Summer Wars

I have been anxiously awaiting the release of Summer Wars for some time now and seeing Hosoda's excellent The Girl Who Lept through Time only increased my unwisely high expectations. After finally being able to sit down and view Summer Wars, I am happy to announce it has met my outlandish expectations and then some.

The story concerns Kenji, a math nerd who (suspension of belief required) is asked by cute popular girl Natsuki attend her Grandmothers birthday celebration posing as her boyfriend(!). The farce is going swimmingly with the event bringing together Natsuki's lively and eccentric extended family. Things go to shit when the online virtual world "Oz" (which the world more or less runs on, think of it has a advanced version of the internet) is taken over by a particularly malicious hacker who used Kenji's account to do the deed. With the world in chaos and the authorities after him, Kenji teams up with Natsuki's computer wiz cousin in an attempt to destroy the virus like avatar in Oz through virtual battle and set the world back to normal.

Summer Wars is a family dramady with a strong sci-fi component. The characters we are given, even the bit players, are immensely likable and well characterized, they feel very real and down to earth. The film as a whole is beautifully animated, but its the scenes in Oz, a kind of digital wonderland, are the scenes that really stick out and the several action sequences the film has are exhilarating. Summer War's biggest triumph is being able to combine the sci-fi bits flawlessly with the rest of the film which is essentially about family and budding romance. Summer Wars is thoroughly entertaining, thought provoking, funny and at times rather poignant. In short it's one of the best amine feature films to come out in a decade; right up there with Spirited Away...(and hopefully Eva 2.22...which is next on my must see list.)

Grade: A

Reviewed: Feature Film Format: DVD, English Dub