Summer Wars Review

So, today my rabbit, friend and companion of eight years, was lost to the perils of my neighborhood. I searched for him until the sun set and then I made a flier and then I cried. After that I decided to check if my favorite youtube reviewer had uploaded anything knew. He hadn’t, but I did see his review for Summer Wars. I started watching it again, because there was nothing else for me to do until I realized I could be watching the real thing. I have wanted to watch Summer Wars for a long time so I thought, hey, why not? All I can say is, it impressed me. I thought it looked a little stupid at first, but when you get into it it’s a really amazing movie. I think a lot of people can relate to it because it combines so many aspects of life that people deal with every day. One of which is family. If you’ve ever experienced a family gathering at all you can relate. The small crazy children, the overprotective cousin, the black sheep, the strong woman at it’s head, and everyone else in between who agree to disagree and fight the rest of the time even though they will always love each other. It’s got the crazy family history that everyone is way too involved in. The crazy recluse cousin that’s into video games…way too much and that girl that’s always bringing her new boyfriend to family gatherings. And if you take one thing away from it the anime makes sure that it’s this, family doesn’t have to be perfect, but it’s family and in the end that’s all that matters. Family can be split into a million different opinions and separated by miles, maybe even large bodies of water, but if their threatened they band together into a fighting force to be reckoned with. There’s the family expectations as well and realizing that maybe they don’t matter as much as we thought. Now that the moral stuff is out of the way, I didn’t really mean to talk about that so much, but it kind of got out of hand…a little bit and I’m feeling kind of philosophical. I guess. Let’s talk about the animation then. Something that can be analyzed. The animation handled the actions scenes and the digitally generated 3D world that made up Oz really well. It gave depth and a certain playful feel to a world that, in the end, was anything but. The difference in feel between the computer screens, Oz, and the real world animation was immense. They TV screens actually made me do a double take at times because they looked so realistic. Sometimes the characters bodies looked a little too thin, tall, and spaghetti like (Natsuke and Kenji in particular). Especially at first, which sort of made me doubt the quality of animation a little bit, but as time went on the animation seemed to get better, or I just got used to the style animation. But it did manage the transition between real world and Oz extremely well. The plot The plot was an interesting mix between getting together in a big family, the consequences of the greater influence of the internet on our lives, and fighting the evil that will always mess up our lives. But isn’t that last reason in all movies? I don’t know, but for the amount of plot elements I thought it managed to combine them all extremely well. The family aspect and the effect of technology on society were almost explored at the same time since Natsuki’s family is so big it has a hand in government and public service, among other things. Really the problem and solution of the plot in this anime is almost completely, single-handedly, managed by Natsuki’s family. They really could make their own self-contained nation. Plot Summary To the actual summary *which may contain spoilers* it consists of a math genius who takes on pretending to be his crushes fiancé as his summer job. Sounds like a good job right? No! Because then the crazy family is introduced. Shy, slightly unsure, and definitely nerdy Kenji has a bit of a problem dealing with Natsuki’s strong-willed family, but I think anyone who’s ever had to meet a friend’s or girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s family can relate. After meeting the family Kenji received a mysterious text message consisting of a code late at night. After spending all night decoding it he finds out that he was decoding the security system of Oz…oops. Fortunately he wasn’t the only one who was duped, in fact he spent all night doing math and failed anyway because of a tiny mistake that messed up the whole code (actually just the last letter)…sounds like me. So he kind of lost. But regardless the hacker AI called, Love Machine, still got into Oz and started wrecking society. Natsuki’s family, led by Gramma, who is indisputably the driving force behind that family, rally against Love Machine to reverse the damage, which ended up being created by the black sheep of the family. The characters The characters were a little underdeveloped, but that can be chalked up to the large cast of characters, I can’t even begin to count all the characters, but the anime uses the fact that most people have big families and have experienced them first hand to supplement the underdevelopment a little. That, and most characters were sort of typical stereotypes anyway. Which doesn’t actually take away from the plot as much as you’d think it would. And it wasn’t the individual characters themselves as much as what they made when they were together that the plot focused on. Some of the main characters are Kazma-computer nerd kid and martial arts student who’s the person behind the most well-known fighting avatar in Oz, King Kazm. Kenji-the main character of the anime who works for Oz. He’s a math genius and almost made it to the national math competition. After that fell through his crush, Natsuki gave him a summer job where all he had to do was go along with whatever she said. Natsuki-the female lead who belongs to a big family, asks Kenji to pretend to be her boyfriend, and knows how to play a very complicated card/board game. Additional thoughts The whole concept reminded me of Sword Art Online. A digital world that rules your everyday life and then goes crazy destroying that life is kind of a theme in that anime. The whole beat-the-boss-and-everything-will-be-normal-again is something the two anime have in common as well. Watching Kasma do his martial arts routine with his uncle to prepare for his fight against Love Machine brought up another Sword Art Online reference: Does real world skill translate into the game…..usually that’s a no. But I think Kasma would enjoy the world of Sword Art Online and maybe even give Kirito a run for his money, since no one else is. Another thing that I really like about the finale was that everyone was necessary for defeating Love Machine. It wasn’t the main character, or the guy who was most tech savvy who was the MVP in the end, it was everybody. Even the girl who’s only skill seemed to be having a crush on her estranged, adopted, bad guy uncle and being able to play a difficult card/board game. Heck, even the estranged, adopted, bad guy uncle was important in taking down Love Machine in the end. Even the gramma, especially the gramma actually, was a key player in taking down Love Machine. It was a very satisfying ending over all that stated, no matter who you are and what you’re good at you can still do something incredible to save the world. You just need to believe in yourself. So, it’s a feel good story about this math nerd and his crush’s family, but it’s also more than that. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I would recommend it.