When timid eleventh-grader and math genius Kenji Koiso is asked by older student and secret crush Natsuki to come with her to her family's Nagano home for a summer job, he agrees without hesitation. Natsuki's family, the Jinnouchi clan, dates back to the Muromachi era (1336 to 1573), and they've all come together to celebrate the 90th birthday of the spunky matriarch of the family, Sakae. That’s when Kenji discovers his "summer job" is to pretend to be Natsuki's fiance and dance with her at the birthday celebration. As Kenji attempts to keep up with Natsuki's act around her family, he receives a strange math problem on his cell phone which, being a math genius, he can't resist solving. As it turns out, the solution to the mysterious equation causes a bizarre parallel world to collide with Earth, and it's up to Kenji and his new fake family to put reality back in order.
Summer Wars was a disappointment. I had heard from many different sources that this was an amazing movie, so I expected highly of it. Ultimately, it turned out to not be what I expected, and ended up watching a generic shoujo.
Story The concept was cool. However, it did not deliver. A world where society is controlled and generated by a game, but everything goes wrong when someone hacks into the internal databases possibly meaning the end for everyone. Sounds pretty neat on paper, right? The society was poorly introduced, having every single little detail shoved into a narration at the beginning of the movie. The romantic build up was so unnecessary and stupid that it felt like I was watching a cheesy 80s movie at some points. Also, the ending moments were so cringeworthy- the power of friendship prevails over evil and the generic boy gets together with the generic girl! Wow!
Characters Bland and forgettable. The protagonist was basically a terrible version of Shinji Ikari. The female lead was irrelevant up until the last 20 minutes or so. The only character who was decent enough to catch my eye was Kazuma, but even he wasn't focused on throughout the movie. There were too many characters in a general location that I didn't even know who half of them were (I believe they were all introduced quickly to the point where it went completely over my head).
Art/Animation The CGI looked great. In the virtual world, the 3D clusters looked wonderful whilst creating smooth-flowing battles. However, only that was where the visuals shined. In the real world, backgrounds were bland and generic, character designs were so dull, and nothing was drawn with any shade or gradient. Everything outside of the virtual world was so boring.
Sound I didn't even remember what the music was like. The voice acting was decent, but they can't do much with ridiculously boring characters.
Overall Don't waste your time watching this piece of garbage. The only things worth watching it for was the CGI battles and Kazuma's kickass virtual character. In the end, this is a shoujo disguised as a sci-fi movie. Madhouse really disappointed me with this one. I rate it 3/10,
the stars going to the wonderful 3D animation.
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