Summer Wars

It is three years since The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, a very well received work, made its long run, and instantly turned the spotlight on the director, HOSODA Mamoru. This work is the latest that the director has presented to the public. Former staff members came together again to collaborate with the director and make an action-entertainment film featuring a big family. The film became a mega-hit, attracting more than a million viewers.

This is a really ambitious work. Generally, the elements a creator wants to include often become worn away in the process of production. As a result of the conflict between ideal and reality, the most desired elements disappear and, if some are fortunate enough to remain, they have to undergo a transformation. The only tactic to cope with this reality is to increase the number of desired elements. The main visual of this work is decorated with an excess of varied and colorful elements. But the interaction of these elements has been carefully planned, and they all prove to be both necessary and worthwhile. No single element is superfluous. What will ultimately be appreciated by viewers is the ingenious avoidance of complexity of recognition by presenting the contrastive structure of a big family living in a provincial city and the Internet society. The creator has exploited a technique to control a large amount of information and shared it with viewers while the production team supported and guided the creator’s approach to the work’s completion. The combination has resulted in a work that can be safely said to be among the front-runners in of all genres this year.