The Dangers of Technology - Summer Wars

This being an anime...this is as normal as this movie gets

Back in the early 2000's, Digimon was a huge franchise. I remember getting up every saturday morning to catch the newest episode. Being a Digimon fanatic, I watched the first 4 seasons before it's formula eventually became stale. While Digimon was a clear ripoff of the Pokemon formula, there was no question that the TV show was superior (with the exception of Pokemon's legendary theme song). So back in 2000 I was pretty damn excited for Digimon: The Movie. The film consisted of three seperate Digimon short films that had already been released in Japan. For US audiences, the three films were smushed into a disjointed overarching plot that didn't really connect together. The three films on their own though are decent in their own rights. The best of the three was titled, Our War Game in which a rogue Digimon causes havoc on the internet and nearly brings down the entire real world in the process. The studio which produced Our War Game loved the idea so much that it decided to take the exact same plot, put it in a different universe, and make another movie out of it. The result is the 2009 film Summer Wars.

Both being Studio Madhouse productions the animation styles are quite similar

Summer Wars

In the universe of Summer Wars, all of the real world is connected to social networking program called OZ. The entire country of Japan runs on this program as it is the main facilitator of the basic infrastructure of the country. This clip explains things better than I ever could... 

Basically the movie starts out with shy math genius, Kenji, who works maintenance on OZ, getting dragged into a family reunion by his friend (more like sudden acquaintence) Natsuki. She tells him that he's coming with her on a job but it turns out that she needs him to pose as her fiancee for the weekend. This is the kind of ridiculous plot that you can always expect to find in Japanese animes. She needs him  because her grandmother is in poor health and Natsuki wants her to know that she found a man to marry before she passes away. Kenji goes a meets her enormous family who all get introduced way too fast for you to remember any of their names. Thus this leads to confusions as to who is which person's child and what their exact relation to Natsuki is. Their names are pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Natusuki's uncle Wabiske however is voiced by the one and only Michael J. Tatum, which is why he's the only family member whose name I can recall. You just start identifying them with Buffy Speak-esque names like "dude with red tank top that goes on and on about the family's history" or "fat baseball obsessed woman who dons a Daisuke Matsuzaka jersey at one point". The sub-plot of Kenji posing as Natsuki's fiancee is quickly swept aside by the the main plot of the movie. A rogue AI has hacked into OZ and begins stealing people's accounts. Since a person's avatar on OZ has the same privileges as their real life owners do one can only imagine the power that such a being has. (ie. the President has an account which could give the AI the power to launch nuclear missles...this point is only mentioned in passing however)

Natsuki and her family...you won't remember any of them

 The rogue AI, named Love Machine (ironic right?), turns out to be using Kenji's admin account in order to access all the areas of OZ. This leads to Kenji being implicated in the crime...a point gets brought up like it's big deal but is quickly swept under the rug. I got excited for a second, I thought that the plot would involve Kenji and Natsuki going on the run as they figure out a way to stop the AI...this never happens (probably because the AI has the law enforcement's accounts so they're powerless in the real world). Kenji teams up with Natsuki's cousin Kazuma whose avatar is OZ's internet martial arts champion, named King Kazma. King Kazma is awesome, he's like a badass version of the Trix rabbit.

Sure he looks cuddly...but he kicks cyber ass...

From then on the movie begins to balance the plots of whats going on in the internet and whats going on at the house in the real world. The sphere of the internet is so the movie can provide anime action (and it doesn't disappoint) and the real world is where the more realistic drama happens (sort of...). This is just like the twin plots in Our War Game except that theres definitely more of a focus on whats going on in the real world. We learn that Natsuki's family is very disjointed, most of it caused by Wabiske (SPOILER - he designed Love Machine). However, as the plot moves along things get personal and it unites the entire family against Love Machine. It's very uplifting to see the way the family develops and eventually comes to work as one. With Kenji's absurdly good math skills, Kazuma's martial arts, and Natsuki's skill at the Japanese card game Hanafuda (this movie makes a rather boring card game into a Dragonball Z like throwdown), they bring down Love Machine, Natsuki and Kenji fall in love, and the family is closer than ever. That's basically as simple as I can make the plot.

