Today the spotlight falls on Funimation’s recent U.S. Blu-ray release of the 2009 anime film Summer Wars.

RELEASE DATE, AVAILABILITY AND COST

The U.S. Blu-ray release of Summer Wars hit store shelves on 15 February 2011. It’s now available via most of the major online anime retailers (Anime News Network has a handy list here), with prices starting from US$19.99.

PACKAGING

My copy of Summer Wars arrived in an ordinary plastic Blu-ray case, with no outer sleeve/slipcase. (All discs were meant to ship with a decorative sleeve, but production delays meant that some customers – myself included – received their copies without one; more details on Anime News Network here.) It’s a pretty bare-bones release consisting of just one Blu-ray disc; there are no physical extras to speak of. The cover art – featuring Natsuki and her family – is the same as that used in the standard Japanese Blu-ray release.

Images of the disc case and jacket (front and back).

The inside of the case, showing the Blu-ray disc and the art printed on the inner side of the jacket.

CONTENTS

The 115-minute main feature is accompanied by about 40 minutes of extra content, consisting of:
- Interviews with 5 members of the Japanese cast, in Japanese with English subtitles.
- An interview with director Hosoda Mamoru, in Japanese with English subtitles.
- Teaser trailers.
- Teaser TV spot.
- Original trailer.
- TV spots.
- Trailers for upcoming Funimation releases.

Audio setup options consist of Dolby TrueHD English 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD Japanese 5.1 soundtracks. There is one set of subtitles (English) that can be turned on or off.

INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY

Summer Wars begins by taking you through a quick walk-through of OZ, the online virtual universe around which much of the film’s plot revolves. To call it Facebook on steroids would be a gross understatement: it’s more like what Second Life would be if it had the power of Microsoft, the ambitions of Google, and the inescapable reach of McDonald’s (and even that sounds like a decidedly inadequate description). In this world, the tentacles of OZ have acquired a pervasive grip on nearly every sphere of life, from social networking and shopping to finance and government services. Whether you’re looking to chat with people from across the globe (made possible by a built-in universal translator) or file your income tax returns, OZ provides the infrastructure you need to get things done.

Kenji is an ordinary high-school student, etc. etc. – a stock character in many ways, but I digress. In brief, he’s a mathematically gifted but socially inept lad who works for OZ as a low-low-low-level administrator. Plying his part-time trade in a cramped computer room at school with friend and fellow OZ underling Sakuma, the day seems just like any other when . . .

. . . fanfare please . . .

. . . their uber-popular high-school senpai Natsuki bursts into the room and offers them a part-time job. One of them anyway. In the end, Kenji is picked and rushes off to Ueda (in Nagano Prefecture) together with Natsuki for her great-grandmother’s upcoming 90th birthday bash. The nature of the job disclosed right in the most awkward of moments – I shall leave you to discover that for yourself – young Kenji is introduced to Natsuki’s legion of rambunctious relatives, a huge family descended of Sengoku-era warlords who struck it rich during the Meiji Restoration but have since descended into genteel poverty (whilst retaining their sprawling, castle-like estate). In firm command of the Jinnouchi clan’s affairs is their formidable matriarch, Great-Grandmum Sakae, a woman with the poise of an empress and the mind of a warrior.

That night, Kenji is roused from bed by an email containing a long string of numbers and the subject heading “Solve Me”. Never mind that it comes from an unknown sender – Kenji’s mathematical curiosity overpowers any misgivings and he rises to the challenge. Working out a solution in the course of the night, he emails the cracked code back to the source and retires to bed.

The next day, all heck breaks loose.

The morning news reports are ablaze with the story that someone has broken through OZ’s supposedly impervious security system. Using Kenji’s avatar, the unknown party starts by taking over other user accounts and wreaking havoc on the virtual plane. Soon it triggers catastrophic real-world problems by tampering with everything from traffic lights and GPS navigation to train schedules and emergency help lines. The hapless Kenji becomes the prime suspect, but with the help of Sakuma and Natsuki’s OZ-savvy cousin Kazuma, he fires the first return shots in what eventually becomes a war to take back the Internet – and save the world.

REVIEW

It’s been a while – a very long while – since I enjoyed a film as much as I did this one. Thinking of my anime favourites from the last five years or so, I don’t remember according any of them the honour of being rewatched in their entirety so soon after seeing them the first time. (Replaying pivotal scenes, yes; viewing them end-to-end a second time, no.) I’ve seen Summer Wars twice now, omitting nothing save for a few seconds of end credits, and even then I’m still thinking of giving it another go tomorrow.

