Summer Wars



"The worst things in this world are being hungry and being alone."

"Technology is only as good as a user."

Summer Wars is a 2009 anime Science Fiction and Slice of Life film. The film focuses on a timid eleventh-grade math genius who has been falsely implicated in the hacking of a virtual world and, with the aid of a classmate's extensive family, must prevent the real and computer-simulated worlds from colliding. It was produced by the Japanese animation studio Madhouse and was directed by Mamoru Hosoda.

The project was first announced without a title at the 2008 Tokyo International Anime Fair, and the first trailer of the film was released in April 2009. Audience interest was fueled primarily through word of mouth and Internet publicity. Two manga adaptations of the film were published ahead of the film's release in Japan and South Korea. It was nominated for the 2009 Golden Leopard award at the Locarno International Film Festival. FUNimation acquired the distribution rights to the film, and has set it up with some of their biggest names in ADR dubbing. FUNimation also set up a theatrical release in select cites starting in December 2010, and a DVD and Blu-Ray release in February 2011. It was gunning for an Oscar nomination, which it failed to get.

The film is extremely similar to the same director's earlier work, the Digimon feature film Our War Game (2000), released in English as part of Digimon: The Movie. Both involve the chaos caused in the real and virtual worlds by a shape-changing artificial intelligence that views everything as a game running wild across the internet, but even beyond this basic similarity in plot, the major story beats are even the same, with a tale that culminates in a set-piece battle that sees millions of internet users across the world rally behind the hero to best the villain, but not before it launches a projectile at our heroes in the real world, leading to a race-against-time scene to stop the projectile underscored with a countdown clock. The artistic design of The Metaverse is shared between both films, depicting the virtual realm as a white void decorated with floating two-dimensional shapes in which all characters have red outlines, as well as with "Superflat Monogram", a Louis Vuitton promotional video also directed by Hosoda.

Despite the graphical and climatic similarities, the movie definitely wins its own place through little details that make up for a great difference. While the Digimon-based production already had a canon, as well as a well-established cast; and could (and did) deviate itself completely into the plot, Summer Wars took a much different approach due to it introducing us to a large series of new characters. As little as it may be, every cast member gets their spotlight and a nice deal of development. Summer Wars has a much slower pace, which gives the viewer time to warm up to the characters and understand the plot, while the Digimon movie was much faster and aimed to a much smaller and specific audience (the Digimon fandom), giving itself little to no time for explanations. Likewise, Summer Wars has much higher production values and an overall drawing and animation techniques that can be considered nothing short of excellent, definitely top notch for anime.

Has a manga spin-off: Summer Wars: King Kazma vs Queen Oz, a prequel which focuses on Kazuma.

