The podcast “Project Gnosis” categorizes itself as a cyber punk and urban fantasy. While that’s an apt description, it only looks at the basic building blocks of any story: character, setting, and plot. The depth comes from what you bring with you. Without it, it comes off as mostly generic. This will be a review of seasons one and two.

Imagine a world like “Bladerunner,” but populated with both humans and magical creatures. It’s an interesting blend of two seemingly opposite sub genres. They work well together here for the most part. Where a cyberpunk story typically looks forward in time with technology and backward in how it does interpersonal and societal relationships, an urban fantasy takes something usually associated with an older period and brings it in the modern age. An evolutionary timeline looking something like this:

Exposition and Narration

The first episode introduces the listener to Fei, a secret agent for a magical organization. Episode two we meet Riz the werehorse and vigilante. Two seemingly different stories that share only the world they both inhabit. They as might as well be two different stories. Once episode three rolls around, the main cast is more or less together. After that moment, however, is anything but smooth sailing. The use of narration for the action scenes in episode one in particular over rely on the written word to do a lot of heavy lifting. Some lines are needed (to an extent), but are written or awkwardly voiced. Such examples include the mention of plugging in a usb drive and the of typing code in episode one. The specifics aren’t important, but they are needed to understand the context. It’s hard to make a usb insert sound effect and have it be recognizable as that without narration. Whether its important to the overall story is something I unfortunately cannot answer, as the worldbuilding and understanding said worldbuilding were difficult to grasp.

The primary struggle I had with this audio drama boils down to listening habits. I listened to the first season at least three times. Each time, I zoned out around the same parts. Quite frankly, I was bored. Boredom by itself makes one look at all the “problems” the story has, thus resulting in less enjoyment. Obviously this is not ideal for a story in any medium, but when you add in misunderstanding of the assignment it becomes even harder to justify the time spent. Not understanding what’s going on is far worse than missing a worldbuilding detail, especially in audio drama.

Netflix’s ‘Bright’ as Podcast, Project Gnosis as Movie

If there was a comp title for “Project Gnosis,” it would Netflix’s “Bright,” but in a cyberpunk world. The Netflix original movie from the director of “Training Day” was a movie more wide than deep according to critics. Full disclosure: I have not seen “Bright.” Based on trailers and plot summary — the urban fantasy film gives District 9 vibes. Unlike the alien allegory for apartheid, “Bright” had 60 million more dollars in their budget on the low end or 76.2 million dollars on the high end. “District 9” made close to 211 million dollars while “Bright” made approximately 99 million dollars, according to Screen Daily. Obviously ticket sales aren’t a 1:1 comparison with number of streams on Netflix, but it’s about the closest we’re going to get to comparing any monetary value (inflation factored in or not), before looking at pre- DVD, Blu-Ray and video on demand sales.

There’s a clear anime/manga influence with “Project Gnosis” and since anime and manga are a visual medium, somethings don’t translate well into an audio-only medium. Perhaps this is one of those cases where a movie should’ve been an audio drama and the audio drama a film/TV show. I can’t speak for how a “Bright” audio drama would go, but the subtext of race relations and other social justice issues is something a lot of audio drama includes explicitly or implicitly.

Project Gnosis Season Two: A Fresh Start?

Season two has similar issues to the first. Both start off with a new character on a mission followed by that character meeting another in a subsequent episode. The people this new character meets are the cast of season one. For this new character—Yeo—meeting the old cast is a job to complete, and by complete I mean exterminate. From there, there are more ups and downs that provide contrast compared to the first season to differentiate the new from the old.

One way is the sound effects, which includes a scene in episode three that rivals a typical action scene from a movie, but is anything but average for the medium of sound. The sparring match between two characters is a stand out moment, but there’s nothing that comes close to replicating or outperforming it. The switch from Peter Havran as the sound designer to Spyce MT and MultiMadea for season two is a difference that is felt.

Transition to Season Three?

One of the last scenes of season two was mostly setup for season three, which drops sometime next month (May 2026). The scene itself is reminiscent of a meeting of the gods where they recap and add more context for certain moments. This epilogue of sorts goes on a bit too long and dampens the effect of intrigue the creator is probably going for to hype people up. If the trajectory of season one into season two is indicative of season three’s story and sound quality, then I imagine we’re in for a treat.

Rating: Internally Consistent (3.7/5 Stars) (7.5+/10 Stars)