Summer Wars (2009)

Kun is a boy born to an executive mother and an architect father. The family lives in a stepped house in Isogo-ku,Yokohama that Kun’s father designed around a tree, where Kun spends his days playing with the family dog, Yukko, and his beloved toy train sets. When Kun is four, his sister Mirai, Japanese for “future”, is born, and he is happy at first when his mother returns home with her. But he soon grows jealous when his parents focus all their attention on her, and has to be restrained from hitting her with one of his toy trains. He lashes out first at his mother, and then at his father when he becomes a stay-at-home dad working from home while his mother returns to work.

After one such tantrum, Kun stomps off to the house’s garden, where he meets a strange man who claims to be the “prince” of the house. As the man endlessly whines about how he lost all the parents’ attention when Kun was born, Kun realizes that the man is actually Yukko turned into a human. Kun even finds Yukko’s tail on the man; when he removes it and places it on himself, he transforms into a dog morph. Later on, a now collected Kun tells his parents about how he had so much fun running around the house as a dog, and he relays Yukko’s complaints about how they treat him.

Girls Day rolls around, and the family set up the traditional dolls to wish Mirai good luck. But they neglect to put the dolls away after the holiday ends. Frustrated again with their parents’ focus on Mirai, Kun runs back to the garden. This time he meets a middle school aged girl who claims to be Mirai from the future, whom Kun is able to recognize by the birthmark on her right hand. She has somehow gone back in time out of concern that every day the dolls are not put away adds one year before she can marry. After a lot of bumbling, future Mirai is able to put the dolls away with help from Kun and humanized Yukko.

Kun’s grandmother shows him photos of his mother when she was Kun’s age. But he continues to attack his mother by leaving his toys everywhere on the floor. He runs out to the garden again, where he is transported a couple of decades to the past. In town, he runs into a little girl whom he recognizes from the photos as his mother. The girl is angry at her mother for refusing to give her a pet cat. They return to her home, where the little girl says that things would look better all messed up, and then starts dumping toys all over the floor and food all over the table. But then her mother, Kun’s grandmother, returns home. Kun is forced out of the house and leaves out the back door, but he overhears his grandmother furiously scolding the little girl, and the girl, his future mother, sobbing hysterically. Kun returns to his own time, and now shows sympathy for his mother, but still continues to complain and whine about every little thing.

Kun gets a bike with training wheels for a present, but wants to learn how to ride the bike without them after seeing older kids on bikes at the park. His father helps him as best as he can, but Kun seems not able to keep the bike upright. Back home, Kun runs back to the garden, where he is transported to a workshop in rural Japan many decades ago. A young man with an injured leg introduces Kun to the many horses near his shop. He takes an initially afraid Kun on a ride on one of the horses, and then on his motorcycle. Back in his own time days later, Kun successfully rides his bike using what he learned from his previous rides. Kun’s mother shows him more photos, revealing the man to be his great-grandfather, who worked on motorcycles and engines in his youth but who died just recently.

Finally, the family decides to set out for a day trip. But Kun once again throws a fit over not being able to wear his favorite yellow pants (because they were in the laundry and he had to wear blue pants), and then runs off to hide. When he comes out, he finds his whole family gone. In the garden, he finds a train station (the Isogo Station) with a train approaching. A boy in his late teens warns him not to board the train, but Kun disobeys him. The train takes Kun to the Tokyo Station, but there he panics about being all alone. He finds a lost and found attendant who needs the name of a relative to page for, but Kun realizes that he doesn’t even know the names of his own parents. The attendant sends Kun to a dragon shaped bullet train, telling him that if they can’t find anyone to pick him up, he must board that train to take him to “Lonely Land,” which is essentially hell. He spots baby Mirai about to board the train and rescues her, pleading that they not be sent on this train. At this point Kun finally acknowledges that he is Mirai’s older brother, and the attendant can now page her. Baby Mirai disappears, and future Mirai shows up to take Kun home by flying through the air. They land in the tree, which houses all the family folklore. Kun sees that his father was too physically weak to ride a bike when he was young, when Yukko left his dog-mom to become a pet, that his mother stopped liking cats when she saw a stray one kill a bird, the World War II battle that left his great-grandfather’s leg injured, and the race he ran to win the heart of Kun’s great-grandmother. Kun also sees the future, and discovers that the teenager at the Isogo Station is future Kun. Back at his own time, Kun decides that he can go on the trip just fine with his blue pants, and he goes on said trip with both his parents and his little sister.