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 KyoAni has produced to date, a return not only to Arawi’s zany comic stylings, but to the bold, experimental s...
Oct 15, 2025•3 hr 29 min•Ep. 559
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 terms of ‘highs,’ though, games are still great, and there’s way too many out there for us to play the...
Oct 08, 2025•3 hr 10 min•Ep. 558
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, depicting three major battles across its 155-minute runtime, and executing on all of it at the same insanely h...
Sep 17, 2025•3 hr 15 min•Ep. 557
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 semester. We discuss a bunch of video games both old and new, from Donkey Kong Bananza and Mafia: The O...
Aug 29, 2025•3 hr 40 min•Ep. 556
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 great lead performances, excellent retro-futuristic production design, and a particularly fun second ac...
Aug 01, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 555
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 deeper here with a full spoiler-filled discussion, breaking down all the characters, performances, themes, s...
Jul 17, 2025•2 hr 15 min•Ep. 554
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 playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on the PS5, watching Ultraman Gaia, and the second season of Disne...
Jul 11, 2025•3 hr 6 min•Ep. 553
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 Tim Story-directed films at 20th Century Fox in 2005 and 2007, to the ill-fated production of 2015’s ...
Jun 27, 2025•2 hr 50 min•Ep. 552
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 remake and Xbox’s first branded handheld, before diving into all things Nintendo Switch 2. Jonathan ha...
Jun 13, 2025•3 hr 55 min•Ep. 551
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 remain such great, singular staples of the first-person shooter genre. And if that wasn’t enough, we also deci...
May 23, 2025•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 550
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 news with Nintendo Switch 2 preorders and enormous Xbox price hikes; Sean has been playing some big PS5 ...
May 09, 2025•3 hr 1 min•Ep. 549
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 month! We discuss the novel itself, along with two of its cinematic adaptations – the 1974 film dire...
Apr 25, 2025•2 hr 52 min•Ep. 548
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 concludes with the month’s last segment, but certainly not its least: The Monthly Ten, the part of the show where Sean and Jonathan challenge each other to make increasingly ridiculous Top 10 lists. In this month’s installment, Jonathan tasked Sean with ranking the Top 10 most unlikely creative collaborations for the Mobile Suit...
Apr 25, 2025•20 min•Ep. 547
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 week’s ‘Show n’ Tell’ segment, in which Sean and Jonathan discuss what they’ve been watching and playing over the last month. Sean talks about the new Like a Dragon game, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, while Jonathan raves about belatedly catching up on Netflix’s Daredevil and watching the revival series, Born Agai...
Apr 18, 2025•53 min•Ep. 546
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 begins with a super-sized news segment, in which we break down Nintendo’s official unveiling of the Nintendo Switch 2, an announcement met with simultaneous excitement, controversy, and uncertainty. The price, and the possibility that it might skyrocket thanks to a certain dumbass’ Tariff policy, was the biggest news, but the sy...
Apr 11, 2025•2 hr 9 min•Ep. 545
For March, we’ve put together a really fun grab-bag of an episode, including a topic segment where we answer a big pile of listener mail from our amazing audience members! Sean and I respond to your questions about our favorite directors, how we analyze art when preparing for podcasts, what we would program if we owned our own movie theater, and much more! In the News segment, we discuss the reveal of instant GOTY 2025 frontrunner Digimon Story Time Stranger, Microsoft’s stupid new Project Muse ...
Mar 07, 2025•4 hr 3 min•Ep. 544
It’s February, the month of love, and we’re celebrating it in style, first by talking about one of our most beloved (and oft-referenced) movies, Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane, and then by having Sean count down the Top 10 Weirdest Anime ‘Ships he could think of, complete with original fan-fic excerpts for each and every one. We also pay tribute to David Lynch, a filmmaker both Sean and Jonathan loved dearly, after his passing at the age of 78 in January; talk about Nintendo’s first...
Feb 07, 2025•3 hr 26 min•Ep. 543
For our first episode of 2025, we take a look back at the very best in video games from 2024, with Sean and Jonathan both presenting their picks for the 10 greatest video games of the year, a diverse collection of titles including several games we’ve never discussed on the show before! In our Show n’ Tell segment, Jonathan talks about his adventures graduating, moving, and preparing for a new job, Sean talks about watching old Gamera movies and Ultraman Tiga, and we review the Doctor Who Christm...
Jan 10, 2025•4 hr 44 min•Ep. 542
In this special bonus episode, Jonathan Lack counts down the Top 10 Films of 2024! You can read the text of this episode, and see links to full reviews of every film discussed, at https://www.jonathanlack.com/p/the-top-10-films-of-2024 Time Chart: Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:02:38 Honorable Mentions: 0:02:38 – 0:10:54 #10: 0:10:54 – 0:16:12 #9: 0:16:12 – 0:20:22 #8: 0:20:22 – 0:24:53 #7: 0:24:53 – 0:29:36 #6: 0:29:36 – 0:33:12 #5: 0:33:12 – 0:37:51 #4: 0:37:51 – 0:41:35 #3: 0:41:35 – 0:46:02 #2: 0:46:02 ...
