Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

ThatAnimeSnob (ThatAnimeSnob) THE STAFF Recipe: Take one half standard slice of life comedy, and one half Digimon formula. Stir them in a bawl for ninety minutes and add a rather high budget for flavor. The result is Summer Wars. - Animated by Madhouse, the king of animated series. OK, it's not a series but they still did a great job with the material they had. - Directed by Hosoda Mamoru, who also did the first Digimon movies; so no wonder they feel so similar.SCRIPT We have a stereotypical spineless geek boy (blushes even by touching a girl), with a bad future career yet with a good heart. Duh, now what does that remind me of? Could this be some sort of wish-fulfillment romantic comedy? He is sort of forced to pretend being the lover and future husband of the prettiest girl of his school. Yup; it is. The reason she wants that is because she promised her one step before the grave grandmother to let her see the next heir of their proud, old fashioned house. And if that is not forced drama, I don't know what it. Some misunderstandings, some erotic teasing and lots of secondary characters in the form of relatives doing their eccentric stuff. And then the story switches to the internet, where the dork's virtual avatar is hijacked by an A.I. which plans to absorb cyberspace and bring a nuclear apocalypse. WOAH where did that come from? But worry not, since there seems to be a way to defeat it by playing video games. You can start face palming now. OK, it's a very far-fetched scenario full of plot conveniences and a cop-out solutions to everything but it's not like the movie pretends to be serious. It's silly fun and does it well. Doesn't excel at script for the same reason of course.CAST The characters are all very lively but because of their large number and the short duration of the film, they don't escape their stereotypes. There is a bit of character development for the major ones but if you happen to have seen a couple of school comedies, you know how it will turn out right away. And don't do the mistake of thinking about their goals and motivation because they will only appear to be retards this way. Hell, what does nuking the whole world has to do with with an A.I. learning? Or how can you call legit a victory that is based on pure luck? Hm, whatever, the cast is colorful but nothing special or memorable.PRODUCTION VALUES The animation is of rather high budget as the characters have a wonderful lively body language and the 3D visuals used to represent the virtual world are indeed geeky detailed and very reminiscent of video games. Each block of arena or message board is represented in an interesting way and Love Machine's Hindu God appearance and battle style are plain awesome. Even the real world is presented fine in all its typical glory, with characters being drawn in plain outfits fitting their persona and a house mixing the traditional with the modern in decoration… inside a land-bound ship, in the green outskirts. You still can't consider the whole thing to be Ghibli-level, as the animation is not that smooth in motion or rich in textures but the aesthetics are in the right place and can easily win the average viewer. Voice acting felt rather dry as although the actors tried to breathe life into their characters, they still don't sound very professional. Maybe this applies just to the Japanese dub since it is basically a Korean production. Anyway, besides this minor glitch, the characters feel alive and interesting and the background music is somewhat epic in style with all that happens while the sound effects during the battles are pretty damn good.LEGACY A fine movie to spend n a joyful evening, without making you think or gasp too much. It is not a masterpiece in any way as the plot is far fetched and flows too convenient, while the characters are just colorful stereotypes without much room for development. Fun but eventually forgettable.

bump-18589 This is a fantasy of a shy boy who is a hidden genius of a summer. On July 30, 2010 there is a virtual world, OZ, which is on the Internet that people all over the world crowd. A shy high school student, Kenji, is invited for a summer job by the senior he longs for, Natsuki. It is her relative who wait them at her home. Moreover, Kenji is asked to pretend to be her betrothed by her, he manages to do that. During he stays her home, he breaks something like some code by using math which he is good at in the middle of the night. From next day, Japanese Society is thrown into confusion.I could enjoy this story very much. I think that the director reflects the real world in recent years to this film. In these days, the world is supported by network, so the Internet and smartphone are essential for our dairy life. I think this film shows the danger of the Internet Society by using animation which may be easy for the audience to understand. In addition, the voice actor of Kenji does good job. He can play Kenji naturally.

