Summer Wars
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
Written by Satoko Okudera
Starring Ryūnosuke Kamiki, Nanami Sakuraba, Sumiko Fuji, Mitsuki Tanimura, Ayumu Saitō
Music by Akihiko Matsumoto
Editing by Shigeru Nishiyama
Studio Madhouse
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date(s) August 1, 2009 (JPN)
August 12, 2009 (KOR)
Running time 114 min.
Country Japan
Language Japanese
Gross revenue US$9,800,496 (JPN)
US$627,608 (KOR
Summer Wars (サマーウォーズ, Samā Wōzu?) is a 2009 animated science fiction film. The film focuses on a timid eleventh-grade math genius who has been falsely implicated in the hacking of a virtual world and, with the aid of a classmate's extensive family, must prevent the real and computer-simulated worlds from colliding. It was produced by the Japanese animation studio Madhouse and directed by Mamoru Hosoda.
The project was first announced without a title at the 2008 Tokyo International Anime Fair, and the first trailer of the film was released in April 2009. Audience interest was fueled primarily through word of mouth and Internet publicity.[3] Two manga adaptations of the film were published ahead of the film's release in Japan and South Korea. It was nominated for the 2009 Golden Leopard award at the Locarno International Film Festival.
This and the second "Evangelion" were the two films I was looking forward to this summer, but I was preoccupied with research and watched "Summer Wars" a week after it opened. Even so, the theater in Shinjuku was sold out when I tried Monday night, and again on Tuesday afternoon, a testament to the quality and wide appeal of this work. It is from Hosoda Mamoru, the director of "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," which won many awards, including Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year 2006. As with that film and "Eva," Sadamoto Yoshiyuki did the character designs for "Summer Wars."
The story is about Kenji, a high school student who works part time maintaining a virtual online world called Oz. Basically the entire world is using Oz to function from e-mail and GPS to banking and weapons defense systems. Kenji is crushing on a girl, Natsuki, who invites him to work part time in the countryside over the summer. The job, Kenji finds, is to act like Natsuki's fiancé to please the family matriarch, who will be turning 90. Just as Kenji is starting to get into it, he solves a strange mathematical puzzle that arrives to his cell phone. This turns to be the security code for Oz, and once it is cracked a mega A.I. virus called Love Machine starts unleashing hell on Oz, enslaving other avatars and using the online infrastructure to throw the real world into utter chaos. Natsuki's grandmother dies, but the family comes together to reconcile and defeat the virus. Natsuki uses her avatar to gamble at hanafuda cards and win accounts back from the now monstrous Love Machine, which weakens him enough so that her cousin "King" Kazuma can lay the smack down. Kenji cracks the security code and redirects a missile headed for the house - with the help of Wabisuke, the black sheep of the family who went to America and programmed Love Machine to prove he wasn't a screw up. Admittedly, it is a bit of a stretch that all these talented folks are under the same roof, but you just have to suspend disbelief.
As mentioned, the film is visually very satisfying. It opens on a black screen with layered voices in Japanese and English explaining Oz, then a cell phone appears and the audience is granted access to the virtual land over the rainbow. It looks like a Murakami Takashi painting, specifically from early 2000s when he collaborated with Louis Vuitton and had an installation at Roppongi Hills. The world is white with colorful accents, and is dominated by a giant tower-like creature in the middle and inhabited by cutesy avatars. But what reminded me most of Murakami was the flatness, or slick, polished surfaces of this world. In great contrast is the physical setting, Ueda-shi, Nagano Prefecture. Hosoda's wife is from the area, and the director apparently was quite taken with the image of traditional Japan. It has a warm and lived in feel to it, aided by a scrupulous attention to detail. As Kenji and Natsuki make their way to the countryside (first a bullet train, then local train and local bus) there is a subtle transformation of their surroundings, captured in shocking realism. The views of Natsuki's family estate, a grand old Japanese home, are amazing. Then there is the scenery. Even now some of the images are fresh in my mind: white clouds moving across a blue sky, flowers blooming in the night, the sun rising.
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