Lunchbox Reaction

Here to Slay is a strategic fantasy card game where you try to collect heroes and slay monsters. But watch out! Your fellow players are trying to do the same thing as you, and will stop you at every turn if given the chance. Find out our thoughts on the game, plus our weekly pop-culture news tidbits and fortune cookie readings.

Way back on episode 8 of Lunchbox Reaction, we discussed the first season of one of our favorite animated shows, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. This week, we return to our favorite mute-filled, postapocalyptic world and check up on what Kipo and her friends are up to in season 2 of this awesome show.

Here's a holiday special we can get behind! Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas is a new animated 30-minute special from Aardman Animations. You can stream it on Netflix, and we can't recommend it enough. It's packed full of fun, mayhem, and Christmas cheer. Check it out!

Just in time for the holiday season, we play and review the tile game Azul, a strategy game in which you "draft" sets of colored tiles to fill patterns on your board. The rules feel complicated at first glance, but once you learn the basics, it's a very straightforward game that requires a good amount of strategy. We play a sample round (which may or may not be that entertaining, as it is a very visual game), and fill out the episode with our usual pop-culture news and fortune cookie readings.

Aardman Animations new short film Robin Robin was just released on Netflix. It's a holiday story of a young bird living with a family of mice and trying her best to fit in. On this episode we give a quick review of the show, and talk a little about what makes something a musical, versus a story that happens to have songs. In addition, we also learn that when you watch the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, make sure you're watching the parade from the correct year! All this, plus fortune cookies.

Evan planned and hosted our discussion of Marvel's latest movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. We talk about our favorite characters, plus the fact that there are (finally!) no floating sky cities. All that, plus our pop-culture news and fortune cookies.

It's our 60th episode, so what better to cover than the 1961 Disney comedy The Parent Trap, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary! Brian remembers watching this movie in his elementary school library on actual film. Does the movie hold up for Linnea and Evan? Find out on today's show.

Linnea is busy this week, so co-hosts Evan and Brian use this week to discuss the Fox reality series Lego Masters. Specifically, they talk about the most recent season of 12 episodes, who their favorite building team was, and what they thought of host Will Arnet.

In celebration of Halloween, we watched the 1993 stop-motion animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas. Is it a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie? That's just one of the questions we discussed this week.

We return to UA High this week, and talk about season 2 of the anime My Hero Academia. Was it better than the first season? Yes! Is it easy for animators to draw invisible characters? We think so! All that, plus our usual pop-culture news and fortune cookies.

We reviewed the first season of My Hero Academia in July, 2021 on episode 44.