Social Networking Gone Wrong--Summer Wars

Anime has always been a film genre I have little interest in. I find it trivial, obnoxious, and way too melodramatic for my taste. Interestingly enough, one of my all-time favorite movies is an anime film--Miyazaki's masterpiece, Spirited Away. When I was perusing iTunes trailers a couple of weeks ago I watched a trailer for a Japanese animation film called Summer Wars. I was almost instantly interested in this film based off its revolutionary animation style. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The basic premise for this film is about social networking site called Oz (think Facebook but to the millionth power) that gets hacked by a rogue virus with apocalyptic consequences.

I watched this film a couple of days ago and I was very, very impressed. The animation style really is unparalleled. There were many sequences where my jaw dropped and I was asking myself how the hell they animated the scene. The story is also pretty engaging, although a bit dramatic for my tastes, but the animation manages to completely overshadow this. I highly recommend renting this movie. It really made me think of how social networking is so deeply engrained within our society and what were to happen if it just crashed one day. How would our society react if Facebook went offline for a week? I know I would panic (kind of embarrassing to admit) but we invest so much of our lives into social networking sites that I can not imagine a future without them. Just a thought and check out the trailer for Summer Wars below.

---Post by Karl Ryan