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Summary When teenage math prodigy Kenji solves a 2,056 digit math riddle sent to his cell phone, he unwittingly breaches the security barricade protecting Oz, a globe-spanning virtual world where millions of people and governments interact through their avatars, handling everything from online shopping and traffic control, to nuclear launch code...
Directed By: Mamoru Hosoda
Written By: Mamoru Hosoda, Satoko Okudera, Patrick Seitz
Summer Wars
63
7.0
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Summary When teenage math prodigy Kenji solves a 2,056 digit math riddle sent to his cell phone, he unwittingly breaches the security barricade protecting Oz, a globe-spanning virtual world where millions of people and governments interact through their avatars, handling everything from online shopping and traffic control, to nuclear launch code...
Directed By: Mamoru Hosoda
Written By: Mamoru Hosoda, Satoko Okudera, Patrick Seitz
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 12 Critic Reviews
63
75% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
25% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 12 Critic Reviews
63
75% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
25% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Jan 6, 2011
Hosoda, who directed the cult film "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," has made a sophisticated yet poignant family entertainment with an appeal beyond Japanese animation buffs.
Dec 30, 2010
Summer Wars surprisingly celebrates togetherness and bravery as much as binary-mathematics expertise, all helped along by a kick-ass synthesis of traditional hand-drawn scenes and fluid, rainbow-explosive CG artistry.
User Score
Generally Favorable Based on 83 User Ratings
7.0
71% Positive
59 Ratings
59 Ratings
12% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
17% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable Based on 83 User Ratings
7.0
71% Positive
59 Ratings
59 Ratings
12% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
17% Negative
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
Oct 26, 2014
a brilliant film that reminds me how great animation can be and delivers great charters and a story that is both heartfelt ,engaging and at times even tense it's why it's my favourite film and i can watch it any time
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Apr 14, 2013
This is 1 of the best movies ever.Seeing Japan nearly 99.9% technology it has an aura to PC gamers.u fight in a computer based reality for the sake of humanity in japan.
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Jan 21, 2011
Summer Wars has engineered a truce between the familiar and the fantastical.
Dec 30, 2010
It's the kind of fun and quirky film that you don't see very often in art houses this time of year.
Jan 13, 2011
Considering it's anime, Summer Wars starts out more like a bad romantic comedy.
By Stephanie Merry FULL REVIEW
Dec 30, 2010
It's hard to appreciate things like the character detail amid the insufferably squealy voicing and arbitrary suspense.
May 4, 2025
I grew up loving the Digimon movie as a kid. Call it nostalgia or just a general love of everything digimon. When I was told by my friend that there was a movie that was basically Our War Game by the same director but more complete, cohesive and "way better" I was excited. After watching Summer Wars I find myself underwhelmed and I'm a little sad about that. The movie visually is great especially during the parts that take place online. The visual style is unique and it's amazing to see the creativity that went into the character design. The fight scenes look cool, but it feels like it lacks weight. You never know the desiciveness of a blow because there isn't really a measure between stron and week, which just means 2 thing hitting each other looks cool but you can't really tell how important those hits are. The movie's biggest let down for me is the story. It starts off very contrived and it just expects you to go along with it even though actions and decisions of characters really don't make sense. Character motivations change frequently and often for no reason. The story also moves really slowly because it has so many side characters and stories it tries to juggle, which do all build to something, but it dosent really feel worth all the extra time. The movie isn't all bad though, its large family of characters feel real (almost too real at points). Having a large extended family myself I saw a lot of things that were way to relatable which is a shame, because if given a better story it could feel amazing and connected to me on a much deeper level. Overall Summer Wars isn't a bad movie, it's just not a movie I enjoyed. The visual stile was amazing and the family was relatable, but it's all bogged down with a slow story that feels contrived at points. I can't really recommend it highly, but it might be worth your time if you want to see a Digimon movie without the Digimon.
