Purely Academic #2 - Halloween Trilogy, Astro Bot, PS5 Pro, Nihilistic Anime & More!

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 Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and news of Kyoto Animation making an exciting new film and TV series in 2025. In our ‘Show ‘n Tell’ segment, we discuss what we’ve been playing and watching recently, with Jonathan talking about the terrible new Joker movie, his experiences at the Denver Silent Film Festival, and finally finishing Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon, while Sean shares his thoughts on the 5.0 update of Genshin Impact, and we both discuss the outstanding new PS5 game Astro Bot. And finally, in the ‘Monthly Ten’ segment, Sean is challenged by Jonathan to rank the Top 10 Anime That Aren’t About the Power of Friendship. Enjoy, and we’ll be back next month for an exciting episode reviewing the Heisei-era Gamera trilogy, a series of classic Kaiju films we’ve been promising to discuss for years now. What kinds of things do you think we’re going to learn next time? Time Chart:Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:13:20News: 0:13:20 – 1:03:07Show n’ Tell: 1:03:07 – 2:22:27Topic (Halloween!): 2:22:27 – 3:56:06The Monthly Ten: 3:56:06 – 4:14:20Outro: 4:14:20 – 4:16:56 Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.comSubscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://www.japanimation-station.com Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vKSubscribe to our YouTube channels! Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcastSupport the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuffOriginal Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman