Summer Wars @ The Ritz at the Bourse
Summer Wars is the new Studio Madhouse Anime film directed by Mamoru Hosoda, who you might remember from his first film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I absolutely loved The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and this looks to be another solid effort by the director in a film billed as a “Science Fiction Romantic Comedy”.
The plot of the film reads almost like a mash up of Hackers and The Wedding Date goes something like this:
Kenji Koiso is a young high school student with a gift in mathematics, working as a part-time moderator in the massive computer-simulated virtual reality world OZ along with his friend Takashi Sakuma. When Kenji’s friend Natsuki Shinohara offers him to participate in celebrating the 90th birthday of her great-grandmother, Sakae Jinnouchi, Natsuki takes him to Sakae’s estate in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture. Much to Kenji’s surprise, he is introduced at the Jinnouchi family house as Natsuki’s fiancé.
While Kenji is stuck in a Japanese Rom-Com Love Machine, an artificial intelligence running in the OZ mainframe, uses Kenji’s account and avatar to hack into the mainframe, causing Kenji to become the primary suspect. Kenji, along with Natsuki’s cousin Kazuma Ikezawa and Sakuma, tries to stop Love Machine who continues to steal accounts, and hack into car navigation systems and other computer mainframes wreaking havoc throughout the world.
Starting January 21st through the 27th the film, which is under consideration for a Best Animated Feature nomination for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, will be playing at our very own Ritz Bourse. I suggest you check it out. I know opportunities to see Anime on the big screen are pretty few and far between, so I am definitely looking forward to this.
