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Summer Wars

Summer Wars (2010)

October. 13,2010
|
7.4
|
PG
| Animation Science Fiction

A student tries to fix a problem he accidentally caused in OZ, a digital world, while pretending to be the fiancé of his friend at her grandmother's 90th birthday.

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Reviews

Fluentiama
2010/10/13

Perfect cast and a good story

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Protraph
2010/10/14

Lack of good storyline.

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ChicDragon
2010/10/15

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

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Verity Robins
2010/10/16

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

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phoenix 2
2010/10/17

My main problem with this movie-anime was the whole Oz thing. I was kind of confused on what it was and how it worked. For what I gathered, it was an international internet base that controlled every aspect of the everyday life. So, everyone was depending on it without realising it, until a virus takes over and then everything gets out of control. I liked the concept of tradition and family bonds managing to effect even the technological, cyber world. And, due to the Oz thing, there was a lot of action in this movie. However, it still felt a little odd, as the cyber battles were presented like real ones. Other than that, the concept was nice and the characters interesting, though they never were explored in depth. Another thing that bothered me was that the final battle took too long. After the hero won, the virus always found a way to take control again, and it seemed like they would never win over. So, 4 out of 10.

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ThatAnimeSnob (ThatAnimeSnob)
2010/10/18

THE STAFF Recipe: Take one half standard slice of life comedy, and one half Digimon formula. Stir them in a bawl for ninety minutes and add a rather high budget for flavor. The result is Summer Wars. - Animated by Madhouse, the king of animated series. OK, it's not a series but they still did a great job with the material they had. - Directed by Hosoda Mamoru, who also did the first Digimon movies; so no wonder they feel so similar.SCRIPT We have a stereotypical spineless geek boy (blushes even by touching a girl), with a bad future career yet with a good heart. Duh, now what does that remind me of? Could this be some sort of wish-fulfillment romantic comedy? He is sort of forced to pretend being the lover and future husband of the prettiest girl of his school. Yup; it is. The reason she wants that is because she promised her one step before the grave grandmother to let her see the next heir of their proud, old fashioned house. And if that is not forced drama, I don't know what it. Some misunderstandings, some erotic teasing and lots of secondary characters in the form of relatives doing their eccentric stuff. And then the story switches to the internet, where the dork's virtual avatar is hijacked by an A.I. which plans to absorb cyberspace and bring a nuclear apocalypse. WOAH where did that come from? But worry not, since there seems to be a way to defeat it by playing video games. You can start face palming now. OK, it's a very far-fetched scenario full of plot conveniences and a cop-out solutions to everything but it's not like the movie pretends to be serious. It's silly fun and does it well. Doesn't excel at script for the same reason of course.CAST The characters are all very lively but because of their large number and the short duration of the film, they don't escape their stereotypes. There is a bit of character development for the major ones but if you happen to have seen a couple of school comedies, you know how it will turn out right away. And don't do the mistake of thinking about their goals and motivation because they will only appear to be retards this way. Hell, what does nuking the whole world has to do with with an A.I. learning? Or how can you call legit a victory that is based on pure luck? Hm, whatever, the cast is colorful but nothing special or memorable.PRODUCTION VALUES The animation is of rather high budget as the characters have a wonderful lively body language and the 3D visuals used to represent the virtual world are indeed geeky detailed and very reminiscent of video games. Each block of arena or message board is represented in an interesting way and Love Machine's Hindu God appearance and battle style are plain awesome. Even the real world is presented fine in all its typical glory, with characters being drawn in plain outfits fitting their persona and a house mixing the traditional with the modern in decoration… inside a land-bound ship, in the green outskirts. You still can't consider the whole thing to be Ghibli-level, as the animation is not that smooth in motion or rich in textures but the aesthetics are in the right place and can easily win the average viewer. Voice acting felt rather dry as although the actors tried to breathe life into their characters, they still don't sound very professional. Maybe this applies just to the Japanese dub since it is basically a Korean production. Anyway, besides this minor glitch, the characters feel alive and interesting and the background music is somewhat epic in style with all that happens while the sound effects during the battles are pretty damn good.LEGACY A fine movie to spend n a joyful evening, without making you think or gasp too much. It is not a masterpiece in any way as the plot is far fetched and flows too convenient, while the characters are just colorful stereotypes without much room for development. Fun but eventually forgettable.

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bump-18589
2010/10/19

This is a fantasy of a shy boy who is a hidden genius of a summer. On July 30, 2010 there is a virtual world, OZ, which is on the Internet that people all over the world crowd. A shy high school student, Kenji, is invited for a summer job by the senior he longs for, Natsuki. It is her relative who wait them at her home. Moreover, Kenji is asked to pretend to be her betrothed by her, he manages to do that. During he stays her home, he breaks something like some code by using math which he is good at in the middle of the night. From next day, Japanese Society is thrown into confusion.I could enjoy this story very much. I think that the director reflects the real world in recent years to this film. In these days, the world is supported by network, so the Internet and smartphone are essential for our dairy life. I think this film shows the danger of the Internet Society by using animation which may be easy for the audience to understand. In addition, the voice actor of Kenji does good job. He can play Kenji naturally.

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Jacob Thompson
2010/10/20

I was expecting to absolutely love this movie. I was expecting to fall in love with it like I did with Mamoru Hosoda's other films like Wolf Children and the Girl Who Leapt Through Time. And while this film was in no means bad, I couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by it.What's good about it: The animation is great and unique as always, A lot of the emotional scenes were handled pretty maturely, and it can be pretty engaging and gripping at times.What's bad about it: They're trying to tell two different stories at once. One story being about a bunch of people trying to save the world from a corrupt artificial intelligence and the other being about a kid who has to pretend to be the fiancé of a girl he likes. And they're not balanced out very well. I personally think it would've worked if both of these stories were two separate films. Another issue with the film is that the characters that are meant to be important (the love interest in particular) had little to no development outside of just being the love interest. The reason behind that is because there were too many characters. A lot of the film focused more on her family than it did the actual main characters. If you want this character to have a big family, then fine, more power to ya. But you shouldn't put all of your focus on them. You should keep the focus where it should be: on the main characters.But even with these issues, does this film still hold up? Yeah. This movie is in no mean amazing or even great, I still think it's decent. However, if you were expecting a masterpiece like Wolf Children or the Girl Who Leapt Through Time, you may wanna look elsewhere. For me, I'm glad I saw it, I just wouldn't see it again.

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