Review: Summer Wars (Hosoda Mamoru)
Jan. 29th, 2011 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweHigh-schooler Kenji just missed representing Japan in the Math Olympics, so this summer he has nothing to look forward to except working as a low-level moderator for OZ, the nation's premiere virtual reality social, business, and governmental networking site, with his friend Takashi. That is, until his classmate Natsuki persuades him to accompany her to her great-grandmother's 90th birthday party at the family's run-down country house, where he is unexpectedly introduced to the clan as her fiancé. Against his better judgment, Kenji goes along with the story, but matters take another unexpected turn when he solves a tricky math puzzle sent to his OZ account in the middle of the night. Next morning, he discovers that his account has been used to hack dozens of others, including those of government officials, with dire real-world results. But as Japan descends into chaos, Natsuki's great-grandmother picks up the phone and begins making calls to her own social network ... and her family once again finds itself on the front line of war ...
This is an absolutely charming film. The critical raves for its visuals are well-deserved -- the Murakami-esque cuteness of OZ is matched by the loving depictions of the pastoral Nagano countryside; each member of the large human cast is distinctively designed and the animators handle both high-energy combat and quiet moments of character interaction with skill. The characters' OZ avatars are also convincingly cartoonish and flexible; in particular, the antagonist avatar Love Machine starts as an annoying trickster, morphs into a parody of a Hindu god-warrior, and finally becomes a giant, vaguely humanoid, dark locust-like cloud of stolen identities. Brr.
But what really makes this film stand out is the story. It could have been just a techno-thriller or a sci-fi morality tale about the use and abuse of networking techologies or the benefits and dangers of an increasing reliance on IT. But instead of stopping there, the film goes on to meditate on the human need for connection -- what puts the "social" in "social networking." There's Kenji, who goes along with Natsuki's crazy lie partly because he's got a crush on her, but also because his own home life is so lonely that, as he finds his feet among her family, he's seduced by their comfortable togetherness. There's Natsuki, who begins by seeing Kenji as a means to an end (comforting her ill great-grandmother) and a substitute for her own childhood crush on her uncle Wabisuke, the family's black sheep, but comes to appreciate him for his own qualities (intelligence, persistence, courage) and to aid him in his plans. And then there's great-grandmother herself, with her lifetime's worth of relatives, friends, and acquaintances all over Japan to call on in a time of crisis, who also reaches out to Kenji, drawing him into her circle and giving him the motivation he needs to trust his own powers. On the flip side, human beings are also only human -- more than one attempt to solve the plot problem is scuppered by momentary distraction or the failure to have everyone on the same page. One such misunderstanding in fact constitutes the plot's backstory. Wabisuke, the family's illegitimate son who ran away from home, has invented the AI that wreaks havoc on OZ. But he didn't loose it himself -- instead, he sold it to the US military and tries to give the profits to his great-grandmother as a birthday present. ("Love Machine," indeed!) Her response is to pick up a naginata and threaten to kill him, apparently agreeing with her descendants that he's a bad penny. We discover later, however, that she isn't angry with him for attempting to buy her love and acceptance; she's furious because he doesn't realize she doesn't need to be bought -- that, whatever anyone else may have thought or said about him that made him doubt it, she's always loved and accepted him. Only when he realizes this can he bring his talents to the fight. This realistic view of social limitations gives the film's idealistic conclusion, in which individual power is underpinned by cooperative effort, heft.
The plot can certainly be critiqued for its reliance on tired contrivance: the discovery of a revelatory letter late in the plot, not to mention the coincidences that turn the jeopardy into a family affair. Kenji's character arc, too, is shorted by an insufficient introduction; it would have been more telling to show the emptiness of his home life early on rather than have him explain it for the first time when he's been exposed as an impostor. That said, those problems only keep this good film from being an excellent one. The techno-thriller plot is filled with near successes and uh-oh! moments right to the end; the character melodrama is quite sniffle-worthy; and the humor runs the gamut from slapstick (the first attempt to take down the OZ hacker is interrupted by two six-year-olds who want a turn at the cool video game) to bathos (a sensei imparting to his student the deep wisdom that younger siblings are, indeed, a pain in the butt) to genial, self-referential bubble-pricking (when Natsuki's avatar is gifted with a Rare Lucky Item from the system guardians, one impressed onlooker admits, "Wow! I have no idea what that means!").
I can't comment on the original voice work, but Funimation has put together a very lively dub, as usual. Michael Sinterniklaas, whom I'd only encountered as an extra previously, is quite natural-sounding as Kenji and has good chemistry with Brina Palencia's Natsuki. Todd Haberkorn, who seems to be everywhere these days, takes on another one of his characteristic dudely roles as Kenji's friend and fellow mod Takashi. J. Michael Tatum has become one of my favorite actors in the current Funimation repertory company since I heard him in Ouran High School Host Club -- his Wabisuke is convincingly snarky and vulnerable. Maxey Whitehead in another breeches part as video-game ace Kazuma also does a fine job and is especially amusing in her scenes with John Swasey, putting on his Large Ham to play Uncle Mansuke, the commercial fisherman whose OZ avatar is a ninja squid. And I am now looking forward with great pleasure to Pam Dougherty's Madam Christmas, since she makes a lovely and intimidating clan matriarch here.
