Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars finally made its way to the top of my Netflix queue and its timing couldn’t be more appropriate. In the midst of Japan’s recent disasters, it’s hard not to reflect on themes pertaining to family, and the relationship between the quake and Wars correlates not only in the importance of pulling together as a unit, but also – coincidentally enough – in the way of a nation faced with a nuclear crisis.
That is where Hosoda eventually navigates this family-driven drama, and although the events that lead up to its finale seemed a bit arbitrary, I suppose watching Wars in the thick of the mess overseas sort of raised my appreciation for Hosoda’s second feature film. It’s as cliché as they come – which was to be expected from an anime of this nature – and the family in question was more often than not unbearable to put up with, but all in all Hosoda’s harbinger of the pitfalls of a ubiquitous social network is simply a heartwarming treat to experience; now, perhaps, more than ever.
Wars could possibly make a case for being the more relevant social networking film of 2010 – in the states – because unlike Jesse Eisenberg’s star vehicle, Hosoda’s allegory actually takes aim at the consequences a society dependent on technology could potentially face in the near future. It’s a great concept executed in the most refreshing way, but beyond the spectacular eye candy that is OZ – the story’s endangered social network – lies the rather poor execution of themes; they’re heavy-handed thanks to the characters’ melodramatic handling of family matters. If only the brilliance that lied dormant somewhere in this innovative plot could have flooded out the constant preaching imbued in the dialogue, we could have had ourselves a top-shelf anime classic.
What we have is a scrawny, mathlete protagonist named Kenji (Michael Sinterniklaas) who’s taken up a summer job as an IT guy for the interactive computer world OZ. When summer crush Natsuki (Brina Palencia) bombards him with a second “job opportunity” that entails traveling to a historic estate in Ueda – a city in Japan – to celebrate her grandmother’s 90th birthday, he accepts the proposal failing to realize that said proposal happens to be one of marital proportions.
After catching on and considering opting out of the agreement, Kenji is introduced to Natsuki’s family consisting of a couple-dozen strong, including her no-nonsense grandmother Sakae Jinnouchi (Pam Dougherty). Growing an attachment to the Jinnouchi clan compels Kenji to follow through with Natsuki’s scheme, but after solving a mathematical code sent to him via e-mail, Kenji becomes a public enemy overnight when an A.I. program called Love Machine hijacks his account and begins orchestrating a large-scale assault within OZ’s mainframe that puts the network’s several million users at risk.
The film’s Achilles' heel comes in the form of Hosoda’s staggeringly poor representation of women. I can only assume that he was inspired by traditional perceptions of gender roles and perhaps by how he found his own family particularly “hard to deal with” – as he stated while promoting the film – but the women of the Jinnouchi clan are just insufferable; especially in their coarse attitude toward Kenji.
An uncle of Natsuki’s (or perhaps a cousin; keeping track of them all is a chore) mentions that the family is brimming with “take charge women”, yet when the technological world is on the brink of collapse, we find these bold ladies watching baseball games and making catering plans. They’re so distracted in their materialistic pursuits that they remain oblivious to what’s happening right up until the very end. Without exaggerating, I can genuinely say that the lot of them make up the most frustrating, self-interested group of characters I’ve ever seen put on screen.
Obnoxious elements aside, the story arcs that unfold in Wars are solid enough in structure to hold one’s attention for the film’s two hour runtime. I found myself more irritated by the world outside of OZ than bored with it. The sequences that dazzle colorfully on screen within OZ serve as gorgeous throwbacks to Hosoda’s Digimon days, but viscerally, the film as a whole doesn’t quite meet the bar his debut film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time set back in 2006. The amount of product-placement seems wildly misplaced and the overt anti-American connotations may not sit well with the Western crowd, but the message behind Wars remains genuine and heartfelt despite the story’s shortcomings.
7/10
