Movie Review : Summer Wars (2009)

Summer Wars is introduced with an interactive virtual reality world called OZ, it allows us to connect with each other online. One of its main priorities is communication for its importance dissolves the bridges from people worldwide.

Users create a profile with distinct personalized avatars that can be used to play games, shop online, and send email and text messages.

OZ provides support services for businesses and corporations throughout the world. Moreover, agencies, and local governments links to the network to help people with tasks such as paying taxes, and filing documents. Thus, OZ promises protection to users' personal information with their advanced security system.

Meanwhile, in the real world, two of OZ's part-time system maintenance moderators in Japan, Kenji Koiso, an eleventh-grade math genius, and close friend Takashi Sakuma were disturbed by twelfth-grade student Natsuki Shinohara. She asks if one of them would want a simple part-time job with her going to Ueda City in Nagano. Kenji gets to go with her.

Upon arrival at Ueda, Kenji realizes that Natsuki is taking him to her estate for a big family reunion to celebrate her great-grandmother, Sakae Jinnouchi's 90th birthday. What he didn't expect was he was introduced to Sakae as his boyfriend. This was in fact, was the part-time job Natsuki was referring to. Kenji didn't want any part of this but played along to Natsuki's plan.

At dinner, the whole family was happy to see Natsuki's "boyfriend". Kenji is happy but uncomfortable for he is not used to a big family gathering, and to top that, faking to be a boyfriend was too much.

Just in the middle of dinner, an unexpected guest arrives. It was Natsuki's half-granduncle, Wabisuke Jinnouchi, whom Sakae have had adopted. Wabisuke is sardonic and has a bad reputation to the family. He came back from America for Sakae's birthday. As expected, he was not accepted in the household except for Natsuki and Sakae.

Early in the morning, Kenji woke up receiving an email with a mathematical code with 2,056 digits in it. Being a math genius himself, he feels challenged, got up, wrote down the numbers, and finally cracks it. It says, "the magic words are squeamish ossifrage To know is to know that you know nothing That is the true meaning of knowledge".

Later he found out on the news that OZ was hacked. A picture was shown with his eyes covered, thus, putting the blame on him. Someone has stolen his account.

The entire society depends on OZ accounts. Fire alarms going crazy, traffic lights not dependable, email and text services not working, bus and train routes got scrambled, and more! It caused widespread damage!

It is later identified that the hacker is an artificial intelligence called "Love Machine" who is built for thirst for knowledge and literally devours accounts to make him stronger.

With all the chaos happening at OZ, how will Kenji clear his name? Can the damage be undone? Will Natsuki's family help? What will happen to Sakae's 90th birthday?

Yup, watch the movie :)

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I love Summer Wars a lot because it's about the Jinnouchi family ties, their closeness, and support to one another. Their homeland has rich history from their ancestors which is hugely reflected to their way of life, and thinking.

The movie is not all about the virtual world of OZ although the interaction of the users, mainly the Jinnouchi family to the virtual world helps bring peace to the society.

The film doesn't want the virtual nor the reality world to overshadow each other. The film clearly has shown the best of both worlds. OZ has an amazing set of playful colors for our eyes to feast on, moreover, has unique avatars interacting with each other. Its existence to us is highly dependable. Meanwhile, in the real world, we see a family who works as a team, shows family values, and fights their way through at tough times.

[GEEK SPEAK]

Sorry to do this but let me be geeky in this paragraph... The first part of the mathematical code Kenji solves was "The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage" which was the solution to a challenge cipher text posed by the inventors of the RSA cipher in 1977 (solved in 1993-1994); And the other half "To know is to know that you know nothing That is the true meaning of knowledge" is a Confucius quote. Although the word 'true' should be in-front of the word 'knowledge'.

[/GEEK SPEAK]

Now is this the future of social networking? I do not have an idea but it does seem convincing. Whatever the future holds for the online community, we'll know in the days to come.

Summer Wars is indeed a family-oriented movie with a mixture of the virtual world. A truly unique story everybody will love :)

Rating: 5/5

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