The DVD is due out mid-February, so if you won't be getting a theatrical release in your area, you won't have long to wait to see this gem. I really need to push Hosoda's Girl Who Leapt Through Time up the queue now ...
This is an absolutely charming film. The critical raves for its visuals are well-deserved -- the Murakami-esque cuteness of OZ is matched by the loving depictions of the pastoral Nagano countryside; each member of the large human cast is distinctively designed and the animators handle both high-energy combat and quiet moments of character interaction with skill. The characters' OZ avatars are also convincingly cartoonish and flexible; in particular, the antagonist avatar Love Machine starts as an annoying trickster, morphs into a parody of a Hindu god-warrior, and finally becomes a giant, vaguely humanoid, dark locust-like cloud of stolen identities. Brr.
But what really makes this film stand out is the story. It could have been just a techno-thriller or a sci-fi morality tale about the use and abuse of networking techologies or the benefits and dangers of an increasing reliance on IT. But instead of stopping there, the film goes on to meditate on the human need for connection -- what puts the "social" in "social networking." There's Kenji, who goes along with Natsuki's crazy lie partly because he's got a crush on her, but also because his own home life is so lonely that, as he finds his feet among her family, he's seduced by their comfortable togetherness. There's Natsuki, who begins by seeing Kenji as a means to an end (comforting her ill great-grandmother) and a substitute for her own childhood crush on her uncle Wabisuke, the family's black sheep, but comes to appreciate him for his own qualities (intelligence, persistence, courage) and to aid him in his plans. And then there's great-grandmother herself, with her lifetime's worth of relatives, friends, and acquaintances all over Japan to call on in a time of crisis, who also reaches out to Kenji, drawing him into her circle and giving him the motivation he needs to trust his own powers. On the flip side, human beings are also only human -- more than one attempt to solve the plot problem is scuppered by momentary distraction or the failure to have everyone on the same page. One such misunderstanding in fact constitutes the plot's backstory. Wabisuke, the family's illegitimate son who ran away from home, has invented the AI that wreaks havoc on OZ. But he didn't loose it himself -- instead, he sold it to the US military and tries to give the profits to his great-grandmother as a birthday present. ("Love Machine," indeed!) Her response is to pick up a naginata and threaten to kill him, apparently agreeing with her descendants that he's a bad penny. We discover later, however, that she isn't angry with him for attempting to buy her love and acceptance; she's furious because he doesn't realize she doesn't need to be bought -- that, whatever anyone else may have thought or said about him that made him doubt it, she's always loved and accepted him. Only when he realizes this can he bring his talents to the fight. This realistic view of social limitations gives the film's idealistic conclusion, in which individual power is underpinned by cooperative effort, heft.
The plot can certainly be critiqued for its reliance on tired contrivance: the discovery of a revelatory letter late in the plot, not to mention the coincidences that turn the jeopardy into a family affair. Kenji's character arc, too, is shorted by an insufficient introduction; it would have been more telling to show the emptiness of his home life early on rather than have him explain it for the first time when he's been exposed as an impostor. That said, those problems only keep this good film from being an excellent one. The techno-thriller plot is filled with near successes and uh-oh! moments right to the end; the character melodrama is quite sniffle-worthy; and the humor runs the gamut from slapstick (the first attempt to take down the OZ hacker is interrupted by two six-year-olds who want a turn at the cool video game) to bathos (a sensei imparting to his student the deep wisdom that younger siblings are, indeed, a pain in the butt) to genial, self-referential bubble-pricking (when Natsuki's avatar is gifted with a Rare Lucky Item from the system guardians, one impressed onlooker admits, "Wow! I have no idea what that means!").
I can't comment on the original voice work, but Funimation has put together a very lively dub, as usual. Michael Sinterniklaas, whom I'd only encountered as an extra previously, is quite natural-sounding as Kenji and has good chemistry with Brina Palencia's Natsuki. Todd Haberkorn, who seems to be everywhere these days, takes on another one of his characteristic dudely roles as Kenji's friend and fellow mod Takashi. J. Michael Tatum has become one of my favorite actors in the current Funimation repertory company since I heard him in Ouran High School Host Club -- his Wabisuke is convincingly snarky and vulnerable. Maxey Whitehead in another breeches part as video-game ace Kazuma also does a fine job and is especially amusing in her scenes with John Swasey, putting on his Large Ham to play Uncle Mansuke, the commercial fisherman whose OZ avatar is a ninja squid. And I am now looking forward with great pleasure to Pam Dougherty's Madam Christmas, since she makes a lovely and intimidating clan matriarch here.
The DVD is due out mid-February, so if you won't be getting a theatrical release in your area, you won't have long to wait to see this gem. I really need to push Hosoda's Girl Who Leapt Through Time up the queue now ...