#606 – Summer Wars

Summer Wars (2009)

Film review #606

Director: Mamoru Hosoda

SYNOPSIS: Kenji is persuaded by classmate Natsuki to visit her family with her; posing as her boyfriend for the approval of her grandmother, who is celebrating her ninetieth birthday. As if that wasn’t enough trouble for Kenji, he inadvertently sets off a virus in the OZ network, a digital network that governs most of daily life, causing a rampant AI to seize control of people’s accounts, and control of many systems in the world, causing him to be a suspected criminal…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Summer Wars is a 2009 anime film. Kenji, a high school student and part-time moderator for the OZ, a digital network that spans the entire globe and almost all aspects of daily life. He is persuaded by fellow student Natsuki to visit her Grandmother, and pose as Natuski’s boyfriend at a family gathering for her Grandmother’s ninetieth birthday. As all of these shenanigans are unfolding, a rogue AI has infiltrated OZ, and is slowly taking control of systems all over the world, with Kenji being a suspect in the attack as he inadvertently solved a decryption key without knowing what it was for. The film is a combination of this slice-of-life melodrama, with the more dramatic and wide-reaching effect that this rogue AI is having. The film places them both on equal footings, and balances them fairly well; interweaving the two into a considered tapestry that ties the fate of the characters to what’s happening in the film as a whole. The threats are threatening thanks to some neat designs, and the family has a messy feel to it, but feels full of life, again just like how you would expect a large family to interact when they’re all placed together.

While the film has a positive reception from a lot of people, there are definitely some blind spots which hamper enjoyment of the film for me. Firstly, the main characters, Kenji and Natsuki, are very bland, and don’t bring much unique much to the film in terms of their own personalities and quirks, and as such, they are a bit cliché. They also don’t have that much time on screen together, so it’s a bit awkward when the film tries to push them together for more emotional scenes. Another issue I had is that the characters don’t really contribute that much to the action scenes in OZ: the Ai just does it’s own thing most of the time without much interference and a few fight scenes, and I felt like this connection between the two realms could have been developed in a stronger manner. The film is, as you might expect, heavily embedded in Japanese customs and traditions, but I don’t think you need too much knowledge of them to enjoy the film, but knowing what the card game Koi-Koi is, for example, would certainly be beneficial for understanding what’s actually happening in the film’s climax, but you can get the gist of what’s happening without it.

The animation and visuals are pretty good, with the world of OZ being colourful and fluid. The “real world” contrasts this with a more simple and faded colour palette and style which works well to contrast, but perhaps that extra bit of detail would have been nice to get across the character’s feelings and actions, which as mentioned is one of the film’s weaker points. The film bears a lot of similarities to one of director Mamoru Hosoda’s previous films based in the Digimon franchise: Digimon Adventure: Our War Game very similarly had the main characters have to defeat a rogue digimon that was taking over systems through the internet, and Summer Wars does feel very similar to that. The studio which made this film also made The Girl Who Leapt Through Time previously, which was a huge hit, and similarly combined a slice-of-life drama with more fantastical elements. However, Summer Wars doesn’t have the emotional weight that TGWLTT placed on it’s characters, and fails to reproduce that magic: maybe a rogue AI on the internet (or OZ) just doesn’t seem that fantastical of a concept compared to time travel, and so the different elements of Summer Wars just don’t produce a more exciting reaction when they’re mixed. Summer Wars is not a bad film: it’s well crafted and considered, and balances it’s different elements well, but the blind spots I have mentioned with regards to the characters and such are a bit too prevalent for me, and overshadow a lot of the film’s positive points to dampen them just enough to leave a lasting impression of something flawed amidst the good that the film does.