Movie - Summer Wars

Summer Wars

(I am pretty sure you can find better trailers)

When timid eleventh-grader and math genius Kenji Koiso is asked by older student and secret crush Natsuki to come with her to her family's Nagano home for a summer job, he agrees without hesitation. 

Natsuki's family, the Jinnouchi clan, dates back to the Muromachi era (1336 to 1573), and they've all come together to celebrate the 90th birthday of the spunky matriarch of the family, Sakae. That’s when Kenji discovers his "summer job" is to pretend to be Natsuki's fiance and dance with her at the birthday celebration. 

As Kenji attempts to keep up with Natsuki's act around her family, he receives a strange math problem on his cell phone which, being a math genius, he can't resist solving. As it turns out, the solution to the mysterious equation causes Oz, the program that controls nearly every aspect of life to be hacked into, it's up to Kenji and his new "family" to stop the hacker before it's too late.

(Source: twitchfilm.net)

My rating: 9/10

I am not going to compare this against the other films that the director made (I didn't watch) so please don't compare or anything. When I watched this movie, I didn't read the synopsis or read any reviews and I had no clue what the whole movie is about. I only know it was a fantastic movie.

The movie started out with a virtual world, creating avatar for yourself and honestly, I thought we are in some game world like SAO and I was skeptical because I didn't like the transport-yourself-into-a-virtual-world type of story. Then came the art and I was like "Oh, cool, this is rather digital looking." Just when I almost believe that this was going to be something like SAO, the film returns back into the real world, in the physics club of two guys being the administrator of Oz. 

My perception of the movie changed.

The synopsis has already explained to you the beginning so I will just zoom in on how I felt.

It all started with the mysterious equation that lead to the start of "terrorism" in Japan. I like how they tried to portray terrorism in the story through the form of hacking, but not quite since there wasn't someone to physically "hack" into the system but this character called A.I. that was behind all the attacks and problems that arise in Japan. The man who build A.I. was Jinnouchi Wabisuke. He build a Love Machine that was for the military and the military put this system for testing but they did not know that it actually created such chaos. 

Why? Oz was simply not a game, a social networking site, but the entire world is relying on it as it covers almost everything electronically. So when something is down or vulnerable, A.I. could just gain control and cause unrest. 

I thought there was going to be some crazy hacking activities going on in the movie since Kenji cracked the mysterious equation but no, everything was just solved as Math. Like wtf, how do you just stare at numbers do some crazy mental calculations and then figure out the string of passwords? That is insane. Okay, maybe because I'm just stupid and slow. (I hate math). But yeah, it wasn't some crazy hacking like what you see in bloody monday, just simply math. Although the logic is so simple, it kind of also  creates intensity when Kenji was pressured against the countdown timing of destruction - a satellite (i think) that was in space was targeted to crash at the Jinnouchi house which everyone is currently staying and only Kenji was able to stop the destruction by solving the codes through Math.

Apart from how the plot wasn't the acts of terrorism, I like how the movie covers family spirit. The family originally gathered in the Jinnouchi mainhouse to celebrate grandma Sakae's birthday but during the midst of chaos, grandmother Sakae suddenly passes away and the family was rather broken with different ideas on what to do next - the men insisted on preventing further deaths in other families (Oz system was down and it somehow caused the death of Sakae), while the women believed that they should only be concerned of their own family. Jinnouchi men are considered passive in the family but thanks to this chaos, the men were fighting together and that was when you see the family spirit that grandmother Sakae had passed on - "We are all in this together". The story was really touching when grandma died and she writes her final letter which was read by her daughter. I got all teary when the letter was read out. I loved the grandmother, she was such a wonderful lady. 

The art of the anime is wonderful. The class 2D type of anime different from what you see nowadays - big boobs, huge eyes, lots of blushing. The only thing that reminded me of animes now is how the characters are drawn CLAMP-like skinny figures where they literally look like paper walking around. Awesome setting in the city of Ueda, traditional houses, and nothing elaborate - lovely peaceful scenery. The art of the virtual world was simply wonderful. Totally different from the real world yet it is still classy and digitally colorful - something like penguindrum.

The music is awesome too. The right music played at the different scenes and how it actually made you emotional. The OST is to die for. 

Lastly, the touch of romance and humor in this movie was simply so cute. I am glad that romance wasn't a huge part of this movie and it wasn't entirely retarded. A very slow-paced sci-fi movie happened all within 3/4 days.

I hope my review is proper (laughs). This is my first review so I have no idea what I am supposed to say. I am not a very good in analyzing films and I lack the depth of discussion but what I have said in the above is what I had felt throughout the movie. I am bound to leave out a lot of details, but I hope you can enjoy the movie as much as I do.