With Japanese manga film adaptations, it is not always easy to separate the gems from the dross, and a great deal of dross is screened on Taiwanese screens simply to feed an appetite for all things Japanese. With Summer Wars (Sama Wazu), we have most definitely got a gem. This is the sort of movie that rivals, and for the technologically oriented perhaps even surpasses, the work of Hayao Miyazaki, who created such classic animations as Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004).
The story is about Kenji, an 11th grade computer whiz kid who is invited to stay at the family home of Natsuki, a girl he has a crush on. He is asked to pose as her boyfriend in the hope that this will mollify Natsuki’s grandmother, who is not long for this world.
Uncomfortable with this role, he spends a sleepless night working on a puzzle that is sent to his cellphone. He solves the puzzle. What he doesn’t realize, until it is too late, is that he has just cracked the security code for Oz, a virtual world that has become indispensable to the real world. Oz is where people do their banking, meet their friends, monitor their health and calibrate their GPS. His solution to the puzzle has provided root accesses to a malign force operating within Oz. Millions of user accounts are compromised and then used to create chaos in the real world. Total social meltdown is imminent.
This sort of scenario is not new, but Hosoda’s film brings it to life as a piece of fun family entertainment that proposes an all too possible result of our dependence on and casual acceptance of the Internet. There are a bunch of appealing characters, from Natsuki’s grandmother, the aging matriarch of an ancient samurai family, an uncle who recounts in tedious detail the not altogether glorious history of the family and its retainers in various historical conflicts, and the sullen teenager whose real life is lived as King Kazuma (a rabbit with martial arts skills) and who spends his time fighting his way through the highest level of Oz’s combat championships.
The family supports Kenji as he tries to put things right. Much action takes place within the virtual world of Oz, where King Kazuma and Kenji try to contain the chaos as the malignant force goes viral. The conflict, in all its graphic art glory, is utterly unreal, and also curiously exciting. And the spillover into the daily lives of the characters is very believable, largely as it is so closely linked with things most of us do every day — namely communicate and act through various online systems.
Summer Wars does a splendid job in representing one of the hottest topics of the modern world — computer security — and presenting it in a way that is both thoughtful and fun. This may be simple flat animation that harks back to technologies many decades old, but in terms of quality, it leaves many recent 3D animations trailing in its dust.
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
In our discussions of tourism in Taiwan we often criticize the government’s addiction to promoting food and shopping, while ignoring Taiwan’s underdeveloped trekking and adventure travel opportunities. This discussion, however, is decidedly land-focused. When was the last time a port entered into it? Last week I encountered journalist and travel writer Cameron Dueck, who had sailed to Taiwan in 2023-24, and was full of tales. Like everyone who visits, he and his partner Fiona Ching loved our island nation and had nothing but wonderful experiences on land. But he had little positive to say about the way Taiwan has organized its
The entire Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀) saga has been an ugly, complicated mess. Born in China’s Hunan Province, she moved to work in Shenzhen, where she met her future Taiwanese husband. Most accounts have her arriving in Taiwan and marrying somewhere between 1993 and 1999. She built a successful career in Taiwan in the tech industry before founding her own company. She also served in high-ranking positions on various environmentally-focused tech associations. She says she was inspired by the founding of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019 by Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), and began volunteering for the party soon after. Ko
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
RSS