Alex Rabbitte When taking a look at the history of Japanese animation, it's fair to say that for the western audience at least, Japanese animation films can be severely butchered and be heavily criticised. However, I think films such Summer Wars are exceptions due to the fact that they offer up something different to all audiences and deliver on the entertainment value.'Summer Wars' directed by Mamoru Hosoda (who also directed 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time') is a film that explores the endless possibilities when it comes to our use of technology and blends that with the theme of family/romance. the story which takes place in a near- Utopian future where everyone integrates themselves with the world of OZ (an online platform that is used by everyone)is focused around the 17 year-old high schooler Kenji Koiso, a mathematical genius who like most geniuses is shy, uncoordinated and inarticulate. Being disappointed not representing Japan in the maths Olympics, Kenji finds himself in an odd predicament where the girl of his dreams Natsuki Shinohara 'hires' him out to be her fake fiancé to please her great grandmother Sakae Jinnouchi who's turning 90 years old. While Kenji tries his best to fit in with Natsuki's large family, things get even more complicated when he receives an odd encoded text message one night which although Kenji easily solves the 250-character algorithm, the next day it is known that he actually released a malevolent A.I called 'Love Machine'. With 'Love Machine' purposefully creating havoc in the world of OZ, the repercussions are slowly being felt within the world and as things get more and more chaotic and the stakes are raised even higher, Kenji and family slowly realise that this A.I could pose a big threat to the world than anyone had previously been imagined.What I found out within this film that I really appreciate for doing is it's attention to detail. Not only in terms of animation and visual quality does Summer Wars look great, but the way it eludes to the themes of technology/family is interesting. Probably the most coherent and obvious theme that this film represents is technology and how it certainly gives us, the spectator,an in depth look at the advantages and implications technology can do in our everyday lives. Not only that but the film also gives us this message that technology is always evolving; We have progressed immensely over the past decade through technology and we will enter many more decades to even brighter and scarier society driven sources. While the core of the film does revolve around the technology aspect for the majority of the running time, the other key theme that remains current throughout is 'family'. The actual Jinnouchi family is pretty much the heart and soul of Summer Wars and outlines how on a metaphorical term how important family is in our lives and how that extends through the bonds of friendship. The family it-self felt like one massive character that again delivered this films heart and soul; the way each individual character played each other's response whether it may off been a violent retort or a cheesy joke was played out with such realism which goes to show how good the dubbing was for this animated piece.With such a large cast you could argue however that the weakest part of this film was actually the development of the main characters. Kenji being the usual shy,quirky teenager living his normal high-school life can be depicted as just an ordinary anime character with no back-story apart from being a super genius which is the only interesting quality of character. While the dialogue and voice acting of Natsuki is well-done and charming at times, her relevance to the doom- narrative is very limited and is only perceived as a love interest to help advance the character of Kenji.The only individual that stands out is the great-grandmother as she does add a lot of warmth to everyone and gains a lot of respect from each character .In terms of the visual aspects however, Summer Wars is good-looking film. The action/fighting sequences are fluid and smooth and barely any moments where it just looks stone still. Hosoda's contrast between the standard but detailed real-world setting and the world of OZ which is bright and vibrant and funnily but weirdly looks like the internet has had sex with Nintendo is professionally done and certainly adds to tension of the story snapping back and forth from OZ to the real world.The depth of detail such as the little kids playing with their Nintendo D.S's and Wabasuke (developer of 'Love Machine')with his Iphone was something I enjoyed thoroughly as again it brought this sense of verisimilitude. On top of this, the soundtrack consists of orchestral music which feels very Disney-ish in the up-beat and comical moments but still manages to diverge it self whenever the narrative gets emotional. Besides having an orchestral music-score, there are other types of music which certainly deliver and add to the important sequences. A good example of this would be the theme of 'King Kazma' as the uplifting techno-beat really syncs wells with the adrenalin and high tension of the action-packed scene. In terms of the narrative however, there are certain elements that call-back to the Digimon movie being that there is a digitised world in both and that both are directed by Hosoda. However Summer Wars completely makes better use of this doom- destined story line as it does coincide with the technological aspect of the film.All in-all... Summer Wars alongside many other well-established animated films is a great piece of art. The mixture of the highly-stylised animation mixed in with the characters and this dooms-day narrative make this film what it essentially isAlex Rabbitte - 8/10

Tweekums In the near future just about everybody uses an internet site called OZ; on it on can do just about everything one can do in the real world and its security system means that governments and corporations use it too. Protagonist Kenji spends most of his time there but it looks like things might change when a girl called Natsuki offers him a summer job. He doesn't realise what he is expected of him until she introduces him to her grandmother… as her boyfriend and future husband! He isn't sure that he can keep up the charade but it turns out that is the least of his problems. That night he gets sent a strange mathematical puzzle, which he solves and in the morning his face is on the television; he has been accused of hacking OZ's security! Soon there is chaos as whoever has hacked in is interfering with the country's infrastructure and it is only a matter of time before it presents a real danger to people.This, Mamoru Hosoda's second film after 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' is a lot of fun; there are laughs, thrills and drama as well as tragedy and a little romance. Kenji is a fairly typical anime protagonist; shy around girls to the extent that he has a cliché nosebleed! This isn't really a problem though. The large cast of characters are entertaining and the depiction of the online world is nicely different to the real world… just don't expect it to be a realistic vision of anything on line; I suspect that realism would have made a less interesting film, especially for younger viewers. The film does rely on a level of coincidence that strains ones suspension of disbelief somewhat: Kenji, the best fighter in OZ and the person indirectly responsible for the events all end up at the same house at the same time! From the description it might sound like this is primarily a science fiction film but it feels more like a family drama; and these aspects of the story entertained me more; they were believable as a family in a way that made the more far-fetched parts of the story acceptable. The animation is of a high standard as anybody who watched Hosada's previous film would expect. Overall I found this to be an entertaining film that any anime fan can enjoy; there is certainly very little to offend.These comments are based on watching the film in Japanese with English subtitles.