Summer Wars
I actually watched this movie some weeks ago, at the semester-ending meeting of the McMaster anime club. I held off on talking about it until my friends and associates had seen it, however, because I didn't want to spoil it. Well, they've all seen it now, so let me share with you a glimpse of the pure, cinematic brilliance that is...
Summer Wars
Summer Wars seems, at first blush, to be about a lot. The protagonist, Kenji, has his OZ account hacked. OZ is a sort of melange of every popular or useful internet application imaginable (Facebook, Second Life, gaming, banking, shopping, even government work), and it's so omnipresent that without his account he can't even get his cellphone to work. This happens while he's trying to pretend to be the boyfriend of a classmate, Natsuki, to impress her grandmother, just days away from her 90th birthday, at the grandmother's rather palatial country home, surrounded by the massive Jinnouchi clan. Worse, his hacked account has been used to frame him for breaking the security systems of OZ itself, and instituting chaos on a global scale. And that's before the arrests, the satellite strikes, the malevolent AI and the possible nuclear explosions!
So, yes, Summer Wars seems busy, with its fighting and its card games, it's family dramas and its comedies, and all that math. But when you get right down to it, it's really a very familiar story about a boy, and a girl, and the two of them taking their first steps into an adult world. Kenji and Natsuki have the kinds of flaws you'd expect if you're a regular viewer of anime, or even just a regular observer of teenagers in general, and under all the fantastic elements and the sweet (and bitter-sweet) moments with the Jinnouchi clan, this movie is about these two growing up, just a little bit more than they might've otherwise.
But of course, it's not solely about that; this isn't some sort of teenage Woody Allen anime, after all! Summer Wars' great conceit is OZ, the digital worldscape that replaces the traditional internet, and it is glorious. It's so glorious, in fact, that the first three and a half minutes of the film are actually just an in-universe 'beginner's guide to OZ', and amazingly enough this does not detract from the enjoyment of the film. See for yourself:
Much of the film is set in OZ, and the work of the animators shows through brilliantly there. The cast are all given their own unique avatars, most of which carry some particular reflection of their character through. The three most important avatars, of course, are those of Kenji, Natsuki and Natsuki's cousin, Kazuma, seen here from right to left.
It would have been all too easy for the animators to have taken the easier, and lazier, route of simply giving people variations on a basic theme for their avatars, but as you can see there they range from the nearly-human to the wholly-cartoonish, and everything in between. Despite the serious questions that linger regarding accesibility (how exactly would one navigate a fully-realised three-dimensional digital world with a cellphone keypad or a Nintendo DS?), OZ is as real to the characters, and the viewers, as the real world itself, a point driven home with rather terrible finality later in the film. Had OZ simply been a cartoonish fantasyland, or worse, a retread of the groan-inducing computer visualisations of Hackers, Summer Wars could all too easily have fallen flat on its face. Thankfully, there's never any danger of this happening.
This movie is, quite simply, awesome. It is awesome in the way that I had thought only Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann could be, and I have rarely been more delighted to have been proven wrong. Summer Wars is a fantastic movie on pretty much every level a viewer could reasonably ask for, and I cannot think of anyone for whom I would not recommend this film.
Summer Wars
Summer Wars seems, at first blush, to be about a lot. The protagonist, Kenji, has his OZ account hacked. OZ is a sort of melange of every popular or useful internet application imaginable (Facebook, Second Life, gaming, banking, shopping, even government work), and it's so omnipresent that without his account he can't even get his cellphone to work. This happens while he's trying to pretend to be the boyfriend of a classmate, Natsuki, to impress her grandmother, just days away from her 90th birthday, at the grandmother's rather palatial country home, surrounded by the massive Jinnouchi clan. Worse, his hacked account has been used to frame him for breaking the security systems of OZ itself, and instituting chaos on a global scale. And that's before the arrests, the satellite strikes, the malevolent AI and the possible nuclear explosions!
So, yes, Summer Wars seems busy, with its fighting and its card games, it's family dramas and its comedies, and all that math. But when you get right down to it, it's really a very familiar story about a boy, and a girl, and the two of them taking their first steps into an adult world. Kenji and Natsuki have the kinds of flaws you'd expect if you're a regular viewer of anime, or even just a regular observer of teenagers in general, and under all the fantastic elements and the sweet (and bitter-sweet) moments with the Jinnouchi clan, this movie is about these two growing up, just a little bit more than they might've otherwise.
But of course, it's not solely about that; this isn't some sort of teenage Woody Allen anime, after all! Summer Wars' great conceit is OZ, the digital worldscape that replaces the traditional internet, and it is glorious. It's so glorious, in fact, that the first three and a half minutes of the film are actually just an in-universe 'beginner's guide to OZ', and amazingly enough this does not detract from the enjoyment of the film. See for yourself:
Click to viewMuch of the film is set in OZ, and the work of the animators shows through brilliantly there. The cast are all given their own unique avatars, most of which carry some particular reflection of their character through. The three most important avatars, of course, are those of Kenji, Natsuki and Natsuki's cousin, Kazuma, seen here from right to left.
It would have been all too easy for the animators to have taken the easier, and lazier, route of simply giving people variations on a basic theme for their avatars, but as you can see there they range from the nearly-human to the wholly-cartoonish, and everything in between. Despite the serious questions that linger regarding accesibility (how exactly would one navigate a fully-realised three-dimensional digital world with a cellphone keypad or a Nintendo DS?), OZ is as real to the characters, and the viewers, as the real world itself, a point driven home with rather terrible finality later in the film. Had OZ simply been a cartoonish fantasyland, or worse, a retread of the groan-inducing computer visualisations of Hackers, Summer Wars could all too easily have fallen flat on its face. Thankfully, there's never any danger of this happening.
This movie is, quite simply, awesome. It is awesome in the way that I had thought only Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann could be, and I have rarely been more delighted to have been proven wrong. Summer Wars is a fantastic movie on pretty much every level a viewer could reasonably ask for, and I cannot think of anyone for whom I would not recommend this film.