Thursday, July 30, 2009

Summer Wars - Mamoru Hosoda's next film

Despite the wholly generic and unflattering title, I'm still eager anticipating the August 1st premiere of Summer Wars. Why? Because Mamoru Hosoda also happens to be the director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and the first Digimon movie, two things that rank highly on my list of favorite animated films. One of my favorite aspects of Hosoda's films is the delightful touch of homely, slice-of-life-ish, cynicism-destroying humor that is so refreshing when compared to the hyperactive rapid-fire humor style that is the norm in anime. Anyway, the fact that Summer Wars features a lot of the staff who previously worked on The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (including the scriptwriter Satoko Okudera, also credited with writing Andrew Cunningham favorite Miyori no Mori), is nothing but good news. Crossing my fingers for something damn good. 

By the way, Yahoo! Movies Japan has a stream up of the first 5 minutes of the film, though it's been working inconsistently for the people who've tried it out. 

2 comments:

  1. From the trailers and first five minutes, it looks to be a throwback to Digimon: Our War Game.

    For his next project, I'd like to see Hosoda stretch his creativity; maybe go to Studio 4C, or back to Toei. His One Piece movie is still the visually greatest anime film I've ever seen not called Mind Game, and would definitely like to see him to a similar, unconventional approach to his stories.

    Still, considering he's one of my favorite directors, Summer Wars is probably gonna be damn good.

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  2. I have to agree that it seems as though Hosoda is returning to his roots, as it were, with Summer Wars. That certainly isn't a bad thing, since his Digimon movies are awesome. From the looks of things, SW may end up being just as, if not even more enjoyable than said films.

    I'd love for Hosoda to do another One Piece movie, or at least something similar. His OP film is my second favorite behind TokiKake.

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