Purely Academic with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman

Nearly 4 years after Broly, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero –  the 21st Dragon Ball  film overall, and 4th of the modern era – opened this weekend in North American theaters, playing in both English and Japanese for the first time in franchise history, and with the widest opening for an anime film ever in the United States, playing on nearly 4,000 screens! It’s also the first Dragon Ball  film to be...

Before continuing our journey through Fullmetal Alchemist,  Jonathan and Sean catch up with a very loopy opening segment in which Jonathan asks many increasingly silly questions about Sean’s experience teaching in Texas; Sean reviews the game Sifu  for PS5; and Jonathan talks about his impromptu deep dive into the works of Orson Welles. And then it’s back to the world of Fullmetal Alchemist  for t...

This week’s show starts off with the baffling news about the newly-merged Warner Bros. Discovery shelving a completed Batgirl  film for a tax write-down, and then continues into the first big topic from our new anime podcast, Japanimation Station,  where we’re diving into the world of Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist,  starting today with the 2003 anime that partially adapted the then-young ma...

The Weekly Stuff Podcast is off this week, but for good reason - we're launching a new anime podcast! And for the debut episode of Japanimation Station, we're introducing (or re-introducing) ourselves and hosting a spirited discussion about how we got into anime, how our fandoms and interests have evolved over the years, what makes animation special in the first place, and why anime in particular...

Today’s episode is a real treat, as we finally take the time to talk about one of the greatest video games of all time, Resident Evil 4.  With the remake of Capcom’s action classic coming next Spring, and Sean and Jonathan both having fallen hard down the Resident Evil  rabbit hole at different times over the past few years, we thought now was the perfect time to break down why Resident Evil 4  is...

Jonathan Lack and Sean Chapman, hosts of the upcoming anime podcast Japanimation Station, speak with musician Thomas Lack, composer of the original theme song to Japanimation Station!    Subscribe on all podcast platforms at http://JapanimationStation. Com   Follow Japanimation Station on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JapanimationPod   Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JonathanLa...

We start today’s show by chatting about work, with Sean telling a funny story about getting a teaching certification, before discussing our love for the fantastic anime Kaguya-sama: Love is War,  but then it’s time for Gundam! And this week, both Gundam  as a franchise and Weekly Suit Gundam  as a podcast are coming full circle by returning to the world of First Gundam, with the brand-new movie se...

Hosts Jonathan Lack and Sean Chapman introduce you to the world of JAPANIMATION STATION, a new anime podcast from the creators of Weekly Suit Gundam and The Weekly Stuff Podcast.  Subscribe on all podcast platforms at JapanimationStation. Com  Follow us on Twitter @JapanimationStation Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JonathanLack  Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter:  https://twitte...

This week saw the release of the hotly anticipated Thor: Love & Thunder,  a movie we were both looking forward to given what an exceptional effort director Taika Waititi’s last go-round with Thor  was in 2017’s Ragnarok.  Alas, the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is maybe the most disappointing, a muddled, unfocused, and aesthetically disastrous mess that has some good ideas and mome...

In the 3rd and final part of our Weekly Suit Gundam 3rd Anniversary ranking celebration, we’re ranking…well, almost everything! We start by listing our Top 10 favorite Mobile Suits from the last year’s worth of shows, our Top 10 Mobile Suits overall, our Top 10 favorite characters from across the franchise – and then it’s party time, as we deliver all the rankings requested by YOU, the listeners,...

Obi-Wan Kenobi,  the 6-episode Star Wars  miniseries on Disney+, finished up its run this week with an emotionally charged and visually stunning episode that proved this to be just as much a series about Darth Vader as it was about Obi-Wan, and all the better for it. We really enjoyed these 6 episodes, even with a few wonky bits of plotting or visuals along the way, and found ourselves deeply inve...

In today’s supercharged extra-long podcast (still less than half-as-long as last week’s 10th anniversary spectacular, though), we go through some of the gaming news from Not-E3 2022, including the reveal of the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga, Persona 3 and 4 coming to modern consoles, Resident Evil VILLage getting DLC, and much more! And then for our main topic, it’s a Weekly Suit...

10 years ago today, on June 13th, 2012, we launched The Weekly Stuff Podcast (then called WGTC Radio) – and today, 10 years and 432 episodes later, we’re bringing you the biggest episode we’ve ever done to celebrate. In this massive 10-hour podcast spectacular, we’ve recorded 10 topics for 10 years, each revisiting one of our many recurring subjects – like Doctor Who, Persona, Lord of the Rings, ...