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Mar 21, 2025
Kenji, a lowly high school math nerd, swallows his heart when he’s offered a summer job by a beautiful classmate. It doesn’t pay well, but... would you mind accompanying me to a reunion on my vast ancestral estate? The unspoken catch is that he’ll also be expected to play fiancé for her huge, overbearing extended family. That deception doesn’t last very long, but the big, noisy household doesn’t have much time to grouch over it. While they’ve been sharing meals, spending quality time and sussing out imposters, greater society has seen its strings snipped by a malevolent, self-sufficient artificial intelligence. And Kenji might be tangentially involved. Summer Wars splits its time evenly across those two fronts: the digital world, where a handful of teens try to thwart global chaos by challenging a bot to mini-games, and the physical one, where the stakes are more emotional. The story kicks and weaves, trying its best to buck convention by trimming plot points and suddenly changing direction, but it’s still overly convenient and predictable. The online world of OZ, an all-encompassing social media strawman that houses the online action, is rudimentary and unrealistic. Its influence is broad enough that a service outage has major planetary repercussions, but three key players in its existential crisis all happen to be in the same house when the **** really hits the fan. One of those, a renowned cyber-fighter, freely transitions from zen-like kempo training on the lawn to frantic keyboard smashing in the den. I don’t see how either translates to success in fighting games. That kind of hand wavy e-fantasy abounds in the OZ scenes; impractical nonsense that’s borderline insulting to anyone who’s ever visited a VR chat (which is, basically, all this place amounts to). Feels like it was written by someone who doesn’t fully understand the boundaries of technology, which is odd because director Mamoru Hosoda actually got his start working on Digimon movies. I was hoping for more from Hosoda, whose efforts I enjoyed in 2015’s The Boy and the Beast, and from Madhouse, who handles the production duties. This is an unusually restrained effort from the famed visual team, especially for those scenes set in the electronic realm. The no-limits environment of OZ gives them ample opportunity to cut loose and really go for broke, but the results are only marginally better than a Wii avatar. They go streamlined and gestural for the analog scenes, and while those fare much better, they also fall short of the studio’s usual high standard. Call it a disappointing work, through and through.
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Apr 30, 2020
Une mièvrerie débile à souhait (pour ceux qui le souhaitent) et à volonté (pour ceux qui en veulent et en redemandent ... de la débilité à la nipponne !) mélangée à des réseaux sociaux ou plutôt un gigantesque réseau social qui pique une grosse colère (et de gros bugs) !... en somme, un gros tas de japoniaiserie très concentrée qui se la joue "branchouille" (ou branchecouilles comme on dit dans ma campagne) à donf ! Et qui nous fait chier à fond les ballons avec ses pathétiques conneries de pseudo-scénario qui n'avance pas, de caricatures ambulantes et autres clichés qui errent, ressassés à l'envi dans ce déambulatoire où tout, absolument tout se marche sur les pieds et dans la prétention (un sacré paquet de prétention à peigne-culs branchecouilles donneurs de leçons, ça déborde de partout !). Quand on est pas coincé dans la caritcature, on est encerclé ici par des têtes à claques et autres tronches de cake qui racontent n'imp' et qui auraient bien besoin d'une bonne distribution de coups de pied au cul... et d'ailleurs le scénario (qui a clairement abusé du saké) en aurait bien besoin, lui aussi, lui qui s'étire sur presque deux plombes inutiles, navrantes et consternantes, emballées dans un mauvais goût permanent et une technique à la rue !
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Production Company
- Madhouse
- Nippon Television Network (NTV)
- Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co.
- D.N. Dream Partners
- Warner Bros.
- Yomiuri Television
- Video Audio Project (VAP)
Release Date Dec 29, 2010
Duration 1 h 54 m
Rating PG
Website http://s-wars.jp/
Awards
Tokyo Anime Award
• 7 Wins & 7 Nominations
Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Mainichi Film Concours
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
