Continuing my AniMAY season by bringing focus to another of the more well-known anime director, at least to western audiences, that being Mamoru Hosoda. As with Satoshi Kon last week, I have seen two of Hosoda’s films before the one we are focusing on today, with those two being The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) and Belle (2021), his first and his most recent respectively. And having watched those two prior to watching today’s film, Summer Wars (2009), I can say it was a really interesting way to approach his work, but that is for another time. Summer Wars follows Kenji (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who agrees to accompany a school friend, Natsuki (Nanami Sakuraba), to her grandma’s estate over the summer to pretend to be her fiancé. While there he accidentally helps a hacker AI access OZ, a digital world which has a huge amount of influence on the running of the whole world, and he sets out to try to fix this problem.
If you think that the synopsis sounds like two completely different films, don’t worry I will get to it. But first I want to focus on aspects of the film I really loved, namely the animation and humour. I really love Hosoda’s animation style, and it has a look to it that is instantly recognisable as Hosoda. His characters are softer and less sharp than in classical anime, and this style fits the comedic tone that has run throughout all of his films I have seen of his so far. This is especially true with his characters' facial expressions and movements when they hit the extremes of their emotions. He employs very over the top movements and expressions which can be seen across the anime spectrum. Still, he is also able to draw it back and make it more subtle when he needs it to be, and there are several moments throughout the film where it does need to pull back from the more over the top animation style. It is one of these moments where the film has one of its more striking visual moments, where the frame tracks from right to left showing all our characters mostly still and silhouetted emphasising their emotional plight at that moment. It is such a simple moment, but it is really effective both from a visual standpoint and for the narrative. The film also has some brilliantly animated action scenes within the virtual world OZ, so it really shows Hosoda's animation abilities.
So, from a visual standpoint, this film is top notch. But it is in the narrative where it loses its way with me. The film feels like it has two narratives going on at the same time, the one being Kenji meeting this family and pretending to be Natsuki’s fiancé, and the other where a dangerous AI has taken over OZ and is wreaking havoc, including the possibility of nuclear disaster. Can you see the tonal dissonance in those two scenarios? To its credit, the film does a decent job of merging the two narratives so that you aren’t completely sideswiped every time it switches from one to the other. However, there are a few moments where the lighter more comedic tone does seem to have the rug pulled out from underneath it when we have to go to the more serious side of the narrative. The film is at its best when it focuses on the family dynamics. This is where the real heart of the film is set, and I was always disappointed to be pulled back into the OZ side of the narrative as I didn’t find that aspect of the film nearly as interesting. The narrative arc with the family would work perfectly and well without the OZ narrative which makes it even more bizarre to me that it is included. And that isn’t to say that all the OZ stuff is bad, and I would argue that a film focusing on that story would also lead to a good film, I just prefer the more grounded nature of the other half of the narrative. This mixture of grounded relationship stories and these larger sci-fi concepts is something that Hosoda implemented in both the other two films of his I have seen also, and while I think it works in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time it was also an issue for me in Belle, so I wonder if this is going to be a continuing criticism of his films going forward.
Despite my misgivings towards the narrative, as a whole Summer Wars is still a film I would recommend watching if you are an anime fan. There is still enough here to make it enjoyable, and I do think it is a good film overall. It has a lot of good humour and the emotional side of the film when focusing on the family arch is something that I got totally bought into. It is also strong visually and so there is plenty to enjoy just from an animation perspective. It may be my least favourite of the films I have reviewed from AniMAY so far, but that isn’t to say it is bad, nor that you shouldn’t seek it out and watch it as I do believe it is worth your time.
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