Anime Film Review: Summer Wars from Madhouse and Mamoru Hosoda

Summer Wars
Madhouse 2009
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
Math-wiz Kenji is roped into visiting his upperclassman's family home, but when he's there a disaster occurs: an artificial intelligence hacks OZ, an online world which stretches so vast that by controlling it, the A.I. is able to bring the real world to a grinding halt. With the help of his new friends, his classmates, and his math abilities, Kenji must wrestle control of OZ out of the A.I.'s hands.

Summer Wars begins with a clichés aplenty: a smart but socially-inept protagonist caught in an awkward situation with an attractive female classmate. But the film's very first scene is an introduction to the colorful, cartoony, vast world of OZ, and this sets the tone: Summer Wars is not your usual seinen coming of age. Instead it finds character development through a slew of brilliant aspects: a vast and vivid cast, fine emotive animation, a setting which comfortably straddles the minutiae of daily life and the magical, digital world of OZ, and best of all a plot that balances character development against well-paced action. The film is sometimes a little too funny, but that prevents the plot from becoming too dire; similarly OZ is sometimes too cartoony, which while visually striking doesn't make for the most realistic worldwide digital universe. But for the most part, Summer Wars is faultless.

In fact if I had to make one complaint, it's that the film is a little too perfect. Plot points tie together too nicely, everyone does just the right thing at just the right time, the end is too happy—there's a slight excess of good and awesome in the film. Nevermind the digital world that's the setting of half the plot, it's this abundance of perfection that makes the story tend towards unbelievable. I begrudged this not at all while watching, but as the final scene of celebration drew to a close I felt a bit cheated, like it had all been too easy and too neat.

That issue isn't enough to distract from a wonderful film, though. And Summer Wars is: smart, fun, detailed, colorful, imaginative, clever, and altogether wonderful, this is a movie to rouse cheering and a pleasant choked-up feeling. The only version I've been able to find online was fairly low-res and has soft English subtitles over hard Korean subtitles, but if you can put up with those inconveniences I highly recommend you seek out Summer Wars. And if you can't, keep it on your radar: when a clearer sub is available, you will want to see this film.

On books: Hating and putting down London Bridges, picking up and loving Threshold.

I finished Lost Souls ... yesterday? last night? recently, loving it as much to the end as I did in my passionate accolades halfway through. Nothing was my favorite this time, then Ghost—a change from my passion for Zillah the first go-around.

Picked up a new-to-me book to read and review and had to put it down 35 pages in. London Bridges, Jane Stevenson. Normally I have a rule: to read at least 50, but usually 75 pages of a book before I give up on it. Because it takes me about that long to form an opinion I believe will hold up, and I like to have an opinion before I continue with, or give up on, or even worse give up on and write an "ohgodwhy" review of a book. I just can't make myself do that with this one, because 4 pages in I was groaning and bitching and 30 pages after that was no better. Because this:

"Good evening. Can you fill this prescription, please?"

Jeanene took the piece of paper and studied it conscientiously, nibbling her thumbnail.

"I'll have to check on the computer," she said apologetically. "This is a high dosage, and I'm not sure we keep it in that strength."

"It is very important," said the woman, abruptly.
—London Bridges, Jane Stevenson (4) (emphasis added)

This is the type of writing to send me into a rage that begins something like: "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." Stephen King and I agree on little but there, oh there, we can agree.

And on the selfsame page:

"There was something else peculiar about it: the prescribing doctor's address was in Fife; and while Jeanene's education had not been big on British geography, Macbeth, she recalled, was the Thane of Fife. So, surely Fife was in Scotland."

The Thane of Fife had a wife indeed and no matter where she is now her name was Lady Macduff because Macduff was the bloody Thane of Fife, seriously. That may be an intended character error rather than an accidental author error but it still bugged me. A lot.

But more to the point:

"Then the Krauts blew it up?" said Edward inelegently.

"It was destroyed by enemy action on December 14, 1940," confirmed Eugenides. Edward's interest quickened. His memorandum was dated September of the same year: good timing on someone's part.

"It must've meant a hell of a lot of sorting out for you," he observed, considering the old man thoughtfully. Seventy? Seventy-five? How old had he been in 1940?

"I was not personally involved at that time, of course," explained Eugenides.
——London Bridges, Jane Stevenson (28) (emphasis added)

Adverbs again; furthermore do you know why we use he said, she said so often in literature? Because it's clean and pure and motherfucking simple, that's why, instead of sounding like you have a pen in one hand and a beleaguered thesaurus in the other. What always boggles me though that these two things can coincide: unnecessarily strong verbs yet still more adverbs than a high school English essay, and neither aspect has half the impact it's intended to have. It's a mess, is what it is. A ripe old mess.

It's when I get to that point that Devon generally has to take the book away from me because he's sick of hearing my dramatic readings. But this time, I reached that point myself. The plot doesn't hold me, the characters are caricatures, but really it's just that the writing is making my brain hurt so bad that no desire even to review this can make me continue with one more page.

So I picked up Kiernan's Threshold instead. It's a reread for me but I never reviewed it, so that's good enough for my goal to alternate read&reviewed with unread&unreviewed. And I am 12 pages in, and in love. I remember the story as clear as daylight, still—it hasn't been too long since I first read it—but that works. The plot, I can see, will unfold differently knowing where it ends, and Kiernan's writing is still fresh because as much as I remember of it, I cannot remember it all, multilayered, sensitive, artistic as it is.

When I sat down and opened up LJ it was just to type one sentence, so here it is:

And it all washes back over her again, the indisputable reality of it, truth that smells like carnations and a shoveful of red cemetery dirt—that they are dead, gone, all of them, and she's as alone at twenty-three as someone who has outlived an entire lifetime of family and friends and lovers.
—Threshold, Caitlín R. Kiernan (12)

It is not the book's most beautiful, most important sentence, but still it is better than the trash I'm leaving behind. But the real reason I wanted to share it:

Carnations and a shoveful of red cemetery dirt—if BPAL made this perfume I could die happy. They should make this perfume. I must have this perfume. It would be my beloved Penny Dreadful but drier, spicier, not as sweet. I can't think of two notes better suited than red loam and carnation, two notes I would better love. This book is amazing but now I am in mourning that I cannot slather on that dream scent this very instant.