Purely Academic with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the premiere of Japan’s most iconic tokusatsu franchise: ULTRAMAN!  Created by the legendary special effects wizards at Tsuburaya Productions, Ultraman  premiered on July 17th, 1966, and has been a phenomenon in Japan and around the world ever since. To mark the occasion, today we’re taking a look at 15 episodes from 5 different Ultraman  series directed by...

The most wonderful and/or tedious time of the year has come once more: It’s Not-E3 2026, when all of the video game giants share their biggest announcements for the year. As always, we’re here to recap it, with thoughts on Sony’s State of Play, the Summer Game Fest, and the Xbox Showcase, across which we saw the unveiling of God of War Laufey,  the sooner-than-expected Final Fantasy VII Revelation...

We’re back for a fun, variety-filled Monthly Stuff episode filled with our own personal obsessions. After going over some Nintendo and Xbox news, including the announcement of Star Fox for Switch 2 and a changing direction for Game Pass, Jonathan talks about recent news surrounding the One Piece  anime remake by Wit Studio, before going in-depth on the Netflix live-action series after finally watc...

The news just won’t stop coming, so we once again have an overstuffed Monthly Stuff episode to break it all down, from the reveal of Nvidia’s horrific slop-fueled DLSS 5, to Sony raising prices dramatically on PS5 systems, to the announcement of a new Lord of the Rings  movie from Stephen Colbert, and more! Once we’re doing breaking all that down, Jonathan tells us all about his adventures in Poké...

There’s very little we enjoy talking about more than Resident Evil  here at Purely Academic, as the series has been on one of the most amazing hot streaks in the history of gaming over this past decade. The latest entry, Resident Evil Requiem,  is a stirring summation of everything these games have done well as of late, combining the survival horror and bombastic action the series has perfected ac...

It’s been a big – and depressing – few weeks of news in the entertainment industry, so we’re back for the March ‘Monthly Stuff’ episode to break it all down. First up we have Sony’s sudden (and infuriating) closure of Bluepoint, the studio behind many top-of-the-line remakes and remasters including 2020’s Demon Souls,  which prompts a broader discussion about the issues Sony has had during the PS5...

In a very video game-centric episode of the podcast, we talk all the news out of this month’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase and Sony State of Play, including the announcement of a God of War  trilogy remake, a new  Castlevania  game from the  Dead Cells  team, and more! Sean fills us in on the controversies surrounding  Yakuza Kiwami 3,  and we commiserate over the continued desecration of the...

Our sister podcast, the anime history and review show Japanimation Station, returns on March 15th, 2026 for its 6th season, and it’s one listeners have been demanding for a long time: our Tomino-thon! Throughout 2026, we’ll be peering into the delightfully deranged mind of Tomino Yoshiyuki, creator of Mobile Suit Gundam, which kicked off our entire anime podcasting journey with our ‘Weekly Suit Gu...

The time has come, once again: Sean and Jonathan are here to count down the Top 10 Video Games of 2025. It was an undeniably weird year for the medium, with some exciting developments – like the launch of Nintendo’s Switch 2 and a strong first year of exclusive – marred by a lot of depressing industry upheaval, and the AAA space was largely pretty thin. We go quite a bit off the beaten path this y...

For our first show of 2026, we look back on the best movies of 2025, as Jonathan talks us through his list of the 20 best films to come out last year, from undisputed favorites like Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another,  to anime stunners like the Chainsaw Man  and Kimetsu no Yaiba  movies, to some weirder, smaller, and more personal picks. Then, Sean talks us through his busy winter va...

Fair warning: this month’s episode starts out as a major bummer, what with news of the Netflix/WB merger and the pricing madness around RAM spelling doom for both Hollywood and the gaming industry, topics we dive deep on to make ourselves extremely sad. But once you get past all that, we start having some fun, as Jonathan reviews the flawed but extremely fun Metroid Prime 4: Beyond  on Nintendo Sw...

For our November topic – coming just in time for the start of December – we celebrate the release of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein  with a three-part retrospective on one of the most famous stories in the English language. First, we take a look at the original 1818 novel by Mary Shelley – which has been one of Sean’s favorite books, but was new to Jonathan – and celebrate its tremendous accomp...