""Of course this family would bet everything on Hanafuda...""
 * Adorkable: Kenji
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: Love Machine, a privately created AI which escapes from the army and starts a war with the real world..
 * Alliterative Name: Kenji Koiso.
 * Ambiguously Brown: Kazuma.
 * Back From the Brink: Love Machine manages to up the ante on everyone several times over the course of the film, including at least two instances where its cheating makes victory seem all but impossible.
 * Badass: The whole goddamn cast.
 * Badass Adorable: Well, Kazuma is the one controlling King Kazma, so...
 * Badass Bookworm: Kenji, not only did he rally the Jinnouchi clan into fighting back against Love Machine but...well...just see his Crowning Moment of Awesome for further details.
 * Badass Family: The Jinnouchi family is extremely close knit, warm, and hospitable... and will stop at nothing to keep a rogue AI from taking over The Metaverse and
 * Badass Grandpa: Mansuke (Kazuma's grandfather, filling this requirement) taught Kazuma (and thus King Kazma) everything he knows about martial arts, attacked Love Machine (by this time an extremely strong martial arts master) by himself to buy Kazma time to recover, and he has a ninja squid for an avatar.
 * Meaningful Name: He has MAN as the first half of his name.
 * Took a Level In Badass: Many, Kenji in particular.
 * Apparently meant to parallel how ridiculously close averting the is, Ryohei's baseball team.
 * Big Fancy House: Despite Kenji's first impression, it's all that remains of the family's wealth.
 * Big Good: Sakae at the beginning, with this role arguably going to Kenji after
 * Black Sheep: Wabisuke.
 * Bratty Half-Pint: The younger kids. Part of the reason Kazuma loses his first fight with Love Machine is because they're dicking around with the computer during the fight. And then (in the manga at least) they have the nerve to say "Aw, you got hit!" Yeah, that tends to happen when you're distracting him.
 * Break Out the Museum Piece: When everyone's cell phone and internet access becomes unreliable, 90-year-old Sakae breaks out her trusty old dial phone and gets in touch with people through old-fashioned land lines.
 * Butt Monkey: Shota.
 * Card-Carrying Villain: Love Machine. Lampshaded: "Has bad guy written all over him." Something of Truth in Television -- black-hat programmers have fun with malware designs.
 * The Cavalry: Towards the end of the movie Natsuki The game goes well for awhile, but Natsuki is momentarily distracted by the clock and loses a critical hand. She doesn't have enough accounts left to place the minimum bet, and all hope seems lost...  A very nice twist on this trope in that the Cavalry is saving the day by putting themselves entirely into the hero's hands -- far from taking the glory away from the hero, these people are giving Natsuki what she needs to win one last hand with her own skills.
 * Chekhov's Gun:
 * Chekhov's Gunman: Kazuma, whom we see fighting other avatars earlier in the movie. He repeatedly fights Love Machine cyber-physically and is responsible for giving it.
 * Chekhov's Skill: Natsuki's koi-koi-playing skills. To a lesser extent, every member of the extended family's respective skills.
 * The Clan: The Jinnouchi, well, clan.
 * Colony Drop: Love Machine tries to drop a satellite on a nuclear reactor. After losing the match, it redirects it to crash on the house.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: An in-universe example. Love Machine will go by the rules until it's about to lose, then it fights dirty.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Averted. When installing a supercomputer (intended for a cooled server room) in the family's home during a heat wave, they pack it tight surrounded by ice and seal the room to keep heat from the outside from seeping in.
 * Cool Old Guy: Mansuke.
 * Cool Old Lady: You do not pull a fast one on Granny Sakae. The only reason  is because Love Machine went after her while she was sleeping.
 * Cry Cute: Kazuma
 * Curb Stomp Battle: Kazuma's first attempt to stop Love Machine with King Kazma devolves into this due to it absorbing other avatars to increase its strength. In short, the computer is literally being a cheating bastard.
 * Cyberspace: In the far-flung future of 2010, the Internet seems to have been mostly supplanted by Oz, a somewhat whimsical cyberspace setting that nevertheless gets plenty of use from government agencies and businesses. It's mentioned that there are almost as many Oz users as there are cellphone owners.
 * Dark Is Evil:
 * And it still manages to invoke Light Is Not Good, with
 * Dead Man Writing:
 * Deep-Immersion Gaming: And how.
 * Design Student's Orgasm: OZ all the way.
 * The Determinator: "You can't solve an equation by giving up."
 * Disney Owns This Trope: It flashes by insanely quickly during the opening credits, but apparently Kazuma has trademarked King Kazma.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: So a weapon set loose by America onto Japan threatens nuclear fallout, eh?
 * Is it just a coincidence that a movie that's being distributed by Warner Brothers features two scenes of a badass rabbit kicking the ever loving crap out of an evil looking kid in mouse ears?
 * Dynamic Entry: King Kazama performs this little maneuver to stop Love Machine from devouring Kenji's squirrel avatar.
 * Eagle Land: Naturally it's those poor, foolish Americans who release Love Machine to wreak havoc.
 * Everything Is Online: Oz has over billion users for which it functions like one's entire OS, only based on a single social network structure. Imagine if getting your Facebook account hacked was literally the same as getting your personal computer, cell phone, and workplace account hacked because they were all the same account in the first place. While this makes its chaos more justifiable, it is a ridiculously improbable monopoly of service.
