Purely Academic with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman

This week saw the release of Matt Reeves’ The Batman,  the latest cinematic interpretation of the Caped Crusader, and by far the best one Hollywood has created to date. It’s the first Batman  film to get essential parts of the character right – like the hard-boiled detective roots, commitment to not killing enemies, and even some genuinely aspirational heroism – Reeves’ film is a genuine neo-noir...

With the hotly anticipated Season 2 of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba  having drawn to a close in Japan two weeks ago, we finally caught up with the astonishing run of episodes comprising the series’ “Entertainment District” Arc, which may just be the most impressively produced set of TV animation episodes we’ve ever seen. We spend a good long time gushing over the animation, the direction, the mu...

It’s a very busy week on the podcast, as we dive deep with both the Genshin Impact  2.5 update and Part VI of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin,  but before all that, Jonathan talks about his misadventures buying an OLED Nintendo Switch and trying to transfer content from his old Switch – it’s ludicrously difficult! – and we cover several pieces of news including the debut trailer for Amazon’s Lord o...

In 2017, we discussed Atlus’ landmark JRPG Persona 5  so exhaustively that we collected all our conversations into a single 10-hour super-podcast that become our most listened-to episode ever. Since Persona 5 Royal  – the updated, reworked version of the game – released in 2020, we’ve gotten countless requests to update our magnum opus, and after recording another 4 hours of discussion on The Roya...

This week brought the first Nintendo Direct presentation of 2022, and if it wasn’t the most earth-shattering event ever, it sure brought a lot to love for fans of obscure JRPGs and/or sports games. We discuss all the news in depth, talk a little more Genshin Impact,  and even spend a good 15 minutes gushing over the recent run of classic Doctor Who  Blu-ray sets, before diving into Part V of Mobil...

Nearly five years ago now, Atlus’ Persona 5  released in the United States and took our hearts, compelling us to record several weeks’ worth of spoiler-cast discussions on the game that we later compiled into a 10.5-hour mega-podcast that quickly became our most popular episode ever! Since Persona 5 Royal  – the updated, reworked version of the game – released in 2020, we’ve gotten countless reque...

This week saw another major acquisition in the world of gaming as Sony, makers of PlayStation, purchased Bungie – the original makers of Halo, Xbox’s most iconic franchise – for a cool $3.6 billion. We discuss the implications of this deal for the future of PlayStation and Destiny,  but that’s not the only Halo- adjacent talk this week, as we also make fun of the awful new trailer for the Halo  TV...

A legend is born in Part III of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin – Dawn of Rebellion,  which sees Casval Rem Deikun adopt – er, violently steal – the identity of Char Aznable, and gradually develop the colorful, calculating persona made so iconic in Gundam ’79.  It’s one of the most entertaining episodes in the history of Gundam,  an archetypal military academy story built on the foundation of Char’...

The big news in gaming this week – and probably all year, and maybe all decade – was news of Microsoft’s intent to purchase Activision Blizzard King, one of the last major third party publishers standing in the West, for $69 billion, an astronomical and purely theoretical sum of money that makes us extremely depressed about the capitalist hellscape we all inhabit. After attempting to wrap our head...

For our first Gundam discussion of the New Year, we’re beginning our journey through Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin,  the 6-part theatrical OVA created between 2015 and 2018, based on Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s manga of the same name. And to give this great series the royal treatment it deserves, we’re covering it one episode at a time! For this week, we’re discussing Part I: Blue-Eyed Casval, where we...

For our first episode of 2022, we’re taking a look back at the best video games of 2021! It was a slower and more unpredictable year for games than we’ve had in a while, with more releases impacted by pandemic delays and the new-generation consoles continuing to be hard to find, but there were still plenty of truly memorable highlights, from the madcap horror insanity of Resident Evil Village,  to...

In this special bonus episode, Jonathan Lack, co-host of The Weekly Stuff Podcast, shares his Top 10 Films of 2021 (and more!).  You can read or follow along with the text version of this piece at http://www.jonathanlack.com/2021/12/jonathan-lacks-top-10-films-of-2021.html  2021 was yet another terrible year for the world, but it turned out to be one of the greatest years for cinema in my lifetime...

