Summer Wars [サマーウォーズ Samā Wōzu] (2009)

Starring Ryunosuke Kamiki, Nanami Sakuraba, Mitsuki Tanimura, Sumiko Fuji, Ayumu Saito, Takahiro Yokokawa, Kiyomi Tanigawa, Mutsumi Sasaki, Mieko Nobusawa, Takuya Kirimoto, Sakiko Tamagawa

Directed by Mamoru Hosoda

After the surprisingly enjoyable Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I was expecting something better from Mamoru Hosoda. Summer Wars isn’t bad, in fact I had a great deal of fun with the first half of it. Unfortunately the second half tapers off, and I found myself less than enthused with its conclusion.

Much of the film involves the virtual world of Oz. It is an online community where people hang out, play games, conduct business, and in general do anything that you might do online (Except look at porn. This film is rated PG, you know.). I’m not quite sure if Oz is a website on the Internet, or if it simply is the Internet in the world of this film. In any case, it’s a far more idealized version of the Internet than what we have in the real world. All languages are automatically translated on the fly. The user experience seems to be far closer to virtual reality, even to the point of having avatar martial arts tournaments. And of course, security is absolutely unbreachable, which leads to some of the major plot points in the film.

The plot revolves around Kenji and his classmate Natsuki. Using the simplest trick in the book, that of a pretty girl looking sad and bemoaning her fate, Natsuki suckers Kenji into helping her out over summer break. It seems that poor Kenji is doomed to drag Natsuki’s luggage around on a weekend trip to visit her grandmother. Once they arrive, however, Kenji finds out that her real plan is for him to pretend to be her boyfriend and impress her family. This could have been the starting point for any number of tragically ill-conceived romantic comedies, but fortunately the film takes a hard left turn at the next plot point, nearly abandoning the clumsy relationship of the two fake lovebirds.