 * Subverted in that Sakae's social network proves more effective than trying to get through the digital hellhole that OZ has become.
 * Everythings Nuttier With Squirrels: Kenji's guest avatar is a squirrel.
 * Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: Grandpa Mansuke's avatar. Plus, its a ninja.
 * Evil-Detecting Dog: It can detect evil apparently.
 * It also alerted the family about Sakae while everyone was sleeping.
 * The first time we see Wabisuke, he's petting the dog and asking if he's forgotten him.
 * It also whines when Shouta takes Kenji away,
 * Evil Laugh: Love Machine. Shi shi shi...
 * Expy: Kenji resembles a gender-flipped Makoto.
 * Kazuma, a skinny computer wiz who doesn't seem to be all there, also looks a lot like some other skinny computer wiz who doesn't seem to be all there.
 * Love Machine is obviously based on Diablomon, and quite possibly the computer from War Games as well.
 * The entire movie is this to the aforementioned Digimon movie, which had a similar plot but different setting, characters, and the focus of the films are different, with Summer Wars being about the real characters and the other film being more about the digital aspect.
 * Exact Time to Failure: The film's countdown to destruction stops with fifteen minutes to spare, subverting this.
 * Foreshadowing: The numerous mentions of the satellite.
 * Flower Motifs: Morning glories in particular hold special sentimental value to Sakae.
 * For the Evulz: Love Machine isn't doing anything out of malicious intent... it just thinks of everything as a game.
 * The Four Loves: Storge (familial love) at its fullest.
 * Genre Savvy: Sakae clearly sees right through the fake fiance ruse, and just as clearly realizes how that kind of thing usually ends.
 * Goggles Do Nothing: King Kazma's goggles are really just an avatar accessory. Kazma 2.0 replaces them with Hair of Gold similar to Kazuma's.
 * Gondor Calls for Aid:
 * Don't forget Grandma's earlier epic use of her after Love Machine starts sowing chaos.
 * Gone Horribly Right:
 * Good Scars, Evil Scars: Good, in the case of King Kazma. He gains a scar from forehead to jaw over one eye after being thrown into the cloud barrier surrounding OZ by Love Machine.
 * Good with Numbers: Kenji, natch. In a Crowning Moment of Awesome, during the climax, Kenji.
 * Hair-Raising Hare: After, Love Machine grows bunny ears. It doesn't make it any less scary. At all.
 * Heroic Bastard: Through the "heroic" part is a bit of a stretch until the climax of the film, Wabisuke is the illegitimate son of Natsuki's great-grandfather, but was adopted by Sakae anyway.
 * Heroic BSOD: Kazuma, after Kenji shakes him repeatedly, trying to snap him out of it, but he only does so after it's too late  Kenji himself has more than his share of near-BSOD moments throughout.
 * Still later, it's He stares blankly at the screen for a long moment -- and then, as he starts to.
 * Natsuki also enters one after.
 * Hikikomori: Kazuma, who is rarely seen out of his room for a portion of the film.
 * Holding Hands/Intertwined Fingers: There's a prominent scene where Kenji takes Natsuki's hand to comfort her after.
 * Hollywood Hacking: Better then one might expect, Love Machine functions much like a real hacker would:
 * Love Machine begins by crowdsourcing an encryption problem to break a password for high level admin privleges, making it effectively the legitimate owner of Oz. Stealing accounts which are evidently able to command computer resources allows Love Machine to act as a bot-net. Additionally most of Love Machine's mischief comes from abusing other legitimate access from accounts it has stolen. All of this is very much real to life in concept, and possible given Oz's bizarrely powerful yet insecure structure; 2056 characters are not a long enough master password for controlling such a network OS that for some reason can't be manually shut down and restored by the owners.
 * Cyber-physical combat as a distraction to lure a program/bot-net into some undescribed structural trap or betting accounts on a card game, purely this trope. And lots of Rule of Cool. Also, the last part where Love Machine,
 * I Know Mortal Kombat: Inverted. Kazuma's grandfather taught him Shaolin as a means of protecting himself from school bullies; it's commented that his real-world martial arts skills are likely the source of his prowess as King Kazma.
 * I Was Quite a Looker: Not explicitly stated, but we do have a good look at a photo of the young Granny Sakae during her (first) Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * Important Haircut: Kazuma gives his avatar, King Kazma, a blond version of his own haircut when he decides to get serious and challenge Love Machine to a rematch.
 * Jerkass: Wabisuke. But over the course of the film, it's revealed he wasn't so much of a jerk after all.
 * Likewise, Shouta. Who was a dick, but a dick with some integrity to him.
 * And of course Love Machine, the world's greatest internet troll.
 * The Jimmy Hart Version: 'Overture of the Summer Wars' is a heterogeneous piece of music that includes a just-barely-changed sample from Ralph Vaughan Williams's suite 'The Wasps'.
 * Kissing Cousins: Although it's pretty clear nothing actually happened, Natsuki is completely infatuated with her uncle Wabiske, basing Kenji's fake persona on him. Apparently in elementary school she wrote an essay about how they were going to get married one day. Also Shota is suspiciously protective of Natsuki.