For the final Weekly Stuff Podcast of 2021, we are reviewing Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections,  the new entry in the Matrix franchise coming a whole 18 years after Reloaded  and Revolutions  landed in 2003. We did full in-depth revisitations of the original Matrix trilogy on episodes 398, 401, and 402, and this discussion is a great follow-up on those conversations, as we dive deep with t...

We’re here to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays with our 4th annual Weekly Stuff Podcast Christmas Special! After reviewing the Pokemon Christmas Bash  album in 2018, reading through a Western-themed Evangelical Christian rendering of A Christmas Carol  in 2019, and reviewing the extremely festive/psychosexual Christmas masterpiece Batman Returns  in 2020, we’re back for another season...

Hollywood’s biggest release of the year is here with Spider-Man: No Way Home,  the third entry in the MCU’s incarnation of Spidey, and Sean and Jonathan disagree on it pretty heavily at the outset. Sean liked it a lot, while Jonathan…didn’t. But it makes for a really engaging discussion where we find more consensus than initially anticipated, and Jonathan finds himself wanting to give the movie an...

This week saw both the big video game advertising show called The Game Awards and the release of Halo: Infinite’s  surprisingly good campaign, and we discuss both of those before diving into another Weekly Suit Gundam  extravaganza reviewing the second season of Iron-Blooded Orphans.  It’s safe to say we were big fans of the first season, and as the length of this podcast can attest, we are even m...

After taking last week off due to the Thanksgiving holiday, we’re back with a veritable menagerie of stuff for you this week. First up, we hit two pieces of news – the first teaser trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One)  and a Bloomberg report about Sony planning a new PlayStation subscription to compete with Xbox Game Pass – before diving into a big array of game content. Sean...

We’ve finally arrived at the most recent mainline Gundam  TV series on our Weekly Suit Gundam  journey! But before diving into that, we also give thoughts on Halo Infinite’s  multiplayer launch, Jonathan’s early impressions of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond,  and more news about the unfathomably awful environment that is Activision Blizzard. Then it’s on to 2015’s Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orpha...

Today’s episode is dedicated to Trans Awareness Week and Mermaids UK, a group supporting transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse children and their families. We are running a fundraiser to benefit the group and encourage listeners to contribute. Please click here to donate. Today – November 16th, 2021 – is 20 years to the day since Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone arrived in American thea...

We finish our journey through the original Matrix trilogy this week with 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions,  following up on our discussion of the original in episode #398 and The Matrix Reloaded in last week’s #401. We have some minor points of disagreement here, but largely share the view that The Matrix  went out on a rousing high note, with a focused and propulsive final installment that puts big...

In anticipation of this December’s Matrix Resurrections,  we return to the world of The Matrix with 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded,  following up on our discussion of the original film in episode #398. Jonathan is a passionate defender of the Matrix sequels, and Sean hasn’t seen them in many years, and while we don’t agree entirely on how much everything works in this ambitious second installment, we...

Our landmark 400th episode is one of our longest and most entertaining episodes to date, packed with news – including announcements out of DC Fandome and trailers for both The Batman  (yay!) and Uncharted  (nay!) – reviews – Sean talks Far Cry 6,  Jonathan discusses the Xbox Series S and The Ascent,  and we both give our thoughts on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune  adaptation – and a whole lot of celebrat...

This week’s show is another Weekly Suit Gundam spectacular, but before reviewing Reconguista in G,  Jonathan gives some final thoughts on the outstanding Metroid Dread,  and we discuss some recent Nintendo news, including the addition of Sora from Kingdom Hearts  to Super Smash Bros.,  and the unveiling of Nintendo’s laughably expensive Switch online expansion. Then it’s on to Reconguista in G,  t...

With The Matrix Resurrections  arriving in theaters this December, we are finally – almost 400 episodes into this damn podcast – taking our long-awaited look back at one of the single most seminal films of our lifetimes: The Wachowski Sisters’ The Matrix,  a movie that is either at or very near the upper threshold of how good it is possible for big Hollywood studio filmmaking to be. This is such a...

This week’s show – kicking off our October “Road to 400” podcast episodes! – is a fun grab-bag of topics, as we review Deathloop from Arkane Studios, Sean gives first impressions of Lost Judgment from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios, and we cover a mountain of interesting news, from details on the imminent 2nd season of Kimetsu no Yaiba,  to a surprise Nintendo Direct packed with interesting announcements a...