Don’t miss this chance to enjoy a hit anime film by one of Japan’s most critically acclaimed directors with all of your bodily senses. 

Directed by Mamoru Hosoda, produced by studio Madhouse, and originally released in August 2009, Summer Wars was the first of Hosoda’s directorial works to start off as an anime original project. It went on to win a handful of awards, including the prestigious Japan Academy Film Prize for Animation of the Year in 2010. In celebration of the film’s tenth anniversary this year, Studio Chizu, which was established by Hosoda in 2011, has announced that a 4DX version of the film, with moving chairs, splashing water, and blowing air, will be screened at select theaters throughout Japan beginning on January 17, 2020.

▼ Studio Chizu’s official announcement of the 4DX screenings

Hosoda is one of Japan’s most popular anime film directors today, having such international hits as  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006), Wolf Children (2012), and The Boy and the Beast (2015) to his name. Mirai (2018), his most recent film, was even nominated for an Academy Award though it ultimately lost out to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Summer Wars is a fitting selection to receive the 4DX treatment given that its setting is interwoven with a virtual reality world known as OZ. The protagonist, a high school student with a penchant for code-breaking, becomes entangled in an OZ hacking catastrophe that threatens to disrupt the safety of the physical world. and the physical effects of a 4DX presentation, synchronized with on-screen events, promise to make both the virtual reality OZ and the physical world depicted in the film come alive like you’ve never experienced them before.

▼ The official 4DX preview trailer of Summer Wars. As 4DX effects can only be experienced in a specially equipped movie theater, the true nature of the effects is something that won’t be revealed until January.

Tickets for the 4DX screenings will cost a steep 2,400 yen (US$22). a few hundred yen more than regular movie tickets in Japan. However, as this is an uncommon opportunity to catch a hit animated film re-released in theaters a decade later, we certainly think that this new enhanced viewing experience is worth every last coin.

Source: Comic Natalie via My Game News Flash
Featured image: YouTube/スタジオ地図 / STUDIO CHIZU
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