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2011 Spring Cleaning Anime Challenge Review: Summer Wars BD
When timid eleventh-grader and math genius Kenji Koiso is asked by older student and secret crush Natsuki to come with her to her family’s Nagano home for a summer job, he agrees without hesitation. Natsuki’s family, the Jinnouchi clan, dates back to the Muromachi era, and they’ve all come together to celebrate the 90th birthday of the spunky matriarch of the family, Sakae. That’s when Kenji discovers his “summer job” is to pretend to be Natsuki’s fiancé and dance with her at the birthday celebration. As Kenji attempts to keep up with Natsuki’s act around her family, he receives a strange math problem on his cell phone which, being a math genius, he can’t resist solving. As it turns out, the solution to the mysterious equation causes a hijacking of the social networking site through which most of the world’s social and business traffic flows.
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Plot:
Summer Wars brings us a world that is similar to own, but more connected the internet than ever. The world of OZ is similar to the internet now, but what life would be like if Facebook, online shopping, IM, video games, and mobile apps where assimilated into one giant object that connects our lives like never before. Of course, Summer Wars is more than just a sci-fi film, there are some romantic comedy/drama aspects to the film as well. The rom-com aspects are nothing new and are not developed to the extent that they could have been. If Summer Wars was, just a rom-com film it would be nothing special and just a pretty looking movie with a generic plot. Of course it is much more than that and what makes Summer Wars a great film is that both aspects the rom-com and the sci-fi aspects get intertwined and bring out most of the potential that the film has.
Even with generic rom-com aspects of the movie, that is not the only flaw that the film has. Natsuki the main female lead just exists in the film. She is not developed as a character and most of the time she must rely on either Kenji or another member of the supporting cast for be emotional responses. The blame is two-fold for this, Mamoru Hosoda the director and Nanami Sakuraba (her Japanese VA that will be discussed later on in this review).
New York Anime Festival 2010 Announcement Roundup
This year’s New York Anime Festival marks the end of the convention season. With that, there were several exciting new announcements from the companies.
Aniplex announced the release dates for Durarara!! The series will be released in 3 parts. Part 1 will be released on 1/25/11, Part 2 is coming on 3/29/11, and Part 3 will street sometime in May 2011. Part 1 will include a clear slip case and 5 collectible postcards. Some new dub cast announcements were made: Mela Lee will take the role of Erika, Brian Beacock will be Walker, and Steve Blum will be Kyohei.
R.O.D. (Read Or Die) Blu-ray will be available on 1/18/11 and includes all 26 TV episodes and the 3 OVA episodes. The box set will mimic the R2 box art and feature a 48-page booklet… all for the insane price of $159.98. Yes, really.
Otakon 2010 Announcement Roundup
And that they did!
FUNimation and Bandai had some super exciting announcements this weekend at Otakon 2010. I’ll have a con report up within a week or so, but before that, let’s talk about the licenses!
FUNimation outdid themselves again (just when I thought it couldn’t get any better than what they announced at Anime Expo) by announcing Strike Witches 2, Ookami-san, Shukufuku no Campanella, Hetalia World Series, the Hetalia movie, Summer Wars, and Evangelion 2.22.
Obviously, I’m especially happy about the Strike Witches announcement. I’ve been watching the second season of everyone’s favorite pants-free mecha girl series on Crunchyroll, and it’s spectacular so far. FUNimation will be simulcasting it starting soon (Crunchyroll will continue to simulcast it as well).
Summer Wars is the next big hit movie by Mamoru Hosoda, the director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I was lucky enough to be able to see it at the New York International Children’s Film Festival earlier this year, and it is an outstanding movie. Look forward to this one and be sure to pick it up.
The second installment in the Rebuild of Evangelion series, Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance, was also picked up by FUNimation. I already imported the Blu-ray from Asia, with English subtitles. If you thought Evangelion 1.11 was great, this movie will completely blow it out of the water. And that’s saying a lot.
Otaku in Review Podcast – This is [not] 4kids
It was a slow anime news week this week, so Scott and I mostly talk about some random stuff in this episode. We do, however, get into the topic of speculating which show 4kids has recently licensed. Also, I discuss my experience with Summer Wars, which I was lucky enough to be able to see at NYICFF.
