[サマーウォーズ] – Summer Wars

The creator of Digimon: The Movie and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time hits it home again with another innovated and beautifully animated movie, Summer Wars. While it has many (many…) elements similar to the second part of Digimon: The Movie, Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!, it is a fun movie with a solid plot and great animation that will plunge you into a whole new digital adventure.

Protip: spend your summer online, 24/7. You will save the world.

Genres: Action
Themes: Family, Time to Man Up, Never Give Up, Unification, Globalization, etc.
Studio: Madhouse

“Digital adventure” – it’s already starting to sound like Digimon, isn’t it? If you’ve seen Our War Game! before, it’s hard not to spot the obvious plot similarities (which I’ll point out without giving away too much info). Summer Wars also takes place on the internet, but more specifically in an enormous social network called “OZ”. It’s similar to Second Life, but on a bigger scale, with cuter graphics, your avatar can be anything you want, & you can access it from a computer, video game device, cellphone, almost anything. OZ has accounts from major organizations and businesses, governmental departments such as traffic and fire safety, healthcare services, etc. The little creatures, instead of Digimon, are avatars of normal people, and pretty much everyone all over the world – even the President of the United States –owns an account. The antagonist in OZ is not a virus-infected Digimon but an A.I. created to hack, equipped with the thirst for knowledge, called the “Love Machine”. There are two more very obvious similarities which almost bother me, but one of them, as cheesy as it is, makes much more sense and is much less cheesy in Summer Wars than Our War Game!.

Believe it or not, this blonde-haired bunny is actually really kick-ass.

Madhouse delivers spectacular fight scenes, although there aren’t too many major ones. I felt a little silly rooting for an oversized bunny rabbit (who can turn into a sort of Super Saiyan), but King Kazuma’s badassery will definitely get you off your seat and wanting to fight. The motions are fluid and the obstacles handled well. The fight scenes do not include crazy “special” Digimon-esque moves like missiles and lasers and such – nothing but fist, feet, and resourcefulness (which I like). The emotion behind the fight scenes is nice, too. Not too overly dramatic, but makes you feel for the poor losers. In my opinion, they’re the best part of the movie.

Guess who’s the main character. Guess.

The characters are entertaining, focusing mostly on the heroine’s family, the Shinohara clan. With a family involved, you are guaranteed cute family scenes, although with family drama (unfortunately). While you probably won’t be able to catch and remember all their names in their 30-second introduction, their personalities overwhelm the main character’s with their eccentricity and sheer number. Kenji, the guest in the house, is an awkward math wizard who couldn’t talk to girls to save his own life, and doesn’t seem to stand out too much aside from his mathematic wizardry. But, he is awkward and determined enough to keep us entertained and rooting for him whenever he steps up, even if I did forget that he’s the main character, especially after the action starts to pick up.

Every girl deserves her own henshin sequence.

I think the movie focuses more on the family and their quirks, which is a shame because honestly, I felt at times during the movie I wanted to jump back into the world of OZ. Sometimes you see the sky in anime films and series, thinking, “Wow, that’s beautiful.” I thought that too in Summer Wars, but it’s the digital world in OZ which catches my eye. With its simplistic, cartoonish, and almost nostalgic style, Madhouse goes through great lengths to give us a visual masterpiece, even in small details like the difference in the color of the line art. Also important to remember is that the bad guy is in OZ, so while he’s wrecking havoc all over the world and we’re watching the characters eating dinner or watching a baseball game or listening an old lady call a bunch of people and telling them, “Do your best because that’s basically all you can do!”, you can’t help but feel a little agitated.

This is one of the scenes which makes Summer Wars fun to watch!

Summer Wars is a very fun movie to watch, with a lot of scenes that will make you smile, and even laugh. The few, nit-picky reasons I would give it a 7 out of 10 instead of a higher number would be because of the pacing, cheesiest, family drama, and focus. Although the family and its drama are very essential to the plot, I would have definitely liked a little more focus on the main character so he isn’t suddenly needed at the very end of the day. But overall, Summer Wars is great, interesting, and very cool, a definite recommended movie for everyone.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

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