Forum - View topicREVIEW: Summer Wars
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Teriyaki Terrier
 Posts: 5689 |
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Why some people do that is beyond me, but Justin is a brillant person. He deserves more respect than that, so I am glad there hasn't been too much negativty so far. As for the movie, Summer Wars does look quite interesting and is trying to get a message across. Most reliveing is that movie doesn't look like it contains any moe or over the top characters. If this is licensed, hopefully this is given a English audio track. The movie looks excellent, so if this is licensed, I do hope a English audio track is included as well. Great review Justin, I really enjoyed reading the article. |
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xnao
 Posts: 1 Location: Tokyo |
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The computer is a SX-9 from NEC. It was stocked for some public facility by Tasuke Jinnouchi who keeps an electronics store. According to an inteview with writers from Shuukan (weekly) ASCII, Mamoru Hosoda states that a supercomputer in a traditional samurai house would be a great spectacle. Actually, I found the sequence with it so impressive. |
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lhernan02
Posts: 196 |
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Well, I did not want to nit-pick so I did not bring up the squid-boat and computer issues since Justin's review was dead on as far as I am concerned. Summer Wars reminded me both of RoujinZ and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time as far as easy going true blue entertainment.
But since others already started on the nit-pick front. I loved the level of detail: a cooling system for a computer, come on, how many anime would bother. While we can argue if it would have been enough (I think to operate for 2-4 hours it would have been OK but terminal burn out after that), the fact that they paid attention to such details (and this is just one instance, the Humvee relay vehicle was dead on also) adds to the enjoyment. They could have just phoned it in and left it as "future technology just works this way" but they actually bothered to make it believeable. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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That Digimon movie you're talking about...that's the one where they had to fight Diaboromon and it's always digivolving before our heroes can, right? I always found something to be very entertaining about that, though I'm sure it would've lost anyone who wasn't into Digimon when they saw it. After all, the Tomatometer for The Digimon Movie is somewhere in the 20s. It's interesting to get a lot of love here, as, along with the opinions of my classmates in school when I did see it, I had the impression that it was a very much hated movie. Didn't Roger Ebert give it a thumbs up though?
I'll also bet Summer Wars won't be getting as good a reception as this review. Aside from the normal negative stigma any movies-in-general reviewer will most likely have, it'd be an incredibly hard sell if the movie slips out the fact that it stars a math geek as its protagonist who actually employs his math skills and that the story largely revolves around the Internet. The only movies I can think of whose marketing shows off that it's about the Internet are those horror films like White Noise where going online is some sort of dangerous activity. (I don't mean an online villain like in this movie, but the mere ACT of going online is threatening.) Well, we did have War Games back in the 80s, though nobody ever talks about that movie anymore. When I see the Internet used for benevolent ends, it's used for a little while to obtain some information, and then our heroes go dashing off once again. While I do see the Internet becoming increasingly prevalent year by year, I think the English-speaking world (except for some parts of Europe) are still very much a technophobic people. This is only from my experiences though. But I still predict that talking about this movie to people on the street, even if they're movie fans, even if they're animation fans, would say, "Why would I watch a movie about nerds doing nerdy things?" |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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Or, in my case, can't legally buy the DVD yet. I don't know how long it's going to take but I'll be waiting for the DVD over here...
Hah! Yeah... But that also means we still get to have the pleasure of watching it for the first time, while you don't anymore! 
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Shadowrun20XX
 Posts: 1935 Location: Vegas |
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I enjoyed Summer Wars. This movie would have really fit in with the old hand drawn animation. So is this what happens every time Kenji steps away from his computer during the summer ? He could have just said, "nah, I'm busy" and had a shitty summer like the rest of us.
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DavidShallcross
 Posts: 1008 |
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I'm hoping for at least a limited theatrical release.
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ConanSan
Posts: 1818 |
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So in a way, yes, Hosuda was an accessory to a bad movie, but it's all Saban's fault. |
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jgreen
 Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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Okay, reading this thread has somehow managed to make me interested in seeing Hosoda's Digimon movie. Is it available in English by itself, rather than being shoehorned into this compilation?
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braves
 Posts: 2309 Location: Puerto Rico (but living in Texas) |
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AFAIK, no. There isn't an English version for the Digimon Adventure movie or for Bokura no War Game by themselves- only the versions that are on Digimon: The Movie. |
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Miranox
 Posts: 247 Location: Montreal, Canada |
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I saw Summer Wars before reading the review and I'm not impressed. It was entertaining, but when you make statements like "overflowing with sharp social insight in a way we have not seen from anime in years" or "best anime to come along since Cowboy Bebop" then you're just asking for it.
The granny has a lot of friends and a tough attitude. Her family is composed of irresponsible adults, annoying kids, hysterical housewives and a few normal people. So far so good. They drop their issues and work together to defeat the big, bad computer program. How is any of this original? Each character has been used before. The story copies elements from other anime or movies. Using borrowed ideas and plot devices in a different setting is not creative. There is hardly a speck of originality in this movie. I agree with the statement "summer movies are loud, adventurous, unchallenging: a film that can be enjoyed, hypothetically, by anybody". Summer Wars is exactly that: amusing, adventurous and loud but it does not stand out from the rest in any way. It certainly can't be called intelligent or perfect. It appeals to a wide range of viewers and it makes a lot of money. That's all. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I see, so it seems the English-language adaptation of that Digimon movie changed a lot of stuff. I still really love this exchange though:
TAI: Are Matt and TK there? GRANDMA: Why, they're right next to me. TAI: I'd like to talk to them! GRANDMA: I like to talk to them too! Though what I remembered kept me watching it over and over (and enough to get the VHS, which still sits highly visible on a shelf in my room) is the frenetic energy it had, the likes of which I had rarely ever seen before. In later years, what I was impressed with was that it could make convincing 3-dimensional characters (physically speaking) without the need for shading, as well as the very simple line work. Also, what movies are there that have done absolutely nothing that some other movie has done before? I don't think there are any made past the 1920s that became popular. In this case, the family gets together and stops a villain, which was the example stated. The alternative is that the family can't get along and will disagree all the way up to and perhaps past the climactic moment. This has already been done too, notably in spoiler[Shadow of a Doubt], spoiler[Pleasantville], The Simpsons episode spoiler["A Milhouse Divided"], and while not the protagonist's family, definitely in spoiler[Chinatown]. |
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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I was thinking the same thing. Again the mention of 'Roujin-Z' as well. I really hope that series finally makes it stateside.  
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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Mind you, I actually enjoy and even love a few of those series, but your complaints here are at odds with the praise you give elsewhere. You seem to not realize that practically all characters in fiction exist as either archetypes or stereotypes, and you also seem to mistakenly mold the two together here.
Awesome example. |
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Miranox
Posts: 247 Location: Montreal, Canada |
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All series I rated 8/10 or higher have at least some creativity in them. I'm not talking only about characters, although I could name a few unique characters from other anime. Summer Wars has a predictable story, cheesy ending and a couple of short, generic action scenes. It's a typical, uninspired, high-budget movie.
Oh yeah, archetype and stereotype can be used to mean the same thing. A stereotype is basically a simple archetype that has been used too many times. |
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