Welcome to OZ

My lovely wife and I sat down last night to watch a movie. As always, I was able to talk her into which movie but instead of the usual fair this time we sat down to watch Summer Wars, an animated film from Japan by Mamoru Hosoda. This is highly unusual in our house since Marie really dislikes most if not all anime but she was gracious enough to watch it with me which made me very happy.

The movie is about a young dude who goes to the country to pose as a young lady's fiancée for her entire family. Soon though, the entire family is caught up in saving the world from a malicious Artificial Intelligence which is taking over OZ, an internet-style full virtual reality world that everyone uses for everything from talking to shopping to banking to everything else.

The movie has won several wards and in my opinion the movie is deserving of every award it has received. It is a great movie full of family value, romance and science Fiction adventure. The movie does a great job of showing the possible doom that can come from the internet highway we ride in a satirical way that does seem like preaching. Ultimately, for me the take away was the importance of family and the beauty of simply sitting together and enjoying food and drink as a group. This is something Marie and I have always valued but have fallen away from since she started working nights. After watching this film, it stirs a passion in my to be much more intentional about carving out time for this important tradition of the family.

As for whether my wife enjoyed the movie or not I can not speak to. However, in church today listening to the Youth Pastor preach about engaging youth culture he rambled off a pile of stats on internet usage in todays culture and at that very moment Marie leaned in close and whispered "That sounds a lot like OZ." I take that as a win for Anime in my books!!

Enjoy the trailer below for the film.