Summer Wars

is a 2009 Japanese animated science fiction film directed by Mamoru Hosoda, produced by Madhouse, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film's voice cast includes Ryunosuke Kamiki, Nanami Sakuraba, Mitsuki Tanimura, Sumiko Fuji and Ayumu Saitō. The film tells the story of Kenji Koiso, a timid eleventh-grade math genius who is taken to Ueda by twelfth-grade student, Natsuki Shinohara to celebrate her great-grandmother's 90th birthday. However, he is falsely implicated in the hacking of a virtual world by a self-aware, sadistic artificial intelligence named Love Machine. Kenji must repair the damage done, and find a way to stop the rogue computer program from causing any further chaos.

After producing '' The Girl Who Leapt Through Time'', Madhouse was asked to produce something new. Hosoda and writer Satoko Okudera created a story about a social network and a stranger's connection with strange family. The real-life city of Ueda was chosen as the setting for ''Summer Wars'' as part of the territory was once governed by the Sanada clan and was close to Hosoda's birthplace in Toyama. Hosoda used the clan as the basis for the Jinnouchi family after visiting his then-fiancée's home in Ueda.

Production of ''Summer Wars'' commenced in 2006. Art director Youji Takeshige incorporated Japanese houses into his background designs. Hosoda also insisted that 80 family members were to be included as main characters. The project was first announced at the 2008 Tokyo International Anime Fair and the first trailer of the film was released in April 2009. Audience interest was fueled primarily through word of mouth and Internet publicity. A manga adaptation of the film was written by Iqura Sugimoto and began its serialization in July 2009.

''Summer Wars'' premiered in Japan on August 1, 2009. It grossed over US$1 million in its opening weekend in 127 theaters and ranked No. 7 at the box office. The film was well-received by critics and the general audience and was financially successful, earning $18 million worldwide. It won several awards such as the 2010 Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival's Animation Division Grand Prize, the Anaheim International Film Festival's Audience Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for the 2009 Golden Leopard award at the Locarno International Film Festival.

Plot

Kenji Koiso is a young student at Kuonji High School with a gift for mathematics and a part-time moderator in the massive computer-simulated virtual reality world OZ along with his friend Takashi Sakuma.

One day, Kenji is invited by fellow Kuonji student Natsuki Shinohara to participate in her great-grandmother Sakae Jinnouchi's 90th birthday. After traveling to Sakae's estate in Ueda, Natsuki introduces Kenji as her fiancé to Sakae, surprising them both. Kenji meets several of Natsuki's relatives and discovers that the Jinnouchis are descendants of a samurai (vassal of the Takeda clan) who challenged the Tokugawa clan in 1615. He also meets Wabisuke Jinnouchi, Natsuki's half-great-uncle and a computer expert who has been living in the United States since stealing the family fortune 10 years ago.

Kenji receives an e-mail with a mathematical code and cracks it. However his actions inadvertently cause OZ's Love Machine to use Kenji's avatar and hack the infrastructure with the encryption Kenji had inadvertently cracked, causing widespread damage. Kenji, Sakuma, and Natsuki's cousin Kazuma Ikezawa confront Love Machine. Love Machine defeats Kazuma's avatar King Kazma and continues to absorb accounts in the OZ mainframe, which due to many accounts being connected to devices for public infrastructure allows Love Machine to cause catastrophic traffic congestion and the disabling of electrical devices. Two of Sakae's relatives, Rika and Shota Jinnouchi, discover Kenji's involvement. Shota arrests Kenji, but the congestion causes Natsuki to return them to the estate.

Sakae calls associates in important positions in Japanese society and relatives who work in emergency services, encouraging them to work their hardest to reduce chaos and damage, comparing the situation to war. Kenji is able to return control of the mainframe to the moderators and engineers while Sakuma discovers that Kenji actually misspelled one part of the code. Wabisuke reveals that he invented the program and sold it to the United States Armed Forces for a test run and expanding it into a virtual intelligence. Sakae later encourages Kenji to take care of Natsuki during a Koi-Koi match.

The next morning, Sakae is discovered dead by Kenji and the Jinnouchis. Her youngest son Mansaku explains that she had angina, and that Love Machine had deactivated her heart monitor. Kenji, Sakuma, and most of the Jinnouchis form a plan to defeat Love Machine with a supercomputer using ice blocks as a coolant, while Natsuki and the others prepare a funeral for Sakae.

Kenji, along with Sakuma and the others, capture Love Machine, but Shota carries the ice blocks to Sakae's body, overheating the supercomputer. Love Machine absorbs King Kazma and redirects the ''Arawashi'' Asteroid Probe onto a collision course with a nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, Natsuki discovers a will left by Sakae and reunites with Kenji and the rest of the group. Natsuki has Wabisuke return home before the family reads Sakae's will, asking them to bring Wabisuke back to their lives. Realizing that Love Machine sees everything as a game, Kenji has the Jinnouchis confront Love Machine to play Koi-Koi in OZ's casino world, wagering their accounts. Natsuki wins several rounds, but gets distracted and nearly loses her "winnings".

However, OZ users worldwide enter their own accounts into the wager on Natsuki's side, prompting the guardian programs of OZ—the blue and red whales known as John and Yoko—to upgrade Natsuki's account. Natsuki wagers the 150 million avatars given to her in a single hand and critically injures Love Machine, prompting it to redirect the ''Arawashi'' towards Sakae's estate. Kenji repeatedly tries breaking into the probe's GPS, while Wabisuke disables Love Machine's defenses. After being revived and assisted by several of the Jinnouchi family's avatars, King Kazma destroys Love Machine. Kenji infiltrates the GPS to redirect the ''Arawashi'' away from the estate, destroying the estate's entrance and causing a geyser to erupt. In the aftermath, the Jinnouchi family, celebrating their victory as well as Sakae's birthday, has Natsuki kiss Kenji after they confess their love to each other.

Voice cast

Production

Development

After the critical and commercial success of ''The Girl Who Leapt Through Time'', Madhouse was offered to produce another film. Whereas Madhouse based the previous film on a novel, the studio was given the chance to create the next film. Director Mamoru Hosoda selected a story for both people with family and those without having a family. Production of ''Summer Wars'' commenced in 2006.

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