I'm clearly not the right target audience for Summer Wars.

While I can understand that there is A Message to be told in the movie, as per Director Hosoda's Vision, I didn't really find myself noticing it that much. It was sort of in the back of my mind, informing every scene that I saw during the course of the movie, but what really leapt to the forefront were…

… kind of spoilery, so I won't mention most of them. Offhand, though, the phrases which stuck were "In the future of Summer Wars, there is no network lag", and "I don't think physics works that way".

I don't know why I couldn't get my mind off the nitpicks. I mean, Star Trek (as in Star Trek XI, the J.J. Abrams movie) elicited the same sort of reaction, but more muted; maybe the pretty explosions distracted me, and the character introspection in Summer Wars made my mind wander.

Overall, I'd say this is a movie you should watch at least once (and if possible, watch it with a friend or several). Whether you should rewatch it is up to you; in fact, I leave it up to you whether to even like it. I've found that one of the most liberating revelations I have ever had in my life was the knowledge that just because it's well-acclaimed or hugely popular doesn't mean I have to like it: I am free to make up my own mind, based on my own narrow prejudices and experiences, and so is everyone else.

For Summer Wars, I liked it the first time round, but I doubt I'll be rewatching it. Because the right target audience would probably not be distracted by the incredibly poor planning (no documentation, no backups, no security) of what I suppose could be considered the instigators of the movie's foreground conflict.

Unrelated: Kazuma appears to be the fanart-favourite, for some reason. I didn't think he was that androgynous.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 1:33 am and is filed under anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.