Hacker Cinema
Summer Wars
サマーウォーズ
2009 · Film · 114 min
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
Teenage math whiz Kenji Koiso agrees to take a summer job at the Nagano hometown of his crush, Natsuki. When he arrives, he finds that her family have reunited to celebrate the 90th birthday of their matriarch. His job: pretend to be Natsuki's fiancé. Meanwhile, his attempt to solve a mathematical equation causes a parallel world's collision with Earth.
5 positive5 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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12 comments on Hacker News
If we're talking about the movie, RPO is roughly 40% Summer Wars.
> Ever seen the movie Summer Wars? I felt like the protagonist for a moment there, but glad it turns out it was just some 2020s AI nonsense.
Love Machine was a rouge AI in Summer Wars, though.
I am Leonard Somero, I run verysoftwares.itch.io. I have over 300 followers and a game with 20k+ plays that has been repeatedly featured on the front page.
This certainly changed my morning routine! I am glad to hear that the reason wasn't me deleting my Twitter from my page. My first panic reaction was thinking it was me who's caused it, due to some kind of ad revenue conflict.
Ever seen the movie Summer Wars? I felt like the protagonist for a moment there, but glad it turns out it was just some 2020s AI nonsense.
Either way, there's surely an engineer somewhere who's very busy right now.
Well, taste is subjective and all that but out of that list, I'd say these are fairly objectively successful and popular if you're willing to take that as a rough proxy for "good": Haikyuu, Yuru Camp, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, Girls und Panzer, K-On, Haruhi, and the Shinkai films
I personally also quite like Hanasaku Iroha, Barakamon, Natsume Yuujinchou, Night is Short and Summer Time Rendering
Kinda depends on what you're looking for, e.g. Haikyuu is very much a sports anime and does a lot with the tropes of that genre. If you just want to watch a single good thing that has a bearing on a locality in Japan and isn't a project in and of itself (cough Haruhi cough) or otherwise cult, I'd say just watch Wolf Children.
>Summer Wars
Has any other director managed to get away with making the same film three times?
>A group of kids save the world via playing battle games in an ultra detailed 3D virtual world.
Now, is that Digimon (2000), Summer Wars (2008) or Belle (2021)?
> Satoshi Kon
In particular, Tokyo Godfathers hits in a way that not even Miyazaki can replicate IMO. Satoshi Kon probably wasn't as consistent as Miyazaki. But damn, the good Satoshi Kon movies were just beyond excellent.
Mamoru Hosoda is also pretty good. Wolf Children is one of the most "hits you in the real feels" movie that I've seen, despite its surface-level fantasy premise. A true masterpiece, though other movies from Hosoda aren't quite as good IMO. Still, his Digimon and Summer Wars are fun watches.
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There's that off-branch of Ghibli, Studio Ponac too. I've only seen their collection of 3x short films: Modest Heroes (one about a crab family, one about an egg allergy, and one about an invisible guy), but its extremely "Ghibli-like".
Modest Heroes is that mix of fantasy but very much down-to-earth storytelling that reflects upon life, in a child-friendly storytelling style. "Ghibli-style" as people might say.
I have ideas for a "Hackers 2" better than that. All these "30 years later" sequels are dripped in nostalgia too much imo. The Hacking scene is a lot more wilder now. It's hard to imagine either of the leads not having their own family or being divorced with kids or something. They can still be cool to an older audience I guess but you need to let the under 40 crowd relate with them.
My idea is something like "Summer Wars" (anime movie, highly recommend) meets the character building and realism of "The Joker" with the humor,fun and style of the original "Hackers". I'll use layman friendly but still technical stories of actual hacks from various threat intel reports I've read over the years that make anything you seen in movies sound boring. Most of you in tech also read these reports but what most of you don't read is the personal details of the actors behind them. APTs and their organization as part of different governemnt units (china for example have MSS and different units in the PLA) but also those guys don't always work strictly for the state. I have seen first hand guys doing whitehat security work but I also had extensive intel on APTs in their region using those very specific techniques lol, but don't take my word for it either directly or via informal association (russia amd criminal groups for example) many of the APT attacks you hear about involve regular people which always made me think of how easy it would be to weave them into a movie plot. I would also like to add a blue teamer's perspective: the shock, the awe, the excitement, the chaos, the friendly fire! Of what happens when blueteams outside of security vendor companies go toe-to-toe with APT actors.
Honestly, I am really keen on inspiring younger people because the talent shortage is real (and you do get paid well in our industry).90%+ of people I interact with these days work in infosec but I'm hard pressed to find anyone who's even heard of "the manifesto".
"Summer Wars"[1] features breaking keys as a plot element, with a passing mention of Shor's Algorithm. The rest of the movie is mostly unrelated to math. Good movie though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Wars
I like many Ghibli movies but Mamoru Hosoda's movies, I like almost all of them.some are even my all time favorites (of any type). For HN users, you must sample "summer wars".
https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0396074/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Nah.
I'd push things like Spirited Away or Tokyo Godfathers first, as far as anime-movies go actually.
EoE is good for the Evangelion fans. But honestly, Tokyo Godfathers hit me way harder.
EoE probably doesn't even hit my top 5 list of anime movies.
#1: Spirited Away
#2: Tokyo Godfathers
#3: Girl who Leapt through Time
#4: Summer Wars
#5: "Voices of a Distant Star" for #5? Hmm, or maybe "Time of Eve" ?? A lot of things I wanna fit in here but not EoE yet.
Not even getting to the "classics" like Akira, Eden of the East, Ghost in a Shell or whatever. These above movies have some mainstream appeal but still manage to hit that thoughtful analysis and depth. I'd still put something like Ghost in a Shell or "Your Name" above EoE...
There are also 'kid anime movies' like Patema Inverted that really were excellent and deserve recognition.
EoE is niche and fine for Evangelion fans though. Absolutely beautiful, and some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen. But you gotta see some of the __good anime movies__ out there. They all stand above EoE IMO.
Anything by Satoshi Kon is great, and in line with what you've been watching. If I had to pick, Perfect Blue for movies and Paranoia Agent for series.
In the lighter more children spectrum, Mamoru Hosoda does beautiful things like Summer Wars or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
The Tatami Galaxy is another great one
My Japanese mobile phone would occasionally silently fail to display an email message (forwarded to the phone's Softbank address, naturally, since I couldn't get data access without a contract plan) because of the character encoding.
And then there's the fact that you can't get a prepaid SIM in Japan without buying a phone to go with it. And the fact that Softbank is the only prepaid provider. And the fact that I wasn't legally supposed to have a prepaid phone anyway, because I didn't have an Alien Registration Card but was lucky enough to find a discount store that would overlook that.
Japan is VERY technologically advanced, but they often do things in a way that lacks any consideration for the world outside of their islands. The mobile phone debacle is a perfect example of this, because it affects so few Japanese directly. "Open" platforms like Linux, the Internet, and even Windows are largely regarded as hobbyist items, while Docomo and Softbank's closed, curated networks are reality for most Japanese. The recent film "Summer Wars" is an excellent expression of this.