Reviews

Summer Wars is a very interesting anime film. Without giving away too much of the story the plot is about a japanese computer geek/math whiz who gets asked by a girl to go to her grandmother's birthday so that he can pose as her boyfriend. As this goes on he is framed for a catastrophe that occurs on the electronic world Oz, which is very similar to the internet, in which a user name Love Machine is taking many accounts of users. Through the movie the math whiz must team up with his fake girlfriend's ginormous family in order to stop Love Machine from causing destruction in both Oz and the real world. Now one of the most striking things about Summer Wars when someone is watching it is just how big the cast of characters is. The family in this movie is truly huge and by the end of the movie you will at least feel a little familiar with the 20+ family members. Now while most family members, except for a select few, are probably only given a few minutes worth of screen time and dialogue, each one is well represented enough that you at the very least get a good sense of what type of person they are. Even with such a big cast I never felt lost on who someone was and I never felt confused or asked, "wait, who is tis guy again?". Now while the majority of the characters, except for maybe the grandma, are not anything spectacular, the fact that so many characters are included, with each having a distinct personality should be considered a triumph onto itself. In terms of plot while Summer Wars doesn't necessarily do anything wrong it doesn't do anything particularly mind-blowing or original either, while watching even though it does do a good job of getting the audience emotionally involved with the conflict at hand it never does anything too outside of the norm which may be a problem for some who are looking for something a bit more interesting or unique plot. In other words, I could kind of predict what was going to happen in a lot of scenes so one could make the argument that this takes away from the tension. The visuals are overall pretty good but special note should be made for the CG used in the parts of the story that take place in Oz. Sure the real world traditional animation is good but the CG looks especially cool in my opinion since you get a lot of scenes with very interesting environments with people's unique and strange avatars duking it out. Sure it may look weird to some but its very appropriate in context and I feel it helps give the movie its own identity. One thing I personally was kind of annoyed at was the use of Oz in the movie. There is nothing wrong with it in theory but there are times when it feels like the movie is going to use it for social commentary and from that perspective it doesn't go quite as deep as I may have liked. Also there is a romance that while it is developed over the course of the movie, ends up feeling not that natural and kind of forced, at least to me. Now Summer Wars isn't the next Akira or Princess Mononoke and it doesn't exactly have anything that will nock your socks off probably. But what it is a very enjoyable romp with a large cast of fun characters that has enough drama, comedy, and suspense to keep you interested for its running time. While there is some fighting in the movie nothing too violent or disturbing happens so a kid about 12 or older should have no problem watching this film. Summer Wars may not be a masterpiece but it is an enjoyable enough watch for me to recommend to anyone who wants to just see something good.