Summer Wars

I am honored to participate in The Home Sweet Home Blogathon, brought to you by Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Rebecca at TakingUpRoom. Thank you for the invitation and a chance to discuss one of my favorite animes, Summer Wars (2009).

Summer Wars begins in Oz. Not the L. Frank Baum Oz, but the worldwide virtual world of Oz. It is the online community where hundreds of millions have accounts. 

We see Kenji and Takashi in their high school dorm room, which is loaded with computer hardware. The two have part time jobs working in Oz. It is a low-level position, but the two seem more than able to do their work. Enter Natsuki ("the hottest girl in school" Takashi will later say). She needs someone for a job. Having little info, Kenji volunteers. The two travel to Natsuki's Great Grandmother Sakae's house for a family reunion centered around her 90th birthday. Here Kenji finds out his purpose: He is posing as Natsuki's boyfriend and fiance! The string of lies paints the boy as a college student who was studying in America. And the family eats it up!

Kenji meets Kazuma, a young boy who spends much of his time in front of a computer screen. Watching him, he finds that Kazuma's avatar is none other than King Kazma, the greatest fighter in Oz. 

Things go well until the middle of the first night. Kenji is awakened by a text message containing lists of numbers. Kenji looks over the code and is able to quickly decipher it and send the solution back to the origin. In the morning, all hell breaks loose.

It is found that the text allowed someone or something to gain access to the inner workings of Oz, causing disruptions in many of the everyday uses of the network. Worse yet, Kenji is named as the person behind the attack! His face is plastered on the news. All the family members see it. All the lies crash down around Kenji and Natsuki. Kenji is even carted away by the local police, but returns when the traffic is so messed up that no one can get anywhere. 

Great Grandmother Sakae immediately springs into action, spending much of the day on the telephone, bolstering her family away from the party and others she knows into action to help get things back to normal. She is very well connected. 

The family is surprised by the appearance of Wabisuki, the "black sheep" of the family, who no one has seen in ten years. He also happens to be Natsuki's favorite uncle. As the crisis ebbs a bit, he admits that he developed the Artificial Intelligence, named "Love Machine", that is causing the havoc. Although he did not set it into motion, he did sell it to a foreign government (the United States), who decided to do an experiment to see what it could do. After a confrontation with Sakae, he leaves, angry.

Sakae's efforts have not gone unnoticed. Love Machine has found out about it. In the morning, Sakae has passed away. The doctor found that his online monitor of her conditions had been shut down. The family grieves. Natsuki gets her uncle to return. While the women of the family prepare for the funeral, the men use their connections to bring a supercomputer, a power-generating boat and a satellite uplink station to the house to combat the AI. 

This almost works. The group sets a trap and King Kazma is used as the bait. However, the computer overheats, and Kazuma's Avatar is taken by Love Machine, who has stolen more that 400 million accounts. After this, a countdown appears on the screen. In about two hours, the Arawashi Probe will come crashing to Earth, into a nuclear facility, causing death and destruction. 

Per Sakae's final request, the family and Kenji have dinner together. Kenji has an idea of how to destroy Love Machine. As the AI is playing a game all the time, he feels that playing for the accounts held by Love Machine is the way to defeat it. The card game Hanafuda is the family game and Natsuki is the best player. 

Everything is set. The challenge is put forth. The game begins, with nuclear disaster in the balance. 

Mamuro Hosoda

The writer/director of the film is Mamuro Hosoda. Hosoda-san is an amazing storyteller. How fitting that he should be spotlighted for this Blogathon, as most of his films deal with families. Not only Summer Wars (2009), but Wolf Children (2012), The Boy and the Beast (2015) and Mirai (2018), all highlight varying types of family, whether they can transform into wolves, have an orphan human being raised by a bearlike adult or a time traveling sister helping her brother to grow. 

I believe that Hosoda's philosophy can be summed up in some the beautiful words left behind by Great Grandmother Sakae:

"Remember, never let go of fellow family members. Never let life get the best of you. And always eat together as a family, even during difficult times because being hungry and being all alone are the worst things that can happen to anyone."

And we see this through family meals, filled with arguments and laughs. Kenji tells Sakae how grateful he is being included in the celebration. His parents are both busy people and he spends a good deal of his family time by himself. He doesn't have their type of family. He'd obviously like to have that.

One of the most striking scenes is the slow pan of the characters set against a blue sky, each mourning the loss of Sakae. It culminates with a focus of Kenji fumbling to hold hands with Natsuki, giving her comfort. It reminds me of Frank Capra's focus on Jimmy Stewart's hat and his feelings showing through his handling of it in "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington."

Hanafuda

Somehow, I am drawn to films with cards in them. This is no exception. Here is a thumbnail of the game of Hanafuda.

According to Wikipedia, playing cards were introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century. Between then and the late 19th century, they were banned a couple of times, for being a Western influence and for promoting gambling, mostly, until 1889 when a company called Nintendo began production of the cards nationally. (The entry says little of how this affected this Nintendo company, or whatever became of it. It's a mystery.)

The cards are made up of twelve suits, one for each month, four cards per suit. The game play involves eight cards placed, face up in the middle. Each player attempts to match cards in their hand to the card face up. Points are awarded for matches with some cards being of higher value than others. When one has reached a winning total, the player can call 'Koi! Koi!', allowing the game to continue for an even high point total. 

At least, this is how I read the rules. 

Thank you for looking in on my entry to the Home Sweet Home Blogathon. Please take the time to explore Gill and Rebecca's sites and visit as many of the wonderful writers and their entries to the Blogathon. You won't be disappointed.

Koi! Koi!