I don't know what koi-koi means or what the rules of Hanafuda are...all I know it's the most epic card game ever (suck it Yu-Gi-Oh!)

So with that out of the way; what did I like best about Summer Wars? The animation is absolutely fantastic. I watched the film in 1080p on my TV and it looked super crisp and fluid, especially the scenes that took place on the internet. During the scenes that take place in cyberspace, the animation switches to a slick almost cel-shaded look thats absolutely stunning on almost any screen. The white background allows the bright colors to really pop off the screen. You can really tell that the studio just told it's animators to go wild and it really shows. I really liked the animation style when I first saw it in Our War Game and it looks even better here. Everything from Summer Wars is lifted straight out of Our War Game minus the Digimon. Not a bad thing, it lets you see that in 9 years animation has come a really long way and the Digimon movies were very well done for their time. Part of me wonders if Summer Wars is what Madhouse wanted Our War Game to be but didn't have the proper technology or budget at the time. 

The white background really allows the bright colors to pop on screen

My main issues with Summer Wars mostly come from the plot. One of my biggest pet peeves is when plot points are created and then brushed aside, making them irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Yes, Kenji posing as Natsuki's fiancee makes sense because the movie needs a reason for him to be there. At first it seems like this is going to be a comedy sub-plot in which Kenji tries to keep up the charade while saving the world, but within the first 20 minutes it's gone. Same with the sub-plot of Kenji being implicated in the crime. One moment he's being arrested and after about 2 minutes he's a free man again. These sub-plots getting discarded is hardly a bad thing but I thought the movie could have done some fun things with them. Second, OZ seems incredibly impractical. The movie states that theres loads of sensitive information on OZ and if there ever was a hack, the real world would be in a serious mess. The movie opens by saying that OZ's security system is the most secure in the world which in movie speak is code for "this security system will get hacked and everyone will panic as to how it happens". It turns out that a pretty short computer code is all that protects the real world from digital armageddon...not very safe. But as a friend told me, one must imagine yourself in the shoes of those who live in the universe and the plot makes sense. It just seemed to me that a very large amount of idiotic things had to happen in order for this catastrophe to happen (not to mention several of the other antics that happen later in the film). However, once all the dust settles and the actual plot becomes clear thats when the movie kicks into high gear. The plot definitely picks up in the final third and the climax is absolutely brilliant.

This little guy brings Japan (and almost the world) to it's knees

The characters, while entertaining, aren't anything new really, mostly just a bunch of tried and true anime cliches, even the main characters. Kenji is the typical nervous nerd and Natsuki is the typical flirty school friend. Like I said before, the family is introduced so quickly that it's hard to really remember who's who. Luckily, the movie is good about making sure you know which ones are important so you know where to direct your attention. The character development seems to happen to the family as a whole, not as individual characters (excluding the main two characters). Despite their shortcomings, I found Natsuki's family to be entertaining and a key part of the film. Especially memorable is Natsuki's grandmother who essentially mobilizes the entire nation of Japan in order to fix some of the damage Love Machine caused in the real world. The voice work is well done also, the english dub was done by Funimation and as usual they deliver.

Another thing that I really liked about the movie was the theme of family and the dangers of technology. It's a really appropriate movie for this day and age where technology seems to be taking over more and more of our lives. It's not as if this hasn't been explored before in films. War Games and The Matrix Trilogy both explored similar themes of the dangers of letting technology and AI get out of control. Sure, this is certainly an extreme case but I think it serves it's purpose. Secondly, as someone who has a huge extended family myself I could certainly relate to Natsuki's family. They do have a certain charm and it was seeing them come together at the end was really uplifting. It's an important reminder that as awesome as technology is theres still nothing better than the close relationships that you can have face to face with people.

The Verdict:

I really did enjoy Summer Wars, despite my grievances with the plot. It succeeds on several levels especially towards the end. If you can put up with the slow start to the movie you'll be rewarded with an epic climax and some really beautiful animation. You can really tell that a lot of effort went into the making of this movie. I recommend it to anyone whose just looking for something entertaining to watch...you'll actually find a lot more here.

My Score: 4/5