 * Knight Templar Big Brother: Although he's only her second cousin, Shota is very opposed to Kenji's apparent relationship with Natsuki and loudly voices his disapproval right up to the end of the movie.
 * Or it could have been more than just familial protection...
 * Lady of War: Granny Sakae is certainly handy with a naginata.
 * Law of Conservation of Detail: Those who don't know all of the rules of Hanafuda shouldn't expect any substantial exmplanation, since the game is really convoluted.
 * Light Is Good: Natsuki's upgraded avatar.
 * Light Is Not Good: Love Machine's second avatar invokes this trope, with a Deva-like appearance and a golden halo (which he uses to store hijacked avatars) floating behind him.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: You'll have to rewatch that dinner scene (and have a chart handy) if you care to know the full extent of the (immediate) Jinnouichi family.
 * Look Behind You!: Kenji does this to Love Machine to rescue Kazuma's avatar.
 * Meaningful Name: The "Natsu" in Natsuki means "summer." Kind of doubles as a Title Drop.
 * Megaton Punch: Kazuma gets to do this to Love Machine after
 * He also does it earlier in the movie to a random opponent, a giant armored crab that he destroys by punching one of its claws so hard that all of its armor is blown off.
 * Mental Math Nosebleed
 * Mission Control / Voice with an Internet Connection: Sakuma. He co-ordinates the Jinnouichi counterattack on Love Machine from his dorm room.
 * Modesty Towel: Natsuki emerges from the bathroom like this to chase down one of her little cousins running out of the bathroom, only to be seen by Kenji. She quickly darts back in the bathroom while Kenji averts his eyes, insisting that he didn't see anything.
 * Kenji has one as well when going in for his own bath.
 * Mundane Made Awesome: The starts out pretty awesome already, but then  and it gets crazier from there, culminating in a meteor strike-esque (with an explosion of Cherry Blossoms upon impact).
 * Also, scribbling on notepaper and rapidly tapping keyboards have never been so epic.
 * Epic use of a rotary dial phone and an address book!
 * New Media Are Evil: Averted. See page quote.
 * Never Mess with Granny: Grandma Sakae is a tough old broad.
 * Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers and posters for FUNimation highlight the scenes in OZ, when in fact these only take up 20% of the radically down-to-Earth rest of the story.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
 * Twice family members inadvertently sabotage attempts to defeat Love Machine just as it was on the verge of defeat, first the kids piling in and distracting Kazuma, then Shota
 * Kenji initially thinks it's his fault that Love Machine was released because he cracked the code.
 * was the one who developed Love Machine and sold it to the military so his family would be wealthy once again.
 * Non-Standard Character Design: Virtually no OZ avatar is similar to another, with some having Thick Line Animation, overly stylized designs (both human and animal), or composed of pixels like Sakuma's.
 * Nosebleed: the standard variety happens in the ending as a result of both said mental strain and a kiss from Natsuki.
 * Official Couple: Natsuki and Kenji, duh.
 * One-Winged Angel: Love Machine does this as he assimilates more avatars.
 * Almost a literal example, as at one point he has actual wings. Admittedly he has two, but one is standing considerably higher than the other.
 * Oh Crap: Done by several characters throughout the movie, though most notably Kenji's look when he sees that not only has Love Machine stolen his avatar, it's also hijacked a bunch of others. Then his temporary avatar gets punched in the face. Kazuma gets another (reflected by King Kazma) when Love Machine goes One-Winged Angel on it and grabs him before throwing him into a wall.
 * It's also combined with a Heroic BSOD, as Kazuma is so shocked that no amount of shaking from Kenji can get him to react and move out of the way.
 * Overly Long Gag: Natsuki introducing her extended family, though this is Truth in Television for many Asians having dinner with extended family. At those times you are lucky if you get a rudimentary explanations at all before everyone settles down and eats.
 * Parental Abandonment: Kenji's parents' jobs leave them with no time for him; they're never even seen during the movie's whole duration. Staying with the Jinnouichi was really the first time he experienced what family's really like.
 * Peacock Girl: Natsuki's avatar gains a peacock tail and angelic wings when
 * Peek-a-Bangs: Kazuma, and later King Kazma.
 * Petting Zoo People: King Kazma.
 * Please Wake Up:
 * Plot Tailored to the Party: In a story that revolves around the theme of family, there's no surprise that the "war" the titles refers to is waged by pooling all the various family members' resources and skills. Who would have thought being good at card games, math problems, and fighting games would be so critical for survival?
 * Police Are Useless: Shouta himself is a cop, but is often too impetuous to be of any great use.
 * Post Cyber Punk
 * Precocious Crush: Wabisuke was Natsuki's "first love."
 * Product Placement: Surprisingly the English version didn't wipe these out. You got Dr. Pepper, iPhones, and Dell Computers to name a few.
 * Psychic Nosebleed: Kenji suffers one after being forced to crack the third encryption in a row
 * Rapid-Fire Typing: Used extensively -- Kazuma is especially good at it.
 * Rousing Speech:
 * Rule of Cool: There's no practical reason that BUT IT'S AWESOME.
 * Serious Business: Hanafuda, koi-koi version. Justified with the final match since people's lives are depending on it.
 * Serious Business: Hanafuda, koi-koi version. Justified with the final match since people's lives are depending on it.


