... proclaiming the importance of helping one’s community before helping themselves because the act of protecting the community makes one stronger whereas focusing on self makes one weaker and more vulnerable.

| Mar 30, 2025

Where it is far from perfect, Summer Wars feels perfectly in place in Mamoru Hosoda's filmography.

| Original Score: B- | Aug 28, 2022

I cannot recommend this movie enough.

| Jan 15, 2020

It can get a little convoluted but overall it's just so creative.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 12, 2019

Excellent, gorgeous anime has some violence, profanity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 24, 2016

A charming allegory for man - or woman - against machine, Summer Wars is an eye-popping symphony of colour and imagination that leaps from the screen to blow the viewer's mind.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

Far from resorting to easy, reactionary technophobia, Hosoda shows Japan's age-old traditions being upheld throughout different generations, with the beautifully realised digital community of OZ proving as much the solution as the problem.

Full Review | Mar 28, 2011

Where Hosoda shines is in the Oz-world visuals. The various confrontations with Love Machine in cyberspace are completely engaging - metaphorical visual representations of virtual conflicts in the manner of Tron: Legacy and Inception.

| Jan 27, 2011

The filmmakers can't keep the strands of their clumsy plot straight, but they create brilliant images and manipulate them with blithe abandon.

| Jan 20, 2011

An enjoyably trippy Japanese animated feature from director Mamoru Hosoda, Summer Wars combines real-world drama (school crushes, testy relatives) with virtual-world dramatics.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 20, 2011

The story's been done better (and balder) in Die Hard With A Vengeance

| Original Score: c | Jan 16, 2011

The relationship between Kenji and Natsuki unfolds as blandly as a Debra Messing rom-com.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 14, 2011

It's a sugar rush of candy-colored images, a beautifully drawn tale of family tradition and a bracing brain tonic about the Internet's charms and vulnerabilities.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 7, 2011

Summer Wars is every bit as good as anime fans have been hoping it would be.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 7, 2011

candy-colored anime

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 6, 2011

A sophisticated yet poignant family entertainment with an appeal beyond Japanese animation buffs.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 6, 2011

Fanciful and beautifully drawn but leaning a bit too much on clichs and coincidences...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 6, 2011

It's no coincidence that the Second Life-style virtual universe thrown into turmoil in Summer Wars goes by the name of Oz. This spectacular anime entry from Mamoru Hosoda echoes that 1939 classic.

| Jan 6, 2011

Running almost two hours, its increasingly convoluted narrative may be too difficult to follow for younger viewers. But its thematic ambition and dazzling visual style ultimately make it one of the more rewarding anime efforts to reach these shores.

| Jan 6, 2011