Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars - Anime Movie Review

Summer Wars is a 2009 Japanese animated film directed by Momoro Hosoda whose films Mirai and Wolf Children we've looked at on this channel before. Summer Wars is one of three Hosoda films having a renaissance this summer in theaters, actually, along with Wolf Children and also The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. So you check your local listings for those screenings because they seem to come and go pretty quick. You gotta be on the ball. This film, Summer Wars, is unlike any other film I've seen. It is also somewhat, somewhat appropriate for a lot of ages. Let me just say that at the outset, not all ages. There is some language and adult-level name-calling, allusions to sexual relationships, brief and not graphic in any way. It's mostly the language, mostly language, and violence. Nearly all of which takes place in a simulated online world within the world, basically the film's version of the internet, which is merged here with commerce, video games, and avatars, all in one place as a stand-in for reality. The best way I can sort of explain it and how it differs from the actual internet is if you were around in the late 1990s, there was a company called Worlds.com, which tried to create an online reality, basically a city centered on a shopping mall experience, where you could adopt an avatar, wander around, meet real people in real time, explore, see new media, with the promise of better things to come like your bank and shopping and maybe even your job winding up in that virtual world someday. But it cratered pretty hard and the today instead splintered and very competitive. And that's maybe a good thing because it keeps too much concentrated power and too many points of failure from being amassed in one place or in too few hands. But Summer Wars shows us a world where that reality became how the world operated and almost all of Japan does a lot of its living online virtually in a place called Oz. The plot is very simple, even though the particulars might get a bit Byzantine at times, and I was taken very quickly by what this movie is not. More on that in a moment. First, we meet Kenji, a high school kid working a scrub coding job on the side, along with his friend Takashi, running maintenance checks on the vast online world of Oz. Fellow student Natsuki arrives and tries to lure one of the boys to help her out with a secretive favor requiring someone to accompany her to her family's ancestral home in her town called Ueda, I believe, to help with the arrangements for her grandmother and family matriarch's 90th birthday celebration. Now, assuming this job to be involving things like errands and innocuous tasks and also being mesmerized by Natsuki, Kenji agrees to go. But on arrival, he's stunned to discover Natsuki's family's illustrious history and importance, but also that Natsuki wants him to pretend to be her fiancé, to present him to Granny while she's alive, for appearance's sake, and to fulfill a promise she made to Granny about settling down. Now, this leads to a lot of fish-out-of-water fun and hijinks as Kenji just tries to keep up with the ruse throughout the long weekend. But the movie starts to take a turn here immediately when, that very first night, Kenji receives an anonymous text containing a math problem. Well, we've almost forgotten from the beginning of the film that Kenji is the second-place math title holder in all of Japan, and someone out there knows it and knows that this math whiz can't pass up a challenge. So Kenji stays up all night and solves the equation and goes to sleep. But it turns out, when he wakes up, that what he solved was the underlying algorithm unlocking all security measures for Oz. And now, a delicate storytelling balancing act goes into full gear in the film, because if you went to see Summer Wars expecting the movie that's on the poster, that's not really the movie. It's part of the movie. This other stuff around it, the human stuff, is the movie. It's sort of a palace intrigue plot, almost, with lies and manipulations and deceptions and jealousies and black sheep returning from the past, all running alongside, ingeniously I might add, this cyberspace plot, and with commentary on social media, national pride, class, station, and wartime versus peace, but more on that in a minute. Turns out, a malevolent AI is the one who teased this code out of Kenji, and a bunch of other prodigies as well, intent on wreaking mayhem on society. Disrupting business and infrastructure and safety, traffic, air, travel, banking, but mostly stealing identities and combining them to gain more and more access to more and more of the world on its way to ultimate control. And throughout, the family wrestles with Granny's upcoming important birthday arrangements, underscoring the importance of maintaining dignity and family identity, even in the wake of disaster. Now, opinions are divided in the family about where best to place all the family resources and energies in light of the new emergencies that are unfolding, and it's Granny herself who, though she's the oldest and least in touch with cyberspace, knows a war when she sees one brewing, having lived through some major events in her lifetime. And she sets everyone to work, marching in the same direction, to minimize the real-world havoc stemming from the collapse of Oz. But it doesn't end there. In Kenji Natsuki, there's a video game phenom cousin named Kazuma, whose online fighting prowess becomes key in fighting the AI, and everyone actually in the family bands together to revive the family's historic fighting spirit and take on the AI, which is called Love Machine, ironically. And notably, they use a mix of brains and tech and mostly ingenuity to fight Love Machine. And in the end, it's actually the human spirit that defeats Love Machine, specifically our ability to trust, and also human honor, perhaps, which is a conceptual bridge too far for Love Machine to prevail against. There's also a worldwide I'm Spartacus moment in the film, in the final battle, and it's pretty stirring, actually. And it's interesting to see where the people of this future online culture place human value in the real world versus what they're willing to risk online. Business is online, and there's virtual gaming and lots of infrastructure, but the film's very careful to show that there is real sports, for instance, baseball being played, and one of the family members here is obsessed with a ball game that's on TV while all these traumatic events are playing out around them. There's a family member also obsessed with history, family history and world history, and the battles of antiquity and how the family is descended from some great protectors of the land. The message seems to be the importance of a balance between new and old, and how it's okay to embrace the new, new tech, new ways of living, even new mores and social norms, so long as the past is not forgotten and maintains somewhat of a central place in our lives and our identities, or at least some place. It seems a very maybe eastern view, but the more I think about this film, it's also about class, which makes it even more accessible, more broadly maybe. Okay, so I won't give away the store on the plot of this movie, because some of you might actually get to see Summer Wars in theaters this summer, coming out July 27th, near me anyway, and here in Minnesota, so check Fandango or something, whatever you have for your local dates and times, and also I won't give it away because the studio, the same studio for Summer Wars put out Wolf Children, and they took down my Wolf Children video, and I think maybe it was because I gave away too much, or used too many scenes, I don't know. So I don't want a repeat of that with this video, but do check out this film in theaters if you're interested, and it's out in July, as I said, and then it goes back to streaming, I imagine, so time is short. Now, is it the best Mamoru Hosoda film that I've seen? I think that's still mirai for me, for my money, but I still have to see a few. I haven't seen all of them, and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, much beloved in his repertoire, is coming out again in theaters this year as well, I think in September, so, you know, we'll see. But this film will surprise you. It is, like most of Hosoda's films that I've seen so far, unlike any other films, not just his own, but any other films. If anything, this had, for me, a Shakespearean or Kurosawa flavor to it, with its meditations on class and honor and family dynamics, while a war rages around these characters. And, you know, I've been known to improve my take on anime films, Wolf Children being the prime example, and it was you guys, some of you in the comments, who helped me see beyond my concerns on that film. So, I'm not making any pronouncements, but I enjoyed the film, so I'm just giving a stamp of interest, very high interest, and a certain regard for this very well-made story. And its social media plotline is more timely and relevant than ever, so check it out. All right, that's Summer Wars. Hit like and subscribe, if you would, or join the channel, buy a shirt. Other than that, I just want to thank you for stopping by. Go see Summer Wars, and I'll see you soon.