Thursday, April 9, 2009

Check out the full trailer for Mamoru Hosoda's astounding "Summer Wars"

by Chris MaGee

Sometimes I feel like a bit of a dope for overlooking some upcoming anime projects. I mean, I like animated films, but sometimes my little head begins to spin when dealing with most Japanese anime with their multiple episodes and dense plot lines. Give me stand alone projects like "Millennium Actress", "Mind Game", or any of Hayao Miyazaki's films and I'm deliriously happy. It was my prejudice against having to slog into the deep end of an anime series that kept me from paying proper attention to Mamoru Hosoda's "Summer Wars", appropriately due out this summer in Japanese theatres. That is until now.

The full trailer for "Summer Wars" has been popping up everywhere online in the past 24 hours (I saw it at both Anime News Network and Twitch) and I have to say that it's knocked me right on my ass. It looks like Hosoda has really outdone himself in telling the story of a family who one summer embark on an adventure at the request of a 90-year-old woman. The quality of the animation is wonderful and some of those fantasy sequences look like they're heavily indebted to pop artist Takashi Murakami. Take a look below to see what I mean.

I place my hand over my heart and swear that from here on in that I'll keep an open mind to upcoming anime films and won't assume that they're tied in with a manga, a series, or some complex secret language designed to keep fans in and regular film fans out.

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