Cyberpunk 2077 gave us a capitalist dystopia. A wealth imbalance left the fortunate staring down at the city from ivory towers – or grotesque skyscrapers – while those born on the streets had little choice but to either take jobs that run them further into debt, or join gangs just to survive. While Cyberpunk 2077 puts us on the path to “success” fairly early on, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, the new Netflix anime, has us start squarely at the bottom.
David Martinez is a young man with nothing to lose – or at least that’s true by the time the first episode concludes. With plenty of angst and nowhere to go, he’s willing to embrace the worst of what could happen. Cyberpunk’s Night City is supposed to be a place with limitless opportunity, but in Edgerunners, we see that opportunity is hard to come by if you stick to strictly legal means. David and his mother attempt earnestly to work within the system, but medical bills stack up, the rent is late, utility bills are being supplemented with late fees, and there doesn’t seem to be a logical, legal, escape from it.
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Edgerunners is animated by Studio Trigger, a fan-favorite animation studio that has developed modern cult classics such as TV anime Kill la Kill and the feature-length movie Promare. This is a studio that embraces creativity in the projects it undertakes, and Edgerunners is the first time we see the team handle an IP they didn’t create. The stage has already been set for the story, and the first episode dives into the darkest parts of Night City.
We open on an intense fight against a cyberpsycho – the delirious and overpowered denizens of Night City that have taken their cybernetic implants too far. Without regular drugs and maintenance, the implants corrupt the minds of those using them, turning them into violent, borderline-mindless creatures. The beast of a man in the opening turns his guns on the Night City Police Department while using his implants to move at speeds beyond the limits of human reactions. The police respond with focus and aggression that we never see in the game, assisted by a helicopter squad.
As the monster is put down, we discover that it was all a BD – a Braindance. This is a recording of real events, perpetrated by a real person, from their perspective, complete with all sights, sounds, and sensations. They can provide an adrenaline rush or immediate gratification. It’s something that fans of the game don’t need to have explained, even nearly two years after release, but the way Edgerunners introduces new fans to these concepts is engaging and sensational, all while being animated by masters of the craft.
Cyberpunk 2077 launched with a litany of issues, problems that are still being fixed even now in the most recent Edgerunners Update – titled to celebrate the release of the series – but the Edgerunners anime disregards those issues, and just brings back what 2077 did right. The world of Night City, the corpos, and the aggressive, seedy underbelly of the city: these are the things that made Cyberpunk 2077 truly memorable, and Cyberpunk Edgerunners capitalizes on the playground that Mike Pondsmith and CD Projekt RED created, from the bottom, all the way to the top.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
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