definitely one that is worth a watch, as one may as well see their own family in the precious little world of Summer Wars.
