Summer Wars

I watched Summer Wars the weekend before I left, trying to absorb as much Japanese as I could before moving away. Not that watching anime actually helps with the language, but I’d convinced myself it did. I wanted to hear those words again—Kawaii, Sugoi, Oishii—before they stopped making sense.

It’s about this awkward kid and the most beautiful girl in school, and through a series of events that barely need explaining, they end up in the internet—this sprawling virtual world that looks like Facebook crossed with a video game—where they’re trying to stop a computer virus from destroying power plants and the whole grid. Her family is enormous and insane. There’s an actual pervert uncle. A grandmother who’s cooler than anyone. So much food. Baseball. Math. Everything crashes together.

It’s not Miyazaki. Mamoru Hosoda made it at Madhouse, which means if you’ve seen The Girl Who Leapt Through Time or Tokyo Godfathers, you recognize his touch—that particular mix of mundane and impossible, intimacy and spectacle. A story about a family and a computer virus somehow feels like it matters.

I’d grown up on this stuff. Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Evangelion. I knew the language of anime, the way it moves, what it’s saying beneath the surface. Summer Wars doesn’t break new ground, but it executes so cleanly that it doesn’t need to. The action is fluid. The design sharp. The kids believable assholes. The family real. By the end I was close to crying.

Maybe it hit different because I was leaving. Maybe I was just ready for something that good. Either way, it stuck with me.