Lately they´ve been news of AI jsut escaping containment and hacking their way into places where they have no bussiness in being, and suddenly I´m reminded of a movie I´ve watched earlier this summer. That´s right I´m talking about Mamoru Hosoda´s Summer Wars, a sci-fi anime movie where a rogue program break into a virtual world and just wreak havok. Said virtual world is basically a social network/advanced version of the internet where the world has become dependent on, think basic infracture and if something goes wrong a lot of stuff would just stopp working properly like traffic lights among other things. If the plot seems familiar it´s because its the same one for a Digimon feature “Our War Game”, which westerners are more familiar as the second part of the dubbed Digimon: The Movie, and yes it was worked on by the same person. In the middle of all this is a young math genius Kenji Koiso part time moderator of said virtual space and invited by a fellow student and potential crush to go to a family reaunion with her and pass him off as her fiancé, only to get himself and said family involved when his moderation account gets hacked. A period piece that somehow feels relevant today Seriously, this anime screams late 2000s and early 2010s, with people using flipphones and devices that look a lot like the Nintendo DS, as well the old windows gui on pcs And yet.. let´s take a look at the virtual world for example. The entire planet has adopted a virtual reality called OZ, where people use it to communicate, socialize, work, shop and even play games. Everyone has an avatar that they customize itself. Despite the who virtual reality to me it brings to mind how social media and the internet itself has evolved. It went from a niche nerdy thing to mainstream adoption. And we´ve kinda became very dependent on. I guess it also predicted a type of metaverse, but lets be honest, that one flooped with meta as it failed to get mainstream adoption, other people have pointed out VR Chat as the superior version of the metaverse. And I can see the similarities in the diversity and creativity of the customization of avatars. Yet, its still pretty niche and I can´t imagine like your Grandma or just normie style people adopting it in mass anytime soon. And it´s not so much as a prediction as it took inspiration from Second Life, the original metaverse. Remember that one? For those of you who were too young to be there. There was a time where SL was seen as having the potential to completly revoluzitonize the internet. I remember reading article after article, people having full on jobs and making money, work reunions, classes, companies themselves putting up spo sorships and having their own virtual headquarters. A place where people could socialize and party and havetheir own virtual real estate etc.. Heck, I even remember back in my old University, a bunch of students showcased a virtual training simulation of mechanical enginnering in said sapce just to show its potential for educational purposes. Nowadays, it seems like a former shell of itself. I mean people are still logging there but it feel a bit empty. But yeah for a while, it was the future, imagine taking your avatar to a virtual store and then buy something to deliver your door. However, in reality its much more convenient to just click on a link on an app or website. To come back to my previous point the whole feels more a virtual representation for the internet that we´ve become familiar, where everyone seems to exist in the same few spaces. And with it comes certain dangers. Having an account hacked and stolen due to a phishing email is something that we´ve all been warned about (which made me yell at the screen when it happened to the protgaonist) and having the issue of having all your personal data under one password/account. And considering that cyber attacks have become a common weapon but more hostile countries. Yeah. Speaking of which I don´t wanna spoil much but turn out this rogue AI was basically a test run just to see how its able to sabotage major digital infracsturcture, and ironies of ironies wait till you see which country is influenced by it. Love Machine despite being artificial acts like an actual hacker and is always trying to absorve knowledge and infprmation for it sake. Making this a cautionary tale about the misuse of technology without thinking ot its consequences. While its would be easy to dismiss it this as yet another sotry of AI gone rogue, the way its goes about it feel way too close to home that it stands out compared to other similar stories. The Importance of Community Outside of the virtual space, this is also a story about the importance of family, but to me its much more than that. Because the key to help stop this AI from wrecking the rest of the world is the power of bonds between people, corny I know. But hear me out, at the heart of this family is the 89 year old matriach Sakae Jinnouchi, who believes in caring for others and maintaining close family bonds. She also become sorta the key to help japan dealing with the current cyber crisis. See, this Lady got some connections and she uses them to her advantage, armed with nothing but an adress book and a landline phone (since mobile phones are out of commission) she manages to mobilize people into taking action to mitigate the negative effects as thing stop working properly. She raise a little hell is an understatment. The story also explores the importance of communication, the first attempts of Kenji containing the AI fail, due to inteference of some family memebers who didnt understand that gravity of the internet being hacked and taken over, thinking its just a silly game or some digital nonsense.It´s only when everyone has a sitdown, and they explain the danger they all in, that they start working together and pool resources which allows for the AI to finally be stopped. As someone who had to explain to less tech literate relatived how the internet can affect real life, I felt that frustation. But what really allowed the defeat of said AI was the contributions of the rest of the OZ users, it´s at this point I´m reminded of how the AI bubble is failling because a lot of people have been collective refusing to buy what its selling, its also something I´ve seen apply to other situations. That seems like a neat message for a movie to have. Final Thoughts I recommend give this a watch specially if you´ve seen Mamoru Hosoda´s other work. Besides the cool themes, one thing that I really enjoyed was the animation. The way the virtual world OZ looks and feel looks something that only a cartoonist would make and reminds me a lot of the colorful videogames that were popular during the ps2 era, and has some cool fight scenes. I felt like it expnaded on the stuff shwon in the digimon movie, and it did a pretty good job of it. Also I feel the virtual world and some gaming references might be appealing to the gaming crowd. Special Blaugust Mentions Weekly Wrap Up - Divergent Rays an obscure game: Monster Rancher Hop-A-Bout - lucky instar Blaugust 2026 Group Projects – Blind Choice - Gamer Lady