 * Shout-Out:
 * Oz's virtual guardians are two whales called John and Yoko.
 * The first encrypted message begins with "The magic words are squeamish ossifrage", the text of a rather famous cryptography puzzle.
 * The storyline is quite similar to the 1983 film War Games: a young man takes up a challenge from a rogue AI, releases it upon a vast network of computers and almost brings about the destruction of the world..
 * The from One Piece movie #6 shows up and it's as awesome now as it was then.
 * King Kazma is a likely reference to Cave Story. King and Kazuma are two characters from the game. The anthromorphic rabbit design supports this.
 * The satellite photos and coordinates of the were real. For example they show the . Some of the coordinates have typos in them though.
 * The list of people other than Kenji that managed to solve the code
 * Love Machine's body language during its first fight with King Kazma is highly reminiscent of the Evangelions in Berserker mode.
 * The face of Love Machine's second form very strongly resembles that of Mazinger Z.
 * The visual style of OZ, especially the large centerpiece in the middle, is highly reminiscent of the works of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
 * Slasher Smile: Love Machine's only expression.
 * Smooch of Victory
 * Spanner in the Works: The "flood the castle" strategy might have worked had
 * Kazuma might've been able to beat Love Machine shortly after he took over Oz and totally avoid all the chaos he unleashed. But just as he had the program in a headlock, his cousins began to climb over him, allowing Love Machine to absorb some other avatars.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Definitely on the side of idealism.
 * The Stoic: Kazuma. When everyone else is rejoicing he barely even smiles when they manage to . Shown to be Not So Stoic a few scenes before
 * Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom: Love Machine isn't nearly as pleasant a program as its name would lead you to believe. Justified in that.
 * Surprisingly Good English: The English voiceover during the opening and Sakuma's chatroom (there are some spelling mistakes, but let's just say they're typos: it is a chatroom).
 * Time Bomb: Love Machine eventually sets a two-hour countdown on OZ's worldwide clock. When it hit zero, it was supposed to . Once Love Machine is thwarted, and the timer stops, it starts up again, this time
 * Totally Radical: Someone on Sakuma's chatroom says "holycow".
 * Too Dumb to Live: To some extent, nearly the entire family until it's explained just how high the stakes are in their situation. One particular example is Shota taking the computer's cooling ice blocks to
 * Justified in that the family is . While some members of the family are focusing on, most of them are simply . When that sort of thing happens to people, their instinct tends to be to turn their focus inward.
 * And the U.S. military deciding to test out Love Machine by releasing it into Oz, which is used by most world governments.
 * Tron Lines: Love Machine, second avatar onward.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Set in 2010. Wonder when that colossal virtual city full of corporate users is gonna get released?
 * Unlucky Everydude: Kenji.
 * The Virus: Justified -- Love Machine is explicitly a botnet, a program designed to be this trope. His evolution even mirrors the progress of a worm -- he starts off as an "evil" version of Kenji's avatar -- the initial infection -- but gradually gains more menacing forms as he assimilates more computing power.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy:  through and through.
 * Woman in White: Natsuki.
 * The Worm That Walks: Love Machine's second One-Winged Angel form, consisting of millions of avatars. Used like that, they certainly become "creepy things".
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Love Machine's plan to ...then it.
 * You Will Be Assimilated: See above.