Dec 31, 2024•57 min•Ep. 541
For our December episode, we go deep with Atlus’ outstanding new JRPG, Metaphor: ReFantazio. Like Persona 5, the team’s previous game, this is a work deeply involved in the political and existential questions of our present time, and gives us a lot to chew on as we break down what is easily one of 2024’s best games. In our Show n’ Tell segment, Sean gives his first impressions on Sony’s PS5 Pro and the range of games upgraded to work on it, Jonathan reviews Square Enix’s incredible Dragon Quest ...
Dec 06, 2024•4 hr•Ep. 540
It’s our busiest episode yet, with a giant six-hour extravaganza to get you through the month of November. Our main topic concerns the Gamera Heisei trilogy from the 1990s; directed by Kaneko Shusuke with special effects by Higuchi Shinji, these movies are towering classics of the Kaiju genre, and secretly some of the greatest superhero films ever made – and they’re very fun to talk about. For the news segment, we discuss 343 Industries becoming Halo Studios and speculate about the future of the...
Nov 08, 2024•6 hr 4 min•Ep. 539
For the October installment of Purely Academic, Jonathan and Sean embrace the spooky season by talking Halloween – specifically, the recent Halloween reboot/sequel trilogy directed by David Gordon Green and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, with the hosts debating whether these films are muddled messes or interesting revisionist takes on the slasher genre. We break down some recent News, including Sony’s controversial unveiling of the PS5 Pro, several new game announcements including Ghost of Yōtei and...
Oct 11, 2024•4 hr 17 min•Ep. 538
For the first episode of this new incarnation of the podcast, Jonathan and Sean introduce (or reintroduce) themselves to listeners by interviewing each other, with a mix of questions equal parts insightful and ridiculous. Then for our first ‘Show ‘n Tell’ segment, we discuss what we’ve been playing and watching recently, with Sean discussing HoYoverse’s Zenless Zone Zero and his ongoing adventures with Ultraman, while Jonathan shares his thoughts on the recently localized Tsukihime remake and wh...
Sep 06, 2024•3 hr 5 min•Ep. 537
The Weekly Stuff Podcast may be dead, but that doesn't mean we are! Sean and Jonathan are here for a quick update to remind you that we're working on the next incarnation of the show behind the scenes, and announcing its premiere in September! Jonathan also tells you all about the new subscriptions at his site, www.JonathanLack.com , where you can get weekly classic film reviews and more! There is a lot of exciting stuff coming from us in the final months of 2024, including the end of Japanimati...
Aug 05, 2024•20 min•Ep. 536
For our 500th episode, we’ve prepared one of the biggest and best podcasts we’ve ever made. Following up on episode 499, where we counted down our favorite anime opening themes, our main topic today is our Top 10 Favorite Anime Ending Themes, and this one is even more exciting, with endings from shows like Dragon Ball, Haruhi Suzumiya, multiple Gundam shows, Clannad, and more tugging at our heartstrings and contributing massively to our connection with each of these great shows. Sean and Jonatha...
Jun 25, 2024•6 hr 51 min•Ep. 535
This month, The Weekly Stuff Podcast is reaching its 500th episode, and we’re celebrating with two massive episodes counting down our Top 10 Favorite Anime Opening & Ending Themes. The former is the main topic of today’s show, as Sean and Jonathan share their respective 10 favorite Anime Openings, from obvious favorites like Dragon Ball Z and Neon Genesis Evangelion, to deeper cuts including Maison Ikkoku and Patlabor. It’s an extremely fun countdown, with a few big surprises along the way, ...
Jun 10, 2024•5 hr 16 min•Ep. 534
After many months and hundreds of hours of play, Sean and Jonathan have finally both finished Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the second installment in Square Enix’s remake trilogy, and … we didn’t really like it. So today, we’re going to tell you why, diving into a game that starts out promising but turns out to be a very flat, frequently frustrating, extraordinarily long experience that ends with an unbelievably frustrating series of narrative decisions. We also review the latest episodes of Doctor...
May 28, 2024•3 hr 23 min•Ep. 533
Doctor Who returned this week for its new season (Series 14, Season 1, or Season 40, depending on who you ask), the first full run starring Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor and Millie Gibson as companion Ruby Sunday. And the first two episodes were a ton of fun, particularly the formally off-the-wall “The Devil’s Chord,” which proves returning showrunner Russell T Davies is taking the show in a very different direction than anything we’ve seen before! But before that, we have to talk about the awf...
May 14, 2024•2 hr 37 min•Ep. 532
Jonathan had a very exciting week as The Criterion Collection published an essay he wrote on Makoto Shinkai , thus checking off a major bucket list item, while Sean had an extremely boring week administering standardized tests to high schoolers and showing them the 2011 animated not-a-classic, Gnomeo & Juliet. We talk about both of those experiences, share some more thoughts on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and finally hear Jonathan gush about the 1997 Berserk anime, now on Blu-ray from Discote...
Apr 30, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 531
In one of the grab-baggiest grab bag episodes we’ve ever recorded, Sean reviews a bunch of anime including Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Solo Leveling, and The Dangers in My Heart, and talks about playing through all the DLC for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot; Jonathan gives his thoughts on Netflix’s outstanding new drama Ripley and talks about finally getting his hands on the premium Game Boy device, the Analogue Pocket; and finally, we both give our initial impressions of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, S...
Apr 16, 2024•2 hr 57 min•Ep. 530
