Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

2022 - 9 - 13

Post cover — Image courtesy of "GameSpot"

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Review - A Hugely Successful Netflix Anime (GameSpot)

Netflix's anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is the embodiment of '80s and early '90s anime. It's overly-dramatic, ridiculously bombastic, ...

It builds on the world of Night City and the characters from the underworld that live within it. It's a lot of neon. However, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is sentimental for the past while creating its own path with a story and look that is reminiscent of anime like Akira, Battle Angel, and other sci-fi action content from that time. The action is over-the-top, featuring shootouts with hundreds of bullets flying across the screen in a matter of seconds and wildly-violent deaths where blood comes out of the dead like geysers. The amount of attention that's paid to where things and people are framed is incredible. Netflix's anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is the embodiment of '80s and early '90s anime.

'Cyberpunk: Edgerunners' Review - A Dense And Tragic Anime On ... (Digital Mafia Talkies)

Back in 1982, a film by Ridley Scott, and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young, called “Blade Runner,” was released.

The way Kenn showcases David’s transformation from a person with just apathy in his veins to a leader who is reeling with the pressure of unfulfilled dreams is masterful. Also, if possible, try to watch it on a big screen, accompanied by the best sound system at your disposal, and in a darkened room. As mentioned before, even though every episode is 25 minutes long, it takes a toll on your senses (in the best way possible). His voice chemistry with every single actor in the show is palpable, especially Hiroki and Aoi, who are excellent in their own right. Because there’s a subplot about a character (keeping it vague here), who dreams of going to the Moon because they think that’s the only place, they’ll find solitude. But some of the not-so-obvious ones are (and this is a big guess on my part) “Cowboy Bebop” and “First Man.” The beautifully done opening title sequence, edited to the tune of “This Fffire” by Franz Ferdinand, really reminded me of “Tank!” by Yoko Kanno and Seatbelts; because of the use of silhouettes and its overall vibe. Not just because it’s one of the only positive things in the plot, but also because of the visually dynamic way it is portrayed. Whether or not that’s overly sexualized or a sign of the character’s sexually liberated traits, I’ll leave that to the experts. Just like the plot, the entirety of “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” is kinetic. And while David’s effort to find his family in Maine’s team to overcome the loss of his mother is certainly endearing, the beating heart of this series lies in his and Lucy’s romance. Hit jobs that a broker for the corporation called Arasaka (whose rival is the corporation called Militech) named Faraday (Kazuhiko Inoue/Giancarlo Esposito) gives to Maine. And it seems like the writers and creators of the show are aware of that.

'Cyberpunk: Edgerunners': TRIGGER goes gloriously downbeat (The Spool)

'Promare' director Hiroyuki Imaishi's ultraviolent action is colorful and kinetic, but it's the quiet moments—lovely, sad, and otherwise, that make this ...

And without scolding the audience for enjoying its well-choreographed and bloody setpieces, Edgerunners makes a point of paying heed to the consequences both physical (what’s left behind is grody. And David and Lucy’s romance, fraught and thorny, is genuinely lovely. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is at its best when David and Lucy get to be still, in the comparatively brief moments of peace they dig out of their lives. He finds deliverance from his malaise in a crew of Edgerunners (cyberware-wielding mercenaries and outlaws) who, despite a guns-drawn introduction, take him on and teach him their world. And, though Edgerunners is David, Lucy, and their fellow Edgerunners’ story, it’s just one of many merciless tales in Night City—a place so stubbornly resistant to change that it bounced back from a nuclear bombing more or less intact, a place that devours people. Acknowledging that a well-done romance is catnip to me, David and Lucy’s tale is damn fine catnip. Maine is a teacher and brother figure. It’s a downright downbeat show and one that gets bleaker as it progresses. Night City—the California megalopolis where Edgerunners and 2077 take place—is merciless. [numerous](https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/cyberpunk-three-months-later/) and [significant](https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/13/22229626/cd-projekt-apology-cyberpunk-2077-post-launch-roadmap-patch-107) failings of 2077‘s development and launch, the game as it currently stands features some [tremendously impressive character work](https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-judy-alvarez-story-romance-masterpiece/) and [a defiant melancholy](https://wapo.st/3BECwcZ) that, to get personal, has meant a great deal to me during a rough personal time) I’ve repeatedly come back to Pondsmith’s observation. “Cyberpunk is about that interface between people and technology, but not in that transhumanist way where it’s all about the technology changing or improving them. He’s a smart, anxious, lonely young man teetering on the edge of oblivion.

Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners connects to Cyberpunk 2077 in ... (Polygon)

The Netflix and Studio Trigger anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077. Here are the connections to the video game and ...