In one of our most absolutely jam-packed Monthly Stuff installments to date, we live up to our moniker with a long discussion of teaching stories and curriculum planning (but it’s fun, we promise) before moving on to talk about the avalanche of games we’ve playing recently, including Ghost of Yōtei, Pokémon Legends Z-A, Hades II, Super Robot Wars Y,  and the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake.  Befo...

We spent a full year chronicling the history of Kyoto Animation on our anime podcast, Japanimation Station,  back in 2024, which means we are very excited to talk about CITY: THE ANIMATION,  the latest anime series from the renowned studio. Directed by Violet Evergarden  helmer Ishidate Taichi and based on the manga Nichijou  author Arawi Keiichi, CITY  is one of the absolute greatest series KyoAn...

We’re back for the month of October with an exciting episode covering both the highs and lows of the video game industry in 2025. In terms of ‘low,’ we’ve got more Xbox Pricing Madness, as Microsoft once again hiked prices on Xbox hardware, before unveiling a full 50% raise to the price of Xbox Game Pass, a move that feels like the definitive end of the brand’s subscription model experiment. In te...

It’s a 2-part episode of Purely Academic  as we discuss the recent Nintendo Direct presentation – our first big event from Nintendo since the launch of the Switch 2 – before reviewing the biggest movie in the world right now: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie – Infinity Castle.  The first part of a trilogy adapting the final arc of Gotouge Koyoharu’s manga, it’s an incredible film, depictin...

Our August episode of Purely Academic  is one of our busiest recordings to date, as Sean and Jonathan break down how they spent their summer vacations, and talk about the start of the new school year. Sean tells us about some of the legal insanity affecting education in Texas, while Jonathan explains why he created a bunch of feature-length anime fan edits for various classes he’s teaching this se...

After looking back over all the previous attempts to bring Marvel’s Fantastic Four  to the big screen last month, we review the introduction to Marvel’s first family into the MCU: The Fantastic Four: First Steps,  directed by Matt Shakman and starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn. It’s easily the most these characters have ever been done justice on film, with g...

We’re back sooner than usual, with a special episode focused entirely on James Gunn’s SUPERMAN!  The film is the official launch of the new DCU, but much more importantly, it’s an actual Superman  movie, one that truly gets the character and his world in a way no live-action Superman  film has in our lifetimes. Jonathan reviewed the film in writing last week at Fade to Lack, but we dive much deepe...

For the July installment of ‘The Monthly Stuff,’ we break down the news of Xbox’s latest round of devastating layoffs, give fuller impressions of the Nintendo Switch 2 after a full month of play, and discuss recent games and TV shows we’ve experienced. Jonathan gives thoughts on Fast Fusion  and Raidou Remastered,  alongside continued impressions of Mario Kart World,  while Sean talks about playin...

With Marvel’s ‘first family’ finally joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe next month in The Fantastic Four: First Steps,  we thought it would be a good time to look back at the theatrical history of this extremely troubled franchise. There have been three attempts across four movies to make the Fantastic Four work on the silver screen, from the unreleased 1994 Roger Corman production, to the two...

It’s a jam-packed ‘Monthly Stuff’ episode for June as we give our first impressions of the Nintendo Switch 2 at launch and react to the latest season of Doctor Who. First, Sean gives us his review of Doom: The Dark Ages,  while Jonathan talks about watching the classic Takahata Isao anime Heidi, Girl of the Alps.  Then we go through some not-E3 2025 news, including the announcement of a Persona 4 ...

Purely Academic  continues its new format, with our second episode for May focusing on the month’s topic: In this case, we’re celebrating the release of DOOM: The Dark Ages  with a retrospective on the original PC DOOM  games from the 1990s. Over 30 years later, we still find the original DOOM  and DOOM II  utterly captivating, and we wanted to finally devote a podcast to discussing why they remai...

Purely Academic  has a new format starting this month, where we’ll be releasing two episodes a month: One focused on a specific topic, and the other featuring all the other up-to-date variety of News, ‘Show n’ Tell,’ the Monthly Ten, and more! The latter, which we’re nostalgically calling ‘The Monthly Stuff,’ is what you’re listening to today, and it’s a busy one! There was some big video game new...

This month, we’re trying something new by releasing the individual segments once a week, to spread the mountain of content we recorded out over the whole month. And that continues with this month’s main topic, where our resident English teacher, Sean Chapman, assigned us a very important reading: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,  the Great American Novel turning the ripe old age of 100 this...