If you’ve never watched anime (Japanese animation) before, Summer Wars is a great movie to watch! Directed by Mamoru Hosoda, this movie centers around the importance of family and forgiveness. Kenji is propositioned by Natsuki to spend their summer vacation with her extended family pretending to be her fake fiancee. Kenji is very smart and a bit of a geek. In his spare time he works for the massive online community known as Oz. Oz is like Facebook but, 1000x more interactive and heavily used all around the world. It controls nearly all aspects of life like gaming, social networking, and managing your finances.
This is the age old story of the geek doing whatever the popular girl asks of him. Except for the fact that Kenji is a really nice guy and he doesn’t let Natsuki push him around too much. The virtual community of Oz is hacked and infected with a virus that manages to shut down utilities in real life. There is mass chaos and Kenji believes that he can fix the situation. Natsuki’s family overcomes petty differences to work together and support Kenji in his efforts to restore normalcy and destroy the virus.
Summer Wars is a fun and fast paced movie. Of course, there’s a bit of a love story between Kenji and Natsuki but it’s not the main plot of the movie. The animation is gorgeous and the animation of the online avatars is really unique. I really liked the aspect of how the online world is presented. It’s a very lush and virtual community and it’s easy to understand due to our own society’s addiction to social networking. My favorite part of the movie is the Japanese card game match between Natsuki and the computer virus. It’s a really fun and exiting scene! This is a great family movie! While I generally prefer Japanese language/English subtitles, the English dubs a very good!
Theatrical Trailer (English Dubbed):
Available for rental on Netflix |Purchase from Amazon
Movie Description:
From the visionary directory of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time(2007 Japanese Academy Prize, Best Animated Feature) comes the story of an ordinary family going to extraordinary lengths to avert the impending cyber apocalypse!
Kenji is your typical teenage misfit. He’s good at math, bad with girls, and spends most of his time hanging out in the all-powerful, online community known as OZ. His second life is the only life he has – until the girl of his dreams, Natsuki, hijacks him for a starring role as a fake fiancée at her family reunion. Things only get stranger from there. A late-night email containing a cryptic mathematic riddle leads to the unleashing of a rogue AI intent on using the virtual word of OZ to destroy the real world, literarily. As Armageddon looms on the horizon, Kenji and his new “family” set aside their differences and band together to save the worlds they inhabit in this “near-perfect blend of social satire and science fiction.” (AnimeNewsNetwork.com)