It’s been three years since we started our sister series Weekly Suit Gundam , watching just two episodes of the original Mobile Suit Gundam  for our first show – and three years later, we’ve watched over 800 episodes of Gundam and reviewed every series in the pantheon. So for this year’s anniversary, we’re not just ranking the shows we reviewed in the past year – though we do that as well – but ra...

Ewan McGregor made his long-awaited return as Obi-Wan Kenobi in this week’s premiere episodes of the aptly titled Obi-Wan Kenobi  for Disney+, and we were so enthusiastic about the results we just had to share our thoughts in today’s episode! With a compelling characterization of an Obi-Wan stuck between the despair of his many losses in Episode III and the wise, hopeful mentor of Episode IV, the...

Jonathan shares his rankings of all 13 Star Trek films following an inexplicable completist run through all of them, which Sean mocks him roundly for, and then it’s time to settle all Gundam  business by reviewing two ONA (original net animation) series that are the last mainline Gundam titles we’ve yet left un-reviewed. Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt,  based on the manga by Yasuo Ohtagaki, aired...

Before ‘diving’ into this week’s Gundam  discussion – yes, it’s still a pun – Sean talks about finally upgrading to a new smartphone (after being on the iPhone 6S for over half the life of this show), asks Jonathan why he’s inexplicably watching through all the Star Trek  movies including the very bad ones, and Jonathan gives impressions of the excellent indie adventure Tunic  on Xbox. Then it’s t...

It’s a very ‘strange’ podcast this week – haha, get it? – as we review the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness!  Directed by the great Sam Raimi – and featuring WAY more of his characteristic humor, scares, distorted camera work, and cartoon violence than we expected – it’s one of the most unique, imaginative, and downright fun films Marvel ha...

After a bit of a break from the giant fighting robots, we’re diving back into Gundam this week, jumping all the way down to the bottom of the barrel to review 2018’s Gundam Build Divers.  Capitalizing on the Sword Art Online -inspired Isekai  craze of the 2010s, Gundam Build Divers  takes the Gunpla action out of the real world and into a very boring virtual reality, without really understanding w...

After hundreds of hours, countless deaths, millions of runes collected and dozens of demigods slain, Sean and Jonathan are both finally finished with FromSoftware’s incredible open-world RPG masterpiece Elden Ring,  and that means it is, at last, time for our in-depth spoiler-filled review and discussion. After discussing the game in bits and pieces along the way over the past two months, we dive...

It’s a loose and free-wheeling episode this week as we dive into a big bag of listener mail, answering your questions on anime, video games, Gundam, our most anticipated movies of the next year, and much more! Listeners answered the call with a bunch of fun questions that hopefully led to some entertaining and/or enlightening answers. We also talk some more about Elden Ring,  which Jonathan is slo...

With Sonic the Hedgehog 2  (the movie) currently atop the box office in theaters, we thought it would be a perfect time to take a look back at Sonic the Hedgehog 2  (the 1992 video game). Sonic 2  is one of the all-time great video game sequels, a landmark 2D platformer with some of the best graphics, art direction, sound, and music of the 16-bit era, all built atop wildly creative labyrinthine le...

It’s a stuff-heavy episode this week as Sean and Jonathan talk about the latest Genshin Impact  update, talk about anime they’ve been watching – including the news that Attack on Titan  is continuing its ‘Final Season’ to a third and actually final part next year – and discuss the news that PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now will soon be combining into three separate, confusingly-named tiers, th...

This week’s episode is all about the Shonen anime sensation Jujutsu Kaisen,  which recently saw its first film, Jujutsu Kaisen 0,  released in American theaters to surprising levels of success. It’s one of our favorite anime in recent years, and we’re finally taking the time to break down the first season, all the amazing characters, the best fights, the killer music, and the unholy amounts of swa...

We celebrate the 420th episode of The Weekly Stuff Podcast with absolutely no marijuana – but listeners are encouraged to blaze it – and instead stick to what truly gets us high: Mobile Suit Gundam  and life-consuming video games. For the first hour, we continue recounting our journey through FromSoftware’s Elden Ring –  which continues to be incredible – primarily discussing our time in the red w...