[critical] Summer Wars

Welcome to the world of OZ : the community platform of the internet. By logging in from a computer, a television or a telephone, millions of avatars feed the largest online social network for a new life, outside of the boundaries of reality.

Kenji, a high school student to a shy and gifted in mathematics, conducts a summer job at the service of the maintenance of OZ. To his great surprise, the pretty Natuski, the girl of his dreams, offers to accompany him to Nagano, his hometown. It is then boarded for the traditional feast of the clan Jinnouchi. He understands soon that Natsuki has asked to play the role of ” future fiance ” and make a good figure vis-à-vis his venerable grandmother. At the same time, a virus attack OZ, triggering catastrophe upon catastrophe on a planetary level.

With the help of Kenji, the clan Jinnouchi launches into a veritable crusade family to save the virtual world and its inhabitants…

Author’s Note

[rating:8/10]

• Release Date : June 09, 2010

• Directed by Mamoru Hosoda

• Film japanese

• With Ryunosuke Kamiki, Patrick Mölleken, Nanami Sakuraba

• Duration : 1h54min

• Original title : Samā Wōzu

• Trailer :

Graphically successful and very well-animated, the film plunges us into very easily and quickly in his universe overlaying ultra-modernism, technology and family tradition. It is quickly surprised by the aesthetics very video-fun OZ, in opposition to that very “japanese countryside” from the house of Jinnouchi. We found very quickly analogies with our world of the contemporary computer (social networks, avatars, interconnection services, etc.) as well as some common places of the anime (high school student shy, union against a threat, traditions, etc.).

First worried about having to make a film that would be very slow, or complicated, by its very subject matter, one soon realizes that Mamoru Hosoda has very well managed the pace of his film, both in terms of humour than action ; all of which are relayed by very many characters. Moreover, the other quality of the staging is to allow each of its many stakeholders in the story “to exist” as it is in the moments of humorous thanks to the children or to the side mono-maniac of the women of the clan Jinnouchi, in moments of action or drama, with Kazuma and his avatar, King Kazma, or the grandmother figure family must.

The scenario takes to arm the body to about the dependence on computer systems and turns it into a fable where the family traditions and especially the union of individuals, will always have more weight that the enemy is “virtual”. One can of course a little regret about the side manichean treatment of such a subject, but the poetic side of the film, it may seem silly to some, gum heavy ideological lurking in the outline of this story.

Despite very “politically correct”, Summer Wars exudes a freshness to which one has only very rarely right in anime modern. The theme that was closer to a Ghost in the Shell could refer to here is treated with a delicacy and a sense of humor worthy of a movie, studios Ghibli. Here we have a film that is at once modern and poetic, which enjoys a capital of sympathy indisputable.