It's really uncommon if not near impossible to watch anime in theaters over here, much less in the original language. For the second time in history AniFest Group has assembled a nice screening at limited Cinemex cinemas across the country, which makes this experience an exclusive. For this edition they decided to project Ponyo, Summer Wars, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Paprika and Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance.
Obviously I got tickets for Evangelion. To pass the chance to watch humongous mechas and angsty kids killing otherworldly giant monsters while they try to mind rape them in a BIG SCREEN would be literal sin. I'm going with my brother and our friend/almost-neighbor Alfredo tomorrow... Ah yeah, but I was talking about Summer Wars.
EDIT: Evangelion 2:22 is THE BEAST! (Gotta love gratuitous Engrish XD) Had a blast and my brain is still spastic from sitting in the front row and watching FUCKING EVANGERIONS and FUCKING ANGELS fighting like towering giants while I was down right there in Neo Tokyo 3. And the mind rape sequences hurts really at that distance @___________@ Oh, and we ran into a friend as well and he sat with us :3
As much as I'm a fan of animation, at this moment it would be pointless to write a review, everybody has seen this movie. Did you? No? WELL, DO IT FAGGOT! lol
For those out of the loop, a recap. Summer Wars (2009) is a jewel brought to us by Director Mamoru Hosoda, the same director from OMG!!! Digimon Adventure (aka Digimon 01). In fact you can consider Summer Wars as a refinement of "Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! (2000 Film)," made for an original universe. The basic plot and visual style is almost the same, but screenplay (Satoko Okudera, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), character design and execution (Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Evangelion) are extended and far superior. From the staff credentials you can say that this is quality stuff. No Spoiler here but if you want more encourage to watch this movie, if you are interested in Sci-Fi, romance, comedy, cyberspace virtual worlds, social satire of a family with ties that stretch back to Japan’s medieval era, martial arts (specifically Shaolin Kung Fu) and visual effects that willrapeyoureyeswithbeautifulcolors, then you may have a nice treat in this movie.
Yeah, it's a bit corny at times and the plot may seem silly at many points but, and I talk as a serious future computer engineer, the prospect of having a Facebook/SecondLife hybrid with control over real life systems is terrifying. And one year after watching it for the first time, the idea doesn't seems far fetched anymore! With many government agencies deciding to have presence (at least on the PR level) on the social networks, it will only take ONE idiot to try and merge all services into one for "simplicity." Rule number one of cryptography: no system is fail-proof or un-hackeable. Not to mention that today I shuddered at the idea of OZu having a privacy policy similar to Facebook and that OZu Network is basically your only Internet, Cellphone and Authentification Service Provider available worldwide... Evil and creepy I say.
The room was changed to a bigger place and had a 90% occupation. The otakus are weird and bothersome folks but today they behaved surprisingly well! Okay, not so well. Some people were kinda noisy and obnoxious and this one dude in the seat behind me kept kicking the back of my seat, UGH!!! There it goes half a star. But the public reacted to the film and made it mostly positive experience, laughing at the funny scenes, d'awwing at the tear jerkers and LOLing at the NARMtastic scene of Kenji's Mental Math Nosebleed. It was like watching it with a lot of nerd friends.
If my eyes did not deceived me, projector was at 2K resolution, source was a computer with a Blu-ray (evident because of the spin up hiccup at the beginning of the show) using a 2X Bicubic resizer. Playback was great with no decoding problems, alias or blurring. The resolution let the traditional animation shine and the CG to stun with its sharpness. Sound was a little bit distorted in the booms but clear in quiet parts. Subtitles were custom made, the translation was adequate but with punctuation errors and the font was too small and too low on the screen; there goes another half of a star. Staff and cinema experience of quality for a matinee price, seats were great.
And while I could had also watched Haruhi (and I haven't seen that one yet) I decided to watch this movie again because of how pretty it is. Haruhi has its share of background and sequences that are visual art, but it's not constant. And then there is the big fact that one of the heroes who is a cute shotaro boy owns an avatar that is a badass furry rabbit.
