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 series and revisit the anemic, struggling Halo Infinite multiplayer a few months after release. Sean also review the Violet Evergarden movie now streaming on Netflix, and we gush some more over Genshin Impact before diving into our next Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin review. Part IV, Eve of Destiny, is a messier installment than others in this series, failing to find as clear or compelling a through-line as prior or upcoming episodes, even as it contains plenty of great moments including the first meeting between Char and Lalah, a powerful ending scene with Amuro and Fraw Bow, and an absolutely dynamite centerpiece action sequence on the moon. There’s more than enough here to discuss and enjoy, even if it’s all something of a stepping stone to some of The Origin’s best material yet to come. 

Enjoy, and come back this Friday, February 11th, for a very special bonus episode containing our long-awaited, extremely belated, 4-hour-long review and discussion of Persona 5 Royal!

Time Chart: 

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:03:54 

Genshin Impact: 0:03:54 – 0:14:26

Sean Talks Violet Evergarden: 0:14:26 – 0:21:00

Halo Infinite Multiplayer: 0:21:00 – 0:38:02

News: 0:38:02 – 1:12:24

Gundam Origin IV: 1:12:24 – 2:41:50

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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’s twisted friendship with Garma Zabi, and all leading inexorably towards the horrors of the One-Year War. We discuss that at length as today’s main topic, but before diving into Gundam, you’ll also hear Sean talk about Genshin Impact, hear Jonathan’s thoughts on (finally!) watching HBO’s venerable masterpiece Deadwood, and learn our reaction to the latest slew of Doctor Who rumors! 

Enjoy, and come back next week for our long-awaited, extremely belated review and discussion of Persona 5 Royal!

Time Chart: 

Intro & Stuff: 0:00:00 – 0:26:50

Gundam Origin Part III: 0:26:50 – 1:57:11

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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 heads around that news, it’s on to another adventure in the world of Gundam, as our journey through the past of the Universal Century continues with Part II of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. One of the most heart-wrenching installments in the series, Artesia’s Sorrow is a fantastic hour with more than enough to make it worth the full podcast treatment, and we once again find countless things to talk about breaking it down. 

Enjoy! 

Time Chart: 

Intro & Stuff: 0:00:00 – 0:06:01

Microsoft News: 0:06:01 – 0:38:41

Gundam Origin Part II: 0:38:41 – 2:18:02

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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 return to Universal Century 0068 in the Republic of Munzo, where a young Casval Rem Deikun and his sister Artesia see the world thrown into chaos after the death of their father, the revolutionary leader Zeon Zum Deikun. It’s a great debut episode for one of the best prequel stories ever told, but if you’re not into Gundam, we’ve also got a half-hour of Stuff at the top of the podcast, with Sean telling us all about the first Kimetsu no Yaiba game, The Hinokami Chronicles, and Jonathan telling us about his fancy new computer! 

Enjoy! 

Time Chart: 

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:01:59

Kimetsu no Yaiba Game: 0:01:59 – 0:15:38

Jonathan’s fancy new computer: 0:15:38 – 0:30:14

Gundam The Origin: 0:30:14 – 2:18:44

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Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

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Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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 the thrillingly silly assassinations of Hitman 3, to the first new Metroid 2D adventure in almost 20 years, to a landmark year of updates for the outstanding Genshin Impact. Sean and Jonathan talk about all these and much more with our individual Top 10 lists, along with a few honorable mentions, Jonathan’s list of the Top 5 Games Not-quite of 2021, and look forward to what’s sure to be another busy year for the podcast! 

Enjoy! 

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

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Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

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Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

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Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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. The last time I felt this strongly about a year’s worth of movies was 2014 – and before that, 2007, and 2001. Every six or seven years, it seems, we get one of these remarkable years, a convergence of established masters at the height of their craft and bold new voices establishing lasting legacies, with unexpected pleasures coming at us from all directions. 

I loved so many films this year so passionately that in addition to the main Top 10, we’ve got an additional 10 runners-up, bringing us to a nice even Top 20, and then five extra ‘leftovers’ I would have felt bad ignoring, so I guess it’s kind of a Top 25. #20-11 have paragraph-length capsule statements, but for the Top 10, I went all out, penning either a mini-review or a short essay for each. That means this is one of the longest pieces I’ve ever published. But the movies this year deserved it, and since I didn’t get to write many public-facing pieces on film this year, I owed it to myself to spend some time writing about all these works that meant so much to me. 

Ok then. Deep breath. Here we go. 

Time Chart: 

Intro: 0:00:00 - 0:03:41 

Part 1 - Leftovers: 0:03:41 - 0:05:21 

Part 2 - Honorable Mentions: 0:05:21 - 0:17:48 

Part 3 - The Top 10 Films of 2021: 0:17:48 - 1:10:17

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Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

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Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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 this ambitious, challenging sequel that sees Wachowski updating the Matrix – the world and the characters, but also the franchise itself and its many eclectic themes – for a world that’s changed an awful lot in the last 20 years. Sean and Jonathan disagree on exactly how effective the film is on its own terms, but we’re in complete harmony on it being an interesting, passionate idea that’s more than worthy of spending a few hours discussing. 

Thanks so much for listening throughout 2021, and we look forward to seeing you all in the 2022 for a whole new year of The Weekly Stuff Podcast!

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

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Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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 of mayhem – and this time, it’s a crossover with Weekly Suit Gundam!  For this Christmas, Jonathan has found several pieces (out of a surprisingly large sea of options) of Christmas-themed Mobile Suit Gundam fanfiction, set in the worlds of Gundam Wing, Gundam SEED, and Mobile Fighter G Gundam, and he surprises Sean on air by inviting him to read them out loud. A festive, flabbergasted, and altogether confusing time is had by all. 

We here at The Weekly Stuff Podcast wish you and yours a very happy holiday, and look forward to seeing you next week for our final episode of 2021, with our review of The Matrix Resurrections. 

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Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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 another chance in the future. Before the big Spidey review, though, we also talk a bit about playing Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5 Strikers, Jonathan talks about listening to some excellent recent Doctor Who releases from Big Finish, and we discuss finishing the Halo Infinite campaign. All this and more on our first episode in our new Tuesday timeslot, as The Weekly Stuff Podcast is moving from Mondays to Tuesdays going forward (with a Monday night premiere every week at 7:00 PM CT on our YouTube channel – www.youtube.com/c/TheWeeklyStuffPodcast)

Time Chart:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:07:48

Persona Stuff: 0:07:48 – 0:27:27

Doctor Who Stuff: 0:27:27 – 0:41:00

Halo Infinite Stuff: 0:41:00 – 1:06:28

Spider-Man No Way Home: 1:06:28 – 3:00:12

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Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

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 more invested in the big thematic, narrative, and emotional swings the show takes in its second and final season. As it traces the fall of Tekkadan, Iron-Blooded Orphans challenges its characters and audience with a story that’s richer, more complicated, and intentionally structured very differently than the first season, with an absolutely knockout set of final episodes that cross many lines Gundam has never ventured past before, and somehow comes out on the other side seeing more hope in the world than the franchise has seen in its darkest hours. It’s an all-time great finish to a truly tremendous show, and even with an extra-long 4-hour podcast, there’s still so much that could be said about this modern masterpiece. 

Enjoy! 

Time Chart:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:05:28

Game Awards Stuff: 0:05:28 – 0:34:02

Halo Infinite Campaign: 0:34:02 – 1:11:41

Iron-Blooded Orphans 2 – Iron-Blooded Boogaloo: 1:11:41 – 5:10:59

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

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Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!

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Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://japanimationstation.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

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

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman