This virtual reality thriller-cum-family drama from 2009 was an early solo success for Mamoru Hosoda, who along with Your Name’s Makoto Shinkai is one of the leading new-school anime auteurs. Made after he withdrew from directing Howl’s Moving Castle for Studio Ghibli, it flits between a fraught, soap-operaish saga about a family reunion near the city of Ueda and the metaverse of Oz. It isn’t as sophisticated perhaps in its understanding of the online/real-world interface as his 2021 film Belle, but the multilayered storytelling still shows plenty of panache, especially on the visual front.
Maths boffin Kenji (voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas in the English-language dub) is browbeaten by schoolmate Natsuki (Brina Palencia) into attending her great-grandmother Sanae’s (Pam Dougherty) 90th birthday on her family estate; she needs a willing victim to pose as her boyfriend to impress the matriarch. Fending off his new in-laws, the teenager – also a part-time moderator for Oz – solves an encrypted math problem that opens a backdoor for a malevolent AI called Love Machine to corrupt the network. With much of the world dependent on the services hosted by Oz, much more than the birthday party is at stake.
