Purely Academic for November! Gamera Heisei Trilogy, Metaphor Impressions, and Sean's Best Birthday Gifts

Plus so much more on this very special, very long episode

It’s time for another episode of Purely Academic, a monthly variety podcast hosted by Jonathan Lack and Sean Chapman. Each month, we talk about our favorite video games, movies, anime, and more, having fun and maybe even learning something along the way. You can subscribe for free in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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 sp

ecial 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 franchise; talk about the end of Firewalk, the studio behind Sony’s massive bomb Firewalk; laugh about the bizarre state of Disney’s Star Wars movies, and question what the hell is up at Warner Bros. In the Show n’ Tell section, we give our first impressions on Atlus’ amazing new JRPG Metaphor ReFantazio, alongside thoughts on Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero and Sonic x Shadow Generations, and take a trip to Sean’s Beta Corner to discuss Monster Hunter Wilds. We debut a brand new segment, Hey, Listen!, in which Jonathan tries to explain what ‘Brat Summer’ is/was to a very confused Sean, and for The Monthly Ten, Jonathan ranks the 10 absolute best gifts we could get Sean for his birthday this month.

So yes – it’s a busy, silly, very fun episode. And we know it’s coming at a not particularly fun or silly time for America and the world, so Jonathan recorded an extra message at the top of the show reflecting on this week’s events.

Enjoy, and we’ll be back next month to dive much deeper with Metaphor ReFantazio, in the grand tradition of our long Persona spoiler-casts. What kinds of things do you think we’re going to learn next time?

Time Chart:

A Few Words from Jonathan: 0:00:00 – 0:19:19

Intro: 0:19:19 – 0:40:13

News: 0:40:13 – 1:52:12

Show n’ Tell: 1:52:12 – 2:57:27

Topic (Gamera): 2:57:27 – 5:30:08

Hey, Listen: 5:30:08 – 5:41:14

The Monthly Ten: 5:41:14 – 6:03:22

Outro: 6:03:22 – 6:04:21

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Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/