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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3003 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 11, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Digital fast update, Peter and Paul edition.

  1. Your Name, +2. A feature-length anime about a city boy and a country girl swapping bodies that takes an unexpected turn when they decide to meet. It's one of the best-drawn 2D movies I've ever seen and even some 3D-assisted total animation they used doesn't look jarring. As far as I know, the director deliberately wanted to avoid making "another anime" and wanted this to be treated as a work that is judged on its own, not because it has round eyes and too few FPS. He made a couple more feature films after this one that I plan to watch, but I can't be assed to find proper ass subs that overlay carefully styled text over signs and phones and newspapers and do other fancy stuff like that.
  2. Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World, 0. If you have a hardon for the Royal Navy, like Catgirl Kulak, then watch it. Volokolamskoye Shosse is probably a better book about military leadership. The ship scenes look great, but the plot feels more like a series of vignettes than a coherent story. And Russell Crowe is fat.
  3. Breaking Bad, rating pending. I still haven't finished watching it. It will most likely get a +2 from me, but I want to finish season five before rating it properly.
  4. One Punch Man, 0. I almost gave it a -1 after watching the first few series, but then it finally realized it needed at least some plot. It's still nothing more than The Adventures of Dr. McNinja with Japanese characteristics, which makes sense, given than it started as a webcomic as well.

And Russell Crowe is fat

This is just additional realism in casting. In the book series Maturin comments how captain Aubrey is overweight. Royal Navy food was not delectable (biscuits infested with weevils) but it was calorie rich, and unlike the seamen, captain had not many obligations to engage in strenuous physical activity.

But yes the plot suffers because the most exciting naval ploys and scenes from several different episodes from early books are condensed to a single 'chase'. However, if they were more 'true' to the series, it wouldn't have been necessarily any less like a series of vignettes. it's been some time since I read the books, but I got the impression the author leaned towards realism in a way which makes for boring cinema by Hollywood blockbuster standards: Aubrey receives boring or exciting assignments or no assignments at all depending on the interpersonal politics and favors and strategic situation of Napoleonic wars (all essentially random from Aubrey's POV) -- often nothing much happens -- individual naval battles are more often due random happenstance than forming a satisfying narrative arch.

The naval romanticism comes in how Aubrey and Maturin find themselves in once-in-lifetime action improbably often and Aubrey gets to execute all the naval tactical genius of the Royal Navy of the era personally. (All the battles and stratagems are supposedly historical or closely inspired, but Aubrey's career is not.) Additionally, later on Maturin turns a little bit into James Bond of Napoleonic times, with all improbable features and events inherit in that.

There would have been some romance in the books, which might have been good for box office if they had incorporated that.

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