What is most striking about this movie is the detail that's been put into the animation.
Only the characters in this animation looks like animation. All the background detail looks so real. It's hard to believe that someone went to this length to put perfection on celluloid. Not only are the scenic details so perfect, the behavior of the Japanese family is also captured perfectly.
Kenji a math prodigy high school student who is working part time as a software maintenance crew for virtual reality computer network called Oz is invited to a family gathering by Natsuki at her home town of Ueda city in Nagano prefecture. Unbeknownst to him, he's been introduced to her family as her fiancé. The evening he arrives at Natsuki's family home, he receives a sequence of numbers in his phone's text message. Using his mathematical genius to work, he figures out what the code means, and sends it back to the sender. Next day, Oz network has been hacked in by a malicious computer virus that can learn and expend its control over the Oz community. Oz is connected to almost every public service, and the computer virus take control of the community. It's now up to Kenji and Natsuki's family to figure out how to beat the computer virus.
The movie is made for Japanese audience, and it's better if seen with the original Japanese dialog with subtitles. You will get better nuance about how family's interaction is occurring. It's even better if you can understand Japanese. The subtle nuance of character's emotion and intent will be missed otherwise. People who didn't like this movie invariably saw the English dubbed version which doesn't convey the true charm of this movie. Some movie just doesn't translate well when dubbed like "Back to the Future". If you've seen a dubbed version of Back to the Future in other languages, you'll see that all the humorous details didn't make it across the translation. This movie is one such movie.
One of the best anime movie to be ever created, Summer Wars is one movie that's worth watching. See the stunning details put into this incredible work of art.
