Purely Academic with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman

After reviewing the original Gundam Build Fighters  and its sequel series Gundam Build Fighters Try  on our last two Weekly Suit Gundam  topics, it’s time to round out the original Build Fighters  run by rounding-up the many OVAs related to this corner of the franchise. We begin with Model Suit Gunpla Builders Beginning G,  the 2010 OVA that first introduced the concept of a Gunpla Battle-based an...

It’s another Weekly Suit Gundam extravaganza this week as we dive into the sequel to the wonderful Gundam Build Fighters – Gundam Build Fighters Try,  set 7 years after the original with a new cast of Gunpla battlers. It’s a divisive show in the Gundam fandom, and on this podcast! Jonathan loves it, though not without some reservations, and Sean is mostly unmoved by it, despite liking certain thin...

We’re diving into the Marvel’s latest movie this week, and it might also be one of their greatest: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings  is a blast, featuring the best action set-pieces in Marvel movie history, the best performance in the studio’s long run courtesy of the legendary Tony Leung, and a heartfelt, imaginative story that confidently reinvents the title character’s world and mythos...

We were supposed to review Marvel’s latest blockbuster Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings  this week, but in a strange twist of fate Sean arrived at the theater to find they’d just burst a pipe and had to shut down. So instead, we’re catching up on a few Marvel properties from 2021 we haven’t yet reviewed on the podcast: WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,  and Loki,  the first...

After an opening segment where we discuss Sean’s final thoughts on Returnal,  Jonathan finally jumping in 4 years later to Horizon Zero Dawn,  and our reactions to the Spider-Man: No Way Home  trailer, it’s time for another Weekly Suit Gundam extravaganza! This time it’s 2013’s Gundam Build Fighters,  where Gundam leaves the world of life-and-death warfare and science-fiction (mostly) behind, and...

After last week’s marathon Evangelion podcast , we’re back with a shorter, more grab-bag style episode, where we answer a chunk of listener questions on everything from Gundam to comic books to Super Sentai. Before that, though, we also have a big list of news items to get through, from the Great Jeopardy Host Debacle, to Halo: Infinite announcing it will release without co-op campaign or Forge, t...

Almost two years ago, we reviewed Neon Genesis Evangelion  upon its Netflix streaming debut, and promised that we’d come back to discuss Eva  again if and when the 4-film Rebuild of Evangelion  project was ever finished. And with the final film in Hideaki Anno’s lifelong passion project, Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: Thrice Upon a Time,  now streaming worldwide (alongside the first three films) on Amazon...

For the first time since before the pandemic, we’re devoting the show to a brand new Hollywood movie: James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad,  the standalone sequel/very expensive apology for 2016’s atrocious, definite-article-lacking Suicide Squad,  and while it’s not a film we both like equally, it’s definitely one we each enjoyed, and which offers a lot of fun things to talk about. Before the movie rev...

Today’s main topic is another Weekly Suit Gundam  extravaganza, as we finish up the underrated gem Mobile Suit Gundam AGE,  but before that, there’s a solid 80 minutes of non-Gundam material, from Jonathan’s thoughts on David Lowery’s incredible The Green Knight  to news of Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall leaving Doctor Who, to Scarlett Johansson suing Disney over Black Widow,  and the ongoing...

With its massive 2.0 update going live this past week, we thought it was finally time to devote an episode to our favorite ongoing video game, Genshin Impact,  the open-world Gacha sensation with some of the best writing, visuals, music, and world-building in the industry. We dive deep with the new 2.0 expansion, which adds the Japan-inspired island continent of Inazuma, lots of new story and char...

Today’s main topic is another Weekly Suit Gundam  extravaganza, but before that, we also give first impressions on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD  for Nintendo Switch, react to Valve’s announcement of the Steam Deck portable PC gaming console, and talk about Jonathan’s nostalgic binge of American TV classic ER,  and the wonderful, helicopter-related absurdities of the network TV dramas of y...

Our Batman on Film series reaches the end of the Christopher Nolan era with 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises,  the infuriatingly bad final chapter that amps the noxious politics, bad pacing, and frustrating characterization of the first two films up to 11. While Tom Hardy’s inspired performance as Bane is as entertaining as even, 9 years on it’s impossible to ignore the film’s terrible script, endless...

After a little back-and-forth on the week’s stuff – including Jonathan finishing the outstanding Kimetsu no Yaiba ( Demon Slayer ) manga – and checking in on a few quick pieces of news, including Ghost of Tsushima  getting a PS5 re-release in August, we dive straight into our latest Weekly Suit Gundam  extravaganza with Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway.  Premiering worldwide on Netflix this week after...

