Anime Movie Review: Summer Wars

Ahh the wonders of youth, full of bliss. What am I talking about? I'm still in my early twenties, but I'm sure many people about my age already start to reminisce about our high school years. Furthermore, if you were at that peak age where MMORPGs like MapleStory and WoW were popular, you would understand that desire to go meet with your friends after you finish school was so exhilarating. Summer Wars kinda provoked that sense of nostalgia, in the sense that the characters are high schools playing an online virtual reality game, more specifically an online reality world where you "roleplay" as a character. You can possibly that it relates to VR games nowadays like VR Chat.

Original series like these are perfect in the form of a movie. Having it animated as your typical 12 episode cour would have proved disastrous at least in my opinion. Summer Wars involves Kenji Koiso, our main character who's a brain wiz with a gift for mathematics, and not surprisingly also a moderator of the massive virtual reality world. However, one day he did an "oop-sie" (influenced by pewds) and essentially gave admin powers to the virtual reality world to an unknown character, who seems to be bent on seeing the world burn. As one should know, series like this will always have the protagonist win out at the end, and I'm not unhappy about that. Personally, it was nice to see our protagonists actually lose out at the start. Whilst a battle may be lost, the war can still be won. However some viewers may find it a bit cliche, and the story is occasionally slow at parts.

Anyway, the more important aspect of this movie is the haunting and important message that it delivers. In this virtual reality world, every aspect of our technological is linked to the system. Essentially the character in that virtual world is as important as the person who owns the character in real life since every information and technologies is linked to that virtual character profile. Think of it as a profile/service where you link services such as your bank details, payments etc. From this movie, it just shows how disastrous such a system could be if there was one bad fruit in the basket. Whilst the movie is perhaps exaggerated like the water systems and nuclear bombs are controlled by this system, it's not far off from where we are now in terms of how we carelessly and perhaps mindlessly link services together or divulge personal information online. A good example is Facebook, where one is lazy and sign via Facebook, and unwittingly give information to Facebook about our likes, dislikes, where we go, etc. It's really scary, and whilst one should not be stressing about it, it's important to keep that thought in the back of their minds.

Overall, the movie was really enjoyable. I don't usually watch anime movies, since they are rarely in the movie theaters near me, which is a pity since I have to watch it via other sources. If you like a simple and chill anime that gives a simple yet serious message, this is perfect. It is imperative that old folks and youngsters alike must understand the dangers of divulging too much information online and the dangers with mindlessly linking services with one another, especially when it is not necessary.

Overall Score: 7.75/10

Story: 8/10

Characters: 7/10

Art: 8/10

Sound: 8/10

Enjoyment: 8/10