But while Cyberpunk: Edgerunners may lack a firm chronological connection to CD Projekt Red’s original game, it makes up for it by telling a story through the character of David Martinez, which parallels with V’s own story in Cyberpunk 2077. By far the strongest aspect Cyberpunk: Edgerunners shares with its video game counterpart is a focus on centering their respective stories on the precipitous rise and inevitable fall of a flawed, well-meaning, and doomed protagonist. While an exact year and date is never specified in the series, it’s possible to infer from both context clues and the appearance (and non-appearance) of certain characters that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes place before the events of Cyberpunk 2077. David can later be seen visiting Lizzie’s Bar, the “braindance” club located in Watson and owned and operated by the Mox, one of the eight major gang factions in Night City. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes place in Night City, the futuristic metropolis that serves as the primary setting of Cyberpunk 2077. Following a tragedy that leaves him orphaned, David submits himself to being implanted with an experimental cyberware augmentation and turns to the only life left for him: becoming an edgerunner, a cybernetic mercenary for hire who joins a gang of fellow “cyberpunks’’ in search of fame and fortune.

5 Things We Liked, and 3 We Didn't, About Cyberpunk Edgerunners (Gizmodo)

Netflix and Trigger's video game adaptation is a kinetic, colorful sci-fi hit—but not without a few glitches.

Here’s what we thought of the series—the good and the bad, with a few spoilers thrown in for good measure. [Cyberpunk: Edgerunners](https://gizmodo.com/cyberpunk-edgerunners-netflix-series-nsfw-new-trailer-1849474957) is a peculiar sidestep for one of the most lauded animation studios out of Japan. and a few things to love a little less.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 review – a psychedelic anime ... (Ready Steady Cut)

Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 review - a psychedelic anime bucks the trend for video game adaptations. Spoiler-free.

In many ways, this is the Cyberpunk story the Cyberpunk game wanted to tell and couldn’t. The bouncing EDM soundtrack might not do as much heavy lifting, but there’s a case to be made that virtually all action scenes in every show should be set to similar rhythms. It’s a deeply cynical vision of a society in which the gulf between haves and have-nots is even more extreme than our own reality; in which even the fantasy of standing up to our bullies is destroyed by cybernetic augmentations that mean the richest are now also the strongest, fastest, and most dangerous. It’s no wonder that there’s an appeal in running jobs for the hackers and mercenaries who exist outside of the strict parameters governing everyday folks. This is Cyberpunk as self-indulgent psychedelia, as an answer to all the anarchic, energetic promises made but never kept. They had all the goodwill in the world.

Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Tells The Story I Wished For In ... (Kotaku Australia)

The tag “Netflix original anime series” has had its fair share of ups and downs over the years, sometimes being affixed to bold, exhilarating new.

Who knows, maybe Edgerunners will inspire Netflix to go the route of creating more anime adaptations of popular IP instead of habitually rushing toward the “In case of emergency, break live-action glass” lane that the platform has [so publicly crashed and burned](https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/12/netflix-cancels-cowboy-bebop-after-one-season/) with in the past. Edgerunners serves both as an excellent introduction to the world of Cyberpunk 2077 and a more-than-competent standalone anime series. After discovering that his mother did some work with the edgerunners to pay for his high school tuition, David opts to “chrome the fuck up” by installing a dangerously powerful [Sandevistan speedware](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Sandevistan) and joins the gang. Also, David is a soft boi who doesn’t like the taste of alcohol and who wears his mother’s jacket like a comfort blanket wherever he goes, and that’s just precious. Although David is a bonafide criminal, he can’t bear the weight of taking a life, often having flashbacks of his mother’s body. Although David becomes a hotshot edgerunner, the show does a good job of not sweeping his past trauma under the rug. On paper, the trope of an anime following the exploits of a teenager has become so well-trodden it’s on the verge of becoming an uninspired standard in the medium, but Edgerunners utilises this premise as a much-needed opportunity to give the transhuman politics of 2077 new dimensions, showcasing how its last-stage cyberpunk capitalistic world crumbles down on top of an impoverished Latino kid who’s just trying to get by. This all comes to a head when David has a chance encounter with [Lucy](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Lucy_(Edgerunners)), a sardonic girl with hair like the Youtuber The Sphere Hunter, who introduces him to a band of edgerunners. [First announced even before Cyberpunk 2077 released, back in June 2020](https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-is-getting-an-anime-adaptation-subtitled-edg-1844165765), Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a standalone, 10-part anime series by CD Projekt Red, Netflix, and Studio Trigger, the anime collective behind shows like Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill. Basically, replace having shitty internet during a class Zoom meeting and scouring the web to download outrageously overpriced PDFs of textbooks with derailing The real main course is the emotionally resonant story of how David transforms from an impoverished street kid to made man. The tag “Netflix original anime series” has had its fair share of ups and downs over the years, sometimes being affixed to bold, exhilarating new shows, at other times to deflating disappointments.