On the one hand, perfection is not something it can lay claim to. The story isn’t overly complex but may be convoluted enough to bar children from enjoying the experience (not that the film was meant for them though). It generally fits the mould of a family-friendly film but I wouldn’t promote it as such: mostly squeaky-clean, there are nonetheless a few brief suggestive moments that prevent me from recommending it for a younger audience. There are times when it descends into needless melodrama – parts of the climactic hanafuda battle, for one. And the film does seem rather slow in places, mainly in the first half.

On the other hand, it gets so many things right that any flaws seem almost imperceptible. (I had to think long and hard to complete the brief, obligatory con-side paragraph above.)

Let’s start with the visuals. Animation studio Madhouse are known for top-rate work – director Hosoda Mamoru’s previous film Toki o Kakeru Shoujo comes to mind – and their well-established prowess explodes on screen for Summer Wars. The virtual world of OZ, rich in colour and sharp-edged complexity, is built mostly out of flashy computer-aided animation, with the softer and cleaner tones of the real world rendered in a more traditional hand-drawn style. The characters’ movements are very fluid, from the main fight/chase scenes to simple hand gestures; full attention is lavished on even something as peripheral as a child tipping over when a bus rounds a corner. And then there are the innumerable, seemingly inconsequential details that contribute little to the story but add so much to the atmosphere – the station signs, the architectural details of the Jinnouchi mansion, the aged tile-work in the family bath.

Character designs for the real-world side are flat and simple, without sacrificing naturalness – very similar to the overall style Hosoda employed in TokiKake. The virtual world of OZ required another set of designs, in this case for the characters’ online avatars. Just as one would expect in reality, each avatar is a reflection of its owner, whether in terms of their personality or occupation or interests and so on. Some are impressively slick and original, evidently put together with great care; others look as if their owners couldn’t be bothered to go much further than the website’s default options.

The story is wonderfully engaging, striking a good balance between light humour and solid action (with a few key moments of nearly-tear-jerking drama thrown in for good measure). Much of the humour rides on the family dynamics within the Jinnouchi clan, which has a profusion of ages, career paths and personalities as varied as any real-life extended household (together with interactions and clashes to match). Overprotective second cousins? Grandfathers who proudly recount tales of past military glories? Kids who leave destruction in their wake? You name it, they’ve probably got it. The House of Jinnouchi is more of a tossed salad than a melting pot, and the film benefits greatly from this fact.

One character in particular stands out, and all the more because she isn’t a central figure. (Come to think of it, in a manner of speaking she is a central figure, indeed the central figure.) Great-Grandmum Sakae is more than the Jinnouchi family’s ramrod-straight matron: she is a leader through and through, one who in a different day and age might have given the Tokugawas a sound thwacking. She is the first to call the film’s central conflict a “war”, and like any good commander doesn’t give in to panic and speculation. Her family’s wealth depleted long ago, Great-Grandmum Sakae nonetheless has something more powerful at her beck and call: a social network of her own. Politicians, government officials, business leaders, ordinary men on the ground – a vast web of contacts in all rungs of society built up over the course of her long lifetime. As the first effects of the OZ break-in spread out to sow chaos in the real world, she rallies the troops all over Japan using nothing more than an old rotary-dial phone and her contact book (a scene that ranks among the highest points in the entire film). She admits that she doesn’t completely understand what’s going on – the Internet doesn’t figure much in her world after all – but she calmly appreciates the scale of the danger, puts a name to it (“It’s like a war”) and gets the job done. All throughout the film, all the way to the end, it is Great-Grandmum Sakae’s banner that the family unites under to defend all they know and love from the threat that faces them.

It’s certainly possible to force out the usual commentary on modern man’s technological dependence and whatnot, though a closer inspection doesn’t support this as the central theme. I’d lean more towards identifying family and one’s social network (not in Facebook terms but in a broader sociological context) as lying nearer to the heart of the film. We’ve already spoken of Great-Grandmum Sakae’s taking command of homeland defence in the war’s early stages, using her vast network of relatives and acquaintances. Later on, we have various members of the family pitching in to set the stage for the final battle, contributing everything from a fishing boat to a university-grade supercomputer. And then there’s the central figure of Kenji, a stranger, to some even an interloper, an outsider who gets roped into the Jinnouchi network (along with Sakuma) and does his part to see them through to victory. The tag line emblazoned on the back of the Blu-ray case – “ALWAYS PROTECT YOUR NETWORK!” – may not have made much sense at the start, but after watching the film I am now struck by how appropriate it is.

In one of the interviews included on the disc, Hosoda-sensei himself traces the genesis of the film to his own post-TokiKake marriage. After his wedding, his wife’s family – up to that point little more than strangers to him – were suddenly his family as well. The theme is chosen, the seed is planted, and a few years later we are reaping the exceptionally sweet fruit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 19th, 2011 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Anime, Movies, Reviews.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.