Hosts In The Shell

Season two of Hosts In The Shell lurches, careens and, erm, clatters to the end of another rollercoaster run! It's just Matt and Jon to close it out, revisiting their main inspiration and beloved anime franchise to revisit and (sort of) reappraise the 2017 live action version... listen as they figure out what went wrong with the movie, gush about our lovely guests and audience, and fantasise about a cyber-resurgence for the UK...

As we hurtle like a malfunctioning hovercab towards our season finale, we thought it would be fun to dust off this 2021 recording: the first time Jon and Matt ever met! It was a guest appearance by Matt on Jon's other podcast, Dark Natter (where dark fiction gets dissected), but unsurprisingly Matt picked a cyberpunk topic - it's almost like this show was their inescapable destiny...

Those scoundrelly Hosts are joined by the far more wholesome, lovely, and massively talented cyber-graphic-novel-creator, Gustaffo Vargas, for a brilliant deep dive into the world of Peruvian cyberpunk! Tune in to find out how to modernise an ancient culture, Jon's favourite Studio Ghibli moment, and why Matt is changing his name to Adquot...

For those who haven't yet been introduced to this (ahem) masterpiece, Nemesis is the 1992 brainchild of legendary cyber-B-movie director Albert Pyun, and after you've watched it you'll be as incredulous as Jon that it spawned four sequels!! Tune in to find out what Jon and Matt made of this inexplicably endearing cyberpunk action (ahem) extravaganza...

Despite covering The Matrix Resurrections way back at the start of this podcast's existence (before the cyberpsychosis had really kicked in), the Hosts have unbelievably never covered the original Matrix trilogy! Thankfully, brilliant multi-genre writer Keith Anthony Baird was on hand to join us to remedy that shocking state of affairs, resulting in a belter of an episode that aims to once and for all answer the question: why were the Matrix sequels so much worse than the original masterpiece??