Our ongoing Batman on Film  series reaches perhaps the single most iconic and influential film the Caped Crusader has yet starred in with 2008’s The Dark Knight . 13 years later, neither of us quite feel the way we do at the time, and find the movie ripe for reevaluation in a lot of ways. There are plenty of inarguably great elements on display here, from Heath Ledger’s epochal portrayal of the Jo...

Two years ago today, our sister series podcast project Weekly Suit Gundam  was born, and what a wild ride it’s been! Just as we did on its first anniversary, we’re using the show’s birthday to take stock of everything we’ve reviewed up to now. With a particular focus on the “Year Two” shows – namely G Saviour, 0080: War in the Pocket, 0083: Stardust Memory, The 08th MS Team, Gundam SEED, Gundam SE...

We’ve got two big topics this week, starting with a wrap-up of E3 2021, which we mostly covered in last week’s show, but wrapped up on Tuesday with Nintendo, by far the best showcase of the event. With big surprises like Metroid Dread,  welcome new entries in the WarioWare  and Mario Party  series, our best look yet at Shin Megami Tensei V,  and our first gameplay footage from the Breath of the Wi...

After being cancelled in 2020, E3 – the Electronic Entertainment Expo, aka “That Week With All the Video Game Trailers” – is back, sort of, for 2021, in entirely online form. And as we’ve done since the beginning, we’re covering all of it, with today’s episode going over the shows from Ubisoft, Microsoft/Bethesda, Square Enix, and the Summer Games Fest, with Sean’s traditionally exhaustive and/or...

Our BATMAN ON FILM series starts catching up to the modern age of superhero films this week with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins,  the 2005 franchise reboot that marked a new degree of seriousness – not just in theme and tone, but also in production value, casting, and direction – for films about the Caped Crusader, and set the stage for Batman’s biggest moments of mainstream global popularity i...

After going through some big pre-E3 video game news – including events about Dragon Quest, Sonic the Hedgehog,  and Horizon: Forbidden West  – and some other odds and ends, we dive into Part 7 of our BATMAN ON FILM series, with the 2000 direct-to-video feature Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.  Produced by the same team behind the classic Batman: The Animated Series  (and earlier film reviewed i...

It’s another dive into the world of Mobile Suit Gundam  this week with MS IGLOO,  but before that, you’ll also hear some big personal news from Sean, more discussion of Jason Schreier’s fantastic new book Press Reset,  and more Resident Evil  talk, including Jonathan’s experience playing Resident Evil Zero  for the first time. Then we’re off to one of the most obscure corners of Gundam  animation,...

This week’s super-sized podcast offers two in-depth video game reviews for the price of one, as we break down this month’s outstanding Resident Evil Village  and last year’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon –  which we’ve both finally finished! – in long spoiler-filled discussions. A fantastic balance of the terrifying and the silly, Resident Evil Village  hits the absolute perfect sweet spot for both of us...

It’s a fun grab-bag style episode this week as we discuss several pieces of recent news, from the results of the One Piece World Top 100 poll to Sega announcing Yakuza spin-off Lost Judgment  to Toei finally confirming a new Dragon Ball Super  movie for 2022, before moving on to our first, largely spoiler-free impressions of Resident Evil Village.  It’s an outstanding game so far, building on what...

After a bit of a delay due to Sean and Jonathan being extremely reluctant to watch the actual movie, our ongoing Batman on Film  series is back with the last Batman film of the 90s, and one of the worst movies ever made: Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin,  a flop that’s just as terrible if not worse than Batman Forever  in a whole host of ways, while offering a few improvements thanks to Arnold Sch...

After reviewing the first season of the anime in last week’s show, we’re back to review Demon Slayer ~Kimetsu no Yaiba~ The Movie: Mugen Train,  the highest-grossing film in the history of Japan, and one that’s already making waves after its debut in North American theaters this weekend. It was both of our first trips back to a movie theater in over a year, since the start of the pandemic, and we...

We’re talking about anime again this week, but for once, it’s not Gundam! It’s Kimetsu no Yaiba,  also known as Demon Slayer,  the most popular anime/manga franchise in Japan right now, and increasingly one of the most discussed around the world. With the record-breaking movie, Mugen Train,  making its way to North American theaters next week, we go in-depth with the first season of the anime from...