Title: Summer Wars: Material Book
Publisher: Udon Entertainment
Series: Summer Wars by Mamoru Hosoda
Format: Softcover
Pages: 208
Release Date: Out Now
Special Thanks: Udon Entertainment for providing me with a review copy of this title to cover.
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), and brought to life by renowned animation studio MADHOUSE, Summer Wars is the story of an ordinary family going to extraordinary lengths to avert the impending cyber apocalypse! The Summer Wars: Material Book gives a detailed, behind-the-scenes look at the development artwork that went into this award-winning film! Inside you’ll find character profiles, background designs, rough sketches, and an exclusive interview with the film’s director.
You may recall that last month I reviewed the official Wolf Children guide book that was released in Japan last year alongside a variety of other artbook releases of a variety of genres. While I have spent most of this year raving about the film, you may be interested to know that artbook publisher Udon Entertainment have since localized and published the Summer Wars: Material Book, Summer Wars being director Mamoru Hosoda’s previous film.
Unlike the previous book I reviewed which was relatively text-heavy, you will be glad to know that while they do give ample details on the design process, we are treated to a rather nice glimpse at the pop-art inspired visuals that went into building the virtual world of Oz which in the film served as the hub of almost all information in the world from simple online games to the military. How does book fare overall? read on to find out!
NOTE: Due to restrictions placed on Udon Entertainment I was not able to acquire any page samples that have been available in my prior reviews. Therefore I have included screenshots from the film itself.
Content
Summer Wars Material Book is split up into a whopping nine chapters over its 208 pages, and comes with content that would set it more as a design compendium than just an ordinary artbook. An example of a few of these chapters include Character Designs, Oz Designs and Background Designs, each of which have been split up into smaller chapters.
The first chapter looks at each of the 3o different real-world characters that make an appearance in the film, most of whom comprise of members of the Jinnouchi household. While most characters are given either a single-page or double page spread depending on importance, each character gets a few select screenshots from the series and small colour drawings with most of the designs over these pages being line drawings. Most of these designs have been well annotated to highlight visual features that were incorporated into each of the characters as well as their clothing designs for each day. While there are small synopsis of each character which often highlighted the inspiration that went into each character – none of these are what I would consider concept art with them rather being finalized design sketches. Still it was still an interesting read.
The second set of chapters in the book highlighted the design that went into the world of Oz – the virtual world where every human is represented by an avatar of mostly pop art style. As I loved the concept of the world and brought it up during my interview with Mamoru Hosoda himself last April, this was the part of the book I was most anticipating and it didn’t fail to impress. While I would have loved more close-up views of the world itself, it offered many pages of artwork of the world without any animation interruptions often found in film and they even took apart individual items present on the worlds “Administrative Building” and the bookshelves surrounding it. The avatars were also a highlight of Oz, and while you never really get a good moment to look at all the characters dispersed throughout each of the areas shown this book has twelve pages filled with individual avatar designs as well as a closer look at some of the more important ones akin to the character design section.
The final section of the book could be considered as being more around the real-world environment designs, and given this is more realistic in a sense they have provided a lot more in terms of hand-drawn designs of props and rooms (From hand-drawn sketches and layout designs to the more finalized designs that you would expect to see in the finished film. This is the most weighty component of the book and especially when it came to the concept designs the pages are filled with little annotations. Therefore, for each of the sections you get a good look at both the concept and finished product however as a fuly-fledged design compendium there is nothing much of the way of promotional artwork as you would see in Persona 4: Official Design Works for example
But overall, while I wouldn’t have mind more text content throughout the book, as a “Material Book” it more or less suits its purpose.
Layout
Unlike other artbooks I have reviewed in the past, there is no exact theme to this book, going with the simple white background. Given the “Oz” element of the film I am sure they could have come up with something, however as there was nothing to conflict with it, the imagery was allowed to do the talking. For the most part the artwork and other designs were placed nicely on the page however there were several cases where I found myself wanting them to be either whole page spreads on landscape or even double-page spreads. Some of the visual concepts in this film were great and some of the nicer pieces of artwork I don’t think were done justice.
Aside from that, nothing felt to be cluttered in order to save space and the text is legible in a clear font and font size.
Extras
As an extra bonus in this book, Udon Entertainment have translated a 10-page interview with legendary director Mamoru Hosoda. It is worth a read as it delves into the design process and his thoughts on Summer Wars.
Personal Opinion / Review
While it may be lacking quite a bit of the descriptive content I am sure the could have incorporated into the book to give us a true incite into the design process of Summer Wars, this release as been well localized by the team at Udon Entertainment and still provides a nice look at the designs that went into the film – both during the concept stage and the finished product.
Overall for the Summer Wars Material Book I give the game the following grades:
Content: B+
Layout: B+
Extras: B
Personal Opinion: B
Overall Score: B+
Want to Know More About Summer Wars?
From the visionary directory of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2007 Japanese Academy Award winner, Best Animated Feature) comes the story of an ordinary family going to extraordinary lengths to avert the impending cyber apocalypse! Kenji is your typical teenage misfit. He’s good at math, bad with girls, and spends most of his time hanging out in the all-powerful, online community known as OZ. His second life is the only life he has — until the girl of his dreams, Natsuki, hijacks him for a starring role as a fake fiancé at her family reunion.
Things only get stranger from there. A late-night email containing a cryptic mathematic riddle leads to the unleashing of a rogue AI intent on using the virtual word of OZ to destroy the real world, literary. As Armageddon looms on the horizon, Kenji and his new “family” set aside their differences and band together to save the worlds they inhabit in this “near-perfect blend of social satire and science fiction”.
