OZ is a virtual world, and like all visual worlds, you need to create an avatar for you to roam around in this world. But unlike any other virtual world, in OZ, everything you see in real life is reflected in this virtual world. You can pay your taxes, invest on things, have access on the government’s services and the like in this world, in short, we all depend on OZ for our needs.
Enter Kenji Koiso, a math wiz who almost qualified to join an international math competition. Aside from being a math wiz, he is a part-time moderator of the said virtual world. On the start of their summer, his upper classman, Natsuki, one of the most popular girls in their school, invited him to visit her province for her great grandma’s 90th birthday. Little did he know that he was introduced to the family as his fiancé!
After meeting with her extended family, and tried his best to socialize with her extended family, he receives a message that he thought a brainteaser. Seriously, would you call a 2000+ digit mathematical code a brainteaser?! Anyways, he solved the “brainteaser” and sends it; little did he know that sending that message will place him in a tight situation.
On the next day, he became part of a developing news story about a culprit of the hacking of OZ’ system that caused uproar in Japan, affecting every aspect in society like waterlines, fire systems and the like! We later learned that Natsuki’s first love, his uncle Wabisuke is responsible in creating the program known as Love Machine who is responsible for the hacking of OZ’ system. Even if Kenji was able to ease up the problem in OZ’ system, they still have problems in facing Love Machine.
Will they defeat Love Machine? Can they stop this program in getting more accounts that might cause big trouble in the real world? It is for you to find out.
On to the review, I don’t know why the film was called Summer Wars to begin with after seeing the poster. But after watching the film, I finally understand why it is called like that. Because the war happened during to summer, it is not just any other war, it is a war between a math genius and an artificial intelligence program who is causing quite trouble in the virtual world.
It is when we saw the possibility of being over dependent on technology. This is we saw what if we are over dependent on our single online account. You can say this film might be a warning in the future about having a single online account that is your reflection of you in the real world.
Speaking of the virtual world, OZ looks stunning. Sure, the backdrop is white but because of this, the colorful avatars of the world of OZ popped into my eyes! The beauty of it is that those avatars reflect on the current trend of online avatars that I saw online. Cute and colorful and people love to customize them. The fun thing about the world of OZ is like I said in my summary; everything we saw in the real world reflects the real world of OZ. And like what pointed out by some character which I forgot, EVERYONE has an OZ account, including the President of the United States in which, if you have his account, you can have access in the activation code of the nuclear warheads. After seeing the world, I can therefore conclude that OZ can give Digimon’s Digital World or .hack’s The World a run for its money.
Since I talked about the world or OZ, let us talk about the war that happened on this virtual world. The war is a war of wits. It was a battle between an artificial intelligence software that is self aware and curious around its surroundings, versus a shy math wiz. The fun thing about watching the battles is that it reminded me of Bloody Monday, a manga later adapted into a drama, which has a battle between a hacker and a math wiz.
Can a math wiz beat a single computer software, which is self-aware? Their battle was intense especially the last few minutes of the film in which Kenji uses all of his math skills in fighting Love Machine that in some point, mocked him.
On to Kenji, he was at first, shy and he is not socially adept due to his parents being away most of the time. On the start of the film, he was boy who is not sure if he can protect Natsuki when he was asked by her great-grandma if he can protect her. But, as the film progressed, we saw his growth from a regular nerd into a man in which Natsuki can be proud of.
Natsuki was a character that needs closure to her uncle, Wabisuke considering that he is her first love and he was away for a long time. After her “closure” with her uncle, we saw one of the sides that I admire about her. On the earlier parts of the film, we saw how she cared about her family but at the finale of the film, she fought Love Machine in a game of Koi-Koi. It was one of the best parts of the film. It was intense especially the last few moments of the game in which she almost has no chance in winning with the number of accounts she had left.
The animation of the film is nothing surprising from Madhouse. It was gorgeous, it was astonishing but most of all, it was breathtaking. Seriously, when will I see a crappy Madhouse title? When?! If someone knows a crappy Madhouse title, tell me right now!
Anyways, the animation made the virtual world of OZ believable as a Meta universe in which we all exist as colorful avatars. The animations within that world were one of the best things about the film. It reminded me of the clock gears and the time traveling sequences back in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and like those scenes, it out staged the real world. Speaking of the real world, the animation is good, nothing special about it but still, good.
Overall, Summer Wars is one of the best-animated films that I have ever seen. It really deserves the praises it received. It made its director, Mamoru Hosoda synonymous to Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki because of this other amazing work of his. If he will make another collaboration with Madhouse, I will really await for it to be released on home video for me to watch!
The animation of the film was fantastic; this film can be comparable to any Studio Ghibli work to date. Its story is something that is quite related to the real world in which almost everything we do right now has something to do with the internet like shopping, heck even our personal profiles is on the internet in the form of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Now it struck me, what if in the near future we have a virtual world similar to OZ? Will it really affect our lives? Let’s see.