Who would’ve thought the Cyberpunk IP would make such a big comeback?
Technically, the franchise already made its comeback before Cyberpunk: Edgerunners dropped on Netflix. Two years worth of updates had taken Cyberpunk 2077 a long way past its initial, nigh-unplayable state, but it still had more than its fair share of bugs. With Edgerunners, however, the franchise is back in a big way, with Cyberpunk 2077 blowing past The Witcher 3’s all-time concurrent Steam players record with 104,827 players. But enough about that- let’s talk about the anime series.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners follows David Martinez (Zach Aguilar), a gifted student in a prestigious school who sticks out like a sore thumb among his substantially wealthier classmates. His well-intentioned but cash-strapped mother, Gloria (Gloria Garayua) has been trying her hardest to keep up with the fees. However, everything comes crashing to a halt after a car accident.
Out of options, David grafts an illegal cyberware he found in his mother’s possession. Once he runs into an alluring but shifty netrunner named Lucy (Emi Lo)- who can hack into networks and even personal cyberware systems- David starts working on jobs alongside Lucy and her crew of edgerunners. Maine (William C. Stephens), a well-intentioned meathead, runs the crew, and David soon starts to idolize him.
As tragedy continues to befall David and others in his crew, he pushes on, adding on more and more cyberware, ignoring all the cautionary tales of people going insane from using too much cyberware. You know there’s only one way this story can end, but David’s optimism, and his bond with Lucy and the others, keep making you hope otherwise.
This isn’t the first time Netflix struck gold with an animated adaptation- there’s Arcane, which came out last year, and also Devilman Crybaby from a few years earlier- but Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, is one of those rare side-properties that doesn’t take the spotlight away from the main story and actually enhances it. The production studio, Trigger, goes for a loud, boisterous approach, amping up the gore as well as the neon colors of Night City.
The action is heavily stylized, and the aforementioned gore does a good job of balancing the power fantasy of seeing heavily-armed characters with potent cyberware-enhanced abilities take on multiple goons with the knowledge that any one of these characters might die any minute.
Trigger also reimagines many of the game mechanics in unique ways. Eg, bullet time is depicted as David flitting through single-frame afterimages of himself as he glides through his surroundings.
Director Hiroyuki Imaishi’s (Gurren Lagann and Promare) fingerprints are proudly stamped across the show, especially in the juxtaposition of the bright-eyed sincere protagonist and his pure, almost childlike romance with a girl who wants to go to the moon, set against a brutal hyper capitalistic world where people either die like flies or betray one another in the pursuit of more eddies or political capital.
The lead characters David and Lucy are given plenty of time to develop and grow attached to each other, but the supporting characters got the short end of the stick. While some, like Rebecca (Alex Cazares) and Kiwi (Stephanie Wong) are standouts, they are more archetypes than fully-realized characters. Maine’s tragic fate isn’t alluded to in previous episodes but is instead covered in full in just one episode.
The show’s soundtrack uses multiple songs from Cyberpunk 2077, which is a clever way to tie the series to the game. One track in particular, “I Really Want to Stay at Your House” by Rosa Walton (Let’s Eat Grandma), is used in key poignant moments to great effect. If you have seen Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, then you probably won’t be able to listen to the song and have dry eyes ever again.
Edgerunners is a fantastic anime series and a great companion piece to Cyberpunk 2077. Let’s hope its success lights the fuse for not only future Cyberpunk games but also more animated properties, or even live-action ones.