Summer Wars

Summer Wars is a 2009 Japanese animated science fiction film directed by Mamoru Hosoda, animated by Madhouse and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film tells the story of Kenji Koiso, a timid eleventh-grade math genius who is taken to Ueda by twelfth-grade student Natsuki Shinohara to celebrate her great-grandmother's 90th birthday. However, he is falsely implicated in the hacking of a virtual world by a sadistic artificial intelligence named Love Machine. Kenji must repair the damage done to it and find a way to stop the rogue computer program from causing any further damage.

After producing The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Madhouse was asked to produce the next film. Hosoda and writer Satoko Okudera conceived a story about a social network and a stranger's connection with a family. The real-life city of Ueda was chosen as the setting for Summer Wars, as part of the territory was once governed by the Sanada clan and was close to Hosoda's birthplace in Toyama. Hosoda used the clan as the basis for the Jinnouchi family after visiting his then-fiancé's home in Ueda.

Production of Summer Wars commenced in 2006. Art director Youji Takeshige incorporated Japanese houses into his background designs. Hosoda also insisted that 80 family members were to be included as main characters. The project was first announced at the 2008 Tokyo International Anime Fair and the first trailer of the film was released in April 2009. A manga adaptation of the film was written by Iqura Sugimoto and began its serialization in July 2009.

Summer Wars premiered in Japan on August 1, 2009. It grossed over $1 million in its opening weekend in 127 theaters and ranked No. 7 at the box office. The film was well received by critics and the general audience and was financially successful, earning $18 million worldwide. It won several awards such as the 2010 Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival's Animation Division Grand Prize, the Anaheim International Film Festival's Audience Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for the 2009 Golden Leopard award at the Locarno International Film Festival.

In North America, Funimation released Summer Wars on DVD and Blu-ray on February 15, 2011.

The movie premiered on Adult Swim's Toonami block on December 14, 2013, at 12:00 AM, as part of the first Toonami Month of Movies. The movie also aired on Toonami on one other occasion: December 6, 2014, at 1:00 AM, as part of the second Toonami Month of Movies.

Synopsis
Kenji Koiso is a young high school student with a gift in mathematics and a part-time moderator in the massive computer-simulated virtual reality world "OZ" along with his friend Takashi Sakuma.

Invited by Natsuki Shinohara to participate in the 90th birthday of her great-grandmother Sakae Jinnouchi, Kenji travels with her to Sakae's estate in Ueda. While there, Natsuki introduces Kenji as her fiancé to Sakae. Kenji meets several of Natsuki's relatives and discovers that the Jinnouchis are descendants of a samurai who challenged the Tokugawa clan in 1615. He also meets Wabisuke Jinnouchi, Natsuki's half-granduncle and a computer expert who has been living in the United States since stealing the family's fortunes 10 years ago.

Kenji receives an e-mail with a mathematical code and cracks it. Love Machine, an artificial intelligence in the OZ infrastructure, uses Kenji's account and his avatar to invade the infrastructure, causing widespread damage. Kenji, Natsuki's cousin Kazuma Ikezawa and Sakuma confront Love Machine. Love Machine defeats Kazuma's avatar King Kazma and continues to steal accounts, creating catastrophic traffic congestions and disabling electrical devices. Two of Sakae's relatives — Rika and Shota Jinnouchi – discover Kenji's involvement. Shota arrests Kenji, but Natsuki has them return to the estate due to the ongoing traffic congestions.

Recognizing the situation as akin to war, Sakae calls her associates in important positions in Japan's society and her relatives who work in emergency services. She encourages them to work their hardest to reduce the potential chaos and damage that could have occurred. Kenji is able to return control of the virtual world to the moderators and engineers. Wabisuke reveals that he created Love Machine and sold the program to the United States Armed Forces for a test run. After an argument with Sakae, Wabisuke leaves the estate. Sakae later encourages Kenji to take care of Natsuki during a Hanafuda match; and Kenji and the Jinnouchis, running to Sakae's bedside the next morning, find Sakae dead. Her youngest son Mansaku reveals she had angina and Love Machine had deactivated her heart monitor. Kenji, Sakuma, and most of the Jinnouchis initiate a plan to defeat Love Machine using a supercomputer with ice blocks as a coolant while Natsuki and the others prepare a funeral for Sakae.

Kenji, along with Sakuma and the others, capture Love Machine. However, Shota carries the ice blocks to Sakae's body causing the supercomputer to overheat; where upon Love Machine empowers itself and assimilates King Kazma; then redirects the Arawashi Asteroid Probe onto a collision course with a nuclear power plant. At the same time, Natsuki discovers a will left by Sakae before reuniting with Kenji and the rest of the group. Natsuki has Wabisuke return home before the family reads Sakae's will, asking them to bring Wabisuke back to their lives. Realizing that Love Machine sees everything as a game, Kenji has the Jinnouchis play Koi-Koi with Love Machine in OZ's casino world, wagering their accounts in a desperate attempt to stop Love Machine. Natsuki wins several rounds, but gets distracted and nearly loses her "winnings".

However, OZ users worldwide enter their own accounts into the wager on Natsuki's side, which also prompts the guardian programs of Oz, the blue and red whales, to grant Natsuki their blessing. Natsuki wagers all 150 million avatars given to her in a single hand, in which she defeats and critically damages Love Machine, leaving it with control over just two accounts. Facing defeat, the artificial intelligence redirects the Arawashi towards Sakae's estate. Kenji attempts to hack into the probe's GPS, but is unsuccessful. To circumvent Love Machine, Wabisuke disables its defenses, disrupting it long enough for King Kazma to be revived and assisted by several Jinnouchi family avatars before destroying Love Machine. Kenji activates the GPS code and redirects the Arawashi away from the estate. The satellite's impact destroys the estate's entrance and causes a geyser to erupt. The Jinnouchi family, celebrating their victory as well as Sakae's birthday, has Natsuki kiss Kenji after confessing their love to each other.

Characters
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Toonami Broadcast History

 * December 14, 2013 at 12:00 AM (Toonami Month of Movies: 2013)
 * December 6, 2014 at 1:00 AM (Toonami Month of Movies: 2014)