Having not played the game, but being a fan of the director, I think the first two episodes were pretty good.

I may have more to say about it sometime in the future.

Well I guess that’s good news then. I’ve gone and bought the first volume and plan on watching it throughout the week.

Yeah I’m gonna watch an actual anime, I’m as surprised as anyone.

Oh, yeah, right. I'm planning on buying it too. I'm so tired I forgot to mention that somehow.

I've heard mixed reactions about it from fans of the game for the record.

Hmm. I’ve heard mostly positive, a few acknowledgements that there was no way they could fit everything from the game in but they did a good job choosing what to include.

I’m not super spergy about adaptations and I know 99% of the original VAs and story stuff is still there, so I’m happy.

WoF, what's your opinion on Desert Punk? A lot of my friends dig it, plus it's on Netflix so I have easy access to it. Watched the first episode and it seemed pretty okay, for someone whose Anime experience doesn't go much further than watching Digimon and Yugioh as a kid.

Honestly, Desert Punk is very much on my 'To watch' list, but it's classic Gonzo (Also responsible for Last Exile, Gankutsou and Blue Submarine 6. All considered classics on bothh sides of the pacific) so I'd say it should be pretty good.

I watched Pirates 3 last night.

I still don't quite get the ending with the british guy. Why did he just give up and not give any orders at the end? The Endevour was loaded with guns and the Black Pearl and Dutchman were mostly totalled. Not to mention he had an entire fleet behind him.

I dunno, it just kills the climax for me because this driven, ambitious guy suddenly freezes and lets himself die.

Out of the entire film you pick that as the stupid moment to address?

I'd imagine you can't just shoot down the Dutchman. I still don't see why he didn't try/abandon ship. It was crappy, but nothing killed the ending more than the epilogues. I liked the idea of sailing off into the sunset on a tiny ship, but other than that it was stupid and way too long.

I dunno man, it just seemed so suddenly out-of-character.

He was faced for the first time with a situation he couldn't talk his way out of, so he froze. Simple as that.

I think it was one of those "hubris defeated him" moments, and it was the first time that, like WoF observed, the situation was totally out of his hands, so he had a BSOD. I agree that upon a closer examination of his character, it's kind of stupid that the commanding officer couldn't be arsed to think on his feet for a second. He may not have won, but couldn't he have at least made an attempt to... survive?

The third movie is really really bad, but I'm quite fond of it.

The second movie is arguably objectively worse and I despise it.

Have you seen the fourth one?

The fourth one is just two hours of swashbucklin’ and Jack Sparrow being ridiculous.

I mean that in a good way. It doesn’t have all the baggage that the trilogy did.

I never understood how the second movie was hated more than the third. The narrative of the third put me in mind of spaghetti. The second made perfect sense. And I enjoyed the fish people.

Yeah, I quite enjoyed it despite the fact it was shameless fanservice.

Agreed 100%. What about the second movie was so bad? It was far more cohesive than the third, the pirate lore was more delicately woven into the plot, whereas the third felt like a bloated cartoon tailored to necessitate a tight-gripped milking of Jack Sparrow lulzy moments.

I didn't enjoy the fourth one at all. Jack Sparrow as a protagonist is the epitome of "too much of a good thing" for me. The Fountain of Youth set was pretty cool though.

I remember marathoning the first three and enjoying them all. Third one I probably enjoyed the least but it was watchable.

Fourth was awful. Saw it in theaters and was bored out of my fucking mind.

The second movie was utterly boring and unmemorable. The only two bits I remember were the three way swordfight and the ending five seconds that pretty much saved the movie.

Or to put it another way, Geoffrey Rush is far and away the best thing about the franchise.

I’ll vouch for that.

Oh by the way I’ve now watched the first four episodes of Persona 4. It’s good, and boy do they manage to come up with some neat ways of getting references and nods to the game in there.

But hot damn does it ever roll by fast. This must be the fastest-paced TV show I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it just feels that way due to the game’s glacial pace?

I remember all the major beats from the second. The three-way swordfight, the kraken attack, the game of chance with Davy Jones. All of these feel like quintessential pirate movie moments. Quotable, simple but memorable, very evocative of Errol Flynn or the old action serials. I don't remember anything from the third, except for maybe Jack Sparrow's psychosis, and the really fat chinese guy.

I remember every scene where Barbossa has a line. That's quite a sizable chunk of the movie.

Also I hated hated hated everything related to Davy Jones. I just didn't like anything about that at all. Not the actor, not the character, not the plot.

I can't explain why, it just irritated me.

So basically it boils down to Geoffrey Rush and nothing else. I guess I can agree with you there.

Yeah, agreed. He makes the series.

Have you read the book it was (very loosely) based on? It's really quite brilliant. It weaves in a shitload of real piratical history with a quite smart story about voodoo. It's one of those books where you get to the end and then go straight to Wikipedia to find out just how many of the plot points are historical. As it happens, the plot points I thought were least plausible were all the ones that were true.

I watched Evangelion 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo last night. Man, what a clusterfuck of things I like about Anime. I'm not really sure if I can properly assess it but it was a blast. A depressing, miserable blast. Kaworu was my favourite part.

That's it. That's all I got.

Should I be surprised you had the patience to watch a two hour camrip?

I forgot it was based on a book. I'd preferably enjoy that far more. That movie was a disjointed mess.

I suppose so, I'm usually very picky about the environment I'm watching something in. It was slightly more bearable than most cams since it had subtitles added though. Plus I just eat up anything Evangelion related.

Is the Evangelion series really as good as people say? A bunch of people on another forum keep raving about it, plus they changed all their avatars to characters from the show.

I normally don't really care for anime but I'm considering giving it a shot due to its universal praise.