This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Summer Wars features LM, the most boring villain in anime thus far. Granted, its backstory is amazing, but, without spoiling anything, it is rendered dull by the fact that it does not have any true motivation behind its atrocities. If you have watched the film, you may understand why it doesn't have any motivation, but what good is a bad guy who's bad for the sake of being bad? And the moment the movie goes into detail as to how its characters fight LM, the movie loses its damn way. Here, the action of countering LM is represented visually, but that also means that the action on screen is all a loose interpretation of what the computer aficionados at home are actually doing. They dedicate so much time and effort into forcing viewers to watch Oz-related action sequences that it drags me away from what made me love the film initially - the awesome characters. I don't know if just 'general hacking' and 'better computers' are really what are needed to best an AI opponent in a fighting game, but yeah...as I said,

Summer Wars is one of the most ambitious animes to exist, ambitious doesn't always equal greatness on film as a result of being over-ambitious but Summer Wars is one of those that gets it right. Some characters are better developed than others, the main family members are very compellingly real but some of the side characters are sketchily written. If the film had less characters than it did the character development would have been even better.The animation is just wonderful though and stylistically unlike any other I've seen, the colours are eye-popping and the backgrounds are so richly detailed and textured. None of it felt confusing to me. The cyber-battles are particularly strong in this regard, the action itself is thrilling and the visuals positively dazzle. Summer Wars has a music score that is both rousing and ethereal, and luckily mood-wise when matched with the animation and the tone of the storytelling it never jars. There is also a thoughtful script that handles its emotional themes very touchingly and remarkably maturely, while the story covers a lot but despite exploring several themes it doesn't feel too much. The family themes are ones that really resonate and charm, and while the message is not the most original it's a truthful message that doesn't patronise. The lead characters are engaging and the voice acting, both in Japanese and dubbing, is dynamic and expressive.All in all, a beautifully executed anime and shouldn't disappoint anybody who likes Wolf Children and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. It's ambitious but apart from the writing of some of the characters it doesn't feel too much so. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This was a good film about family. To see great examples of closeness, love, caring for one another in the face of a global threat makes this movie one of my better picks. A mixture of good FX, story of boundless ties to brother, and sister, mother to daughter, father to son. Girl friends, and boyfriends. It has it all with excellent music, a great story line about adversity in the face of a global threat. Plus the fact that seeing this family come together like in the ancient past of Japan families makes it all the more desirable.Emotions were there, despair, happiness, sadness, plus everything the human condition is now missing since the technological age has taken over in place of old world traditions. Summer wars has shown us, that in this day and age, even though some of the tech aspect was used to help the Ikezawa fight the good fight... it was all passion, which was bred into every member of the family that traced back over thirteen hundred years.This move wasn't about effects, it was about what was worth fighting for. What it meant to have a family, laughs, cries, shouts, arguments, everything we know of, and can relate to in such perilous times. Calling a movie bad because of its lack of mechanical devices or other forms of recognizable ingredients to other films is just rude. Nobody ever said this was going to win an Oscar, but as for the amiable accompaniment with the treasures of humanism, it gave me a lift from my downed spirits. Digimon is just for kids, nothing more. At least this was something the whole family could enjoy together.Besides, not everything in orbit is 100% foolproof. Even a fool can make a dangerous program, and with the pentagon, you could can bet that sometime in the future, some nobody will make sure to write one to alter our planet in one bad way or the other. We just have to come together in some way to stop them. It's as simple as that.

This is not a traditional Japanese anime. In the beginning, you hear both Japanese and English audio at the same time and may think there's something wrong with the movie. This goes away after a few minutes.Half the story happens inside a computer network called Oz, where computer programs come to live and take on the appearance of a human/monster. For me, this is a big turn-off because I know computers don't work this way. Either the script is written by people who don't know much about computers, or the anime is meant to be viewed by people who don't know much about computers.This is the main reason for the low rating. If you swallow this visualization of a computer, then you may like this anime more.Why is it in animes, the main boy character always shows a lack of self confidence in front of a girl, but gets the girl nevertheless?