[Anime] Summer Wars - サマーウォーズ (2009)

Starting from "Toki o Kakeru Shoujo" the name of Hosoda Mamoru resounded in the community of anime lovers. Hosoda stepped on a more serious arena of storytelling, but still kept his creations suited for the general audience. From then on once every few years the screens shine on the viewers with the new animation movie. It has distinct animation style and especially a story point that has become very much his thing. I call it "embrace the sadness". There is always a moment of sadness or tragedy that doesn't actually pull the person down to fall, but to pull and release for them to reach a new level. And it happened in all of his movies.

But we're here talking Summer Wars today.

The story of Summer Wars is relatively simple, a senpai at school asks one of the boys to accompany her to her hometown, the occasion is the birthday of the head of the family, her grandmother. She then tells a white lie that he is her boyfriend. During the night the boy receives a strange e-mail with a code and while almost being a math Olympiad representative from their country he solves it and send the answer back only to find out in the morning his own face on TV with accusation of breaking the main system everyone is using - Oz. As it turns his account was stolen and used for malicious attacks and the one doing it is an A.I. developed for hacking. It caused a true chaos in society. But what was most concerning was the stealth of truly important accounts that were responsible for national security etc. Kenji with the entire Jinouchi family then proceed to stabilaze Ueda and fight against the A.I. who stole Kenji's account.

The final scene is of Kenji cracking the code to change the missile's destination that headed right to their residence, but since he succeeded the final angle changed and the missile lands accurately in the fields with a high-pressure hot springs stream rushing out after the impact. The Jinouchi residence in tatters after the shock wave, but still alive and happy.

The story indeed has a lot of questionable points, but since it's young people movie forget about that.

'Embrace your sadness' moment to be pushed forward is - death of the head of the family. 

The cause of it is malfunctioning of monitoring system due to hacking attack on Oz and not being able to give medical help in time. The passing not only pushes the family to grief, but also forward to get together and deal with the A.I. that might cause others' people passing that is suggested by Kenji.

It also brought back Wabisuke, the illegimate son of the husband to the current head, but who was brought up under the loving wing of hers, yet one who ran with the little money family had abroad just to earn it with the project he developed - the abovementioned A.I. In every of Hosoda's movie is a note of melancholy and sadness as a result of some sort of drama or tragedy happening, but it also becomes the character's motivation to move forward.

Really good and obvious point is about the family unity. Jinouchi is a big family that existed for several hundred years, judging by what was said they were once rich enough, but all businesses were lost in the hands of poor abilities (the late husband to the current head). So once rich family declined in assets, but not in family bond. Although declined financially, the head of the family still had connections, which gave a short glimpse of the past, how people were building this society and came together for greater good.

This was a really gratifying part of the movie as a whole. And a really positive part too. And in the end Kenji becoming part of this family becomes a happy thing, due to his own family situation being very much like many households, busy parents and their children left alone.

Ah damn, I still tear up the moment granny dies, she's so dope. But that is the thing in all Hosoda movies, we either live through someone's death or something close to that.

But. There is always a 'but' for me. These are just things that you don't really care about or maybe you notice them the first time, yet still they make you think - uh... And I'm talking about several questionable things. What a surprise from my side (no, it's not, it's a blatant irony): Oz as centralized network for every walk of life. It is pretty dangerous to see how services that are responsible for the water pressure for example are almost in the same aisle as enertainment etc. Not to mention that the A.I. locked out others from the system. And here I think come forward some parts that are under the question like: why there is no emergency to deal with that like.. manually? for example to get disconnected from the Oz and use iternal system. Sure thing it's not a thing for the false emergency calls, but when it comes to other systems, they're basically not protected. Not to mention the missile in the end. Same with traffic jams, have you ever seen a traffic regulator? Like there's a person with a baton that helps cars to move when traffic lights are nto available. If I develop into this further there'll be more questions, but since it's a movie for young people you are not allowed to question things, they are as they are :D Otherwise movie wouldn't have happened.

Generally, it's not that big of a deal, since this was not what movie tried to convey, sure thing this is a hole-y background, but it works for this story. And in general it is what it is - a nice entertaining story. And thank god it doesn't have a mother who has to let her son be let into the mountains, because he wants to become a guradian to the forest and live in wilderness, thanks for that.

RATE: 8/10