Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Let's take a stroll down memory lane: the 1980s were a wild time within the anime medium, with films such as Akira, Demon City Shinjuku, M.D. Geist, ...

As mentioned earlier, Edgerunners is a series that isn't shy about its ultra-violence, and while some of the stars will meet gruesome ends, TRIGGER was able to help make those scenes hit that much harder when they inevitably happen to a member of the crew that we came to know over the ten episodes. The animation here is as energetic and exciting as is necessary for a story involving androids leaving behind light image versions of themselves while holding onto a gun bigger than their own arm, and I was reminded of visuals from the classic anime film Redline when witnessing some of the battles displayed here. The series isn't afraid to explore some dark territory, but what works so well about David's story is the light-hearted family he eventually finds in a gang of "Cyberpunks," a.k.a. Another key takeaway from David's story is that he also happens to be a high school dropout who finds himself in a criminal world in which he messes up...a lot. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners feels like the spiritual successor to these properties, presenting a world of technological advancement which is also mired in decay, and in embracing this landscape, takes first place for original David might not break the mold when it comes to your typical anime protagonist, but he works well as an avatar for the viewers, who could easily see themselves in his shoes, even though those shoes are typically moving at light speed thanks to the new spine implanted in his back.

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.

'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.

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.

In Cyberpunk 2077, V's ascent into the criminal underworld was explored in a five-minute cutscene. In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, David Martinez takes about ...

Check out the trailer for the 13 TMNT titles and their Japanese versions, coming to PC via Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on August 30, 2022.The collection includes: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (Game Boy), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy).](/videos/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-the-cowabunga-collection-release-date-trailer) When the story becomes too grim, the art style helps lift it up to maintain the hyper-reality of the cyberpunk genre, while the mature storytelling also reigns in Studio Trigger from going too overboard tonally. Going into Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, I was curious if there’s even a need for another cyberpunk anime in the year 2022. Whereas famous cyberpunk anime like Ghost in the Shell and Akira focus on highly detailed, futuristic cityscapes, Studio Trigger approaches the material with an exaggerated flair. These relationships are front-and-center of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, with David’s rise within this food chain serving as a fascinating vantage point to take in this setting. Whereas V’s mercenary adventures are quite literally hijacked when their body and mind become a living space for Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand, David’s storyline is almost exclusively focused on the criminal elements of Night City. That time gives Studio Trigger and creator Rafał Jaki breathing room to explore Night City and the broken dreams of its inhabitants in an exhilarating 10-episode series that makes a strong argument that CDPR might have something solid to build on for future Cyberpunk stories. Luckily, the central duo of David and Lucy get a chance at a full story, chronicling the two’s growing relationship and leading up to a heartbreaking finale. When David has to begin fending for himself, Edgerunners takes the time to explore how Night City can be terrifying in ways that go beyond psychotic cybernetically enhanced street gangs, which is to say capitalism. [Cyberpunk 2077](/articles/cyberpunk-2077-review), meaning it is set in the same version of the acclaimed tabletop RPG created by Mike Pondsmith. In short, don’t expect to see V or Johnny Silverhand in the anime. In Cyberpunk 2077, V’s ascent into the criminal underworld was explored in a five-minute cutscene.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners delivers a fun, frantic adventure set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 that doesn't demand any familiarity with the game to be ...

Although it isn’t as philosophical or self-aware as more prominent cyberpunk anime (for example, Ghost in the Shell) or as beautifully polished as the aforementioned Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners still measures up well in the genre and as an extension of the game that inspired it. Anyone familiar with the cyberpunk worlds that fill William Gibson stories and the Shadowrun franchise will recognize the major players in Edgerunners, as they tend to fall into the usual archetypes of the genre. That continues with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which serves up a wild anime adventure set in the world of 2020’s [Cyberpunk 2077](https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/cyberpunk-2077-review-pc-stadia-console/). The ultraviolence in Edgerunners gets started early, but the series never devolves into a nonstop symphony of brutality. Fortunately, Edgerunners mostly avoids getting mired in the weeds of its own complicated lore by keeping the focus on its characters. While much of the Edgerunners world is a shiny metropolis sitting among dark streets and dirty alleys, the series doesn’t shy away from covering all of it with a gory mess of blood and viscera.

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.

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.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners introduces us to David Martinez, another Night City legend who dreamt of reaching the top of Arasaka.

In that case, the creators might decide to bring back David to one of their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 projects. In the final moments, Adam Smasher breaks every part of David's body and eventually kills the boy. After that, Falco grabs Lucy and escapes the scene, while David decides to fight Adam Smasher. So, even after witnessing several people losing their minds because of cybernetic implants, David continued exploiting the power of Sandevistan for several years. The story kicks off with the introduction of David Martinez, a gifted student at the Arasaka Academy. The animated series from Studio Trigger introduces us to David Martinez and Lucy, who are forced to survive the horrors of the city's underworld.

Yesterday, Netflix released yet another video game anime adaptation, though this one with a lot of baggage attached. That would be Cyberpunk Edgerunners, ...

The animation and character design here from Trigger is stunning, and the writing from the CDPR team who scripted the series is excellent as well. Everyone involved here, Netflix, CDPR and Trigger knocked it out of the park with Edgerunners. She introduces him to her crew, and his ability to withstand the installation of a stolen augment makes him invaluable to the team. I really felt like my time with the show was enhanced by the game, though I think you could probably also make the argument that the game could be enhanced if you watched the show first. The show is set in Night City and while it does not directly cross over with the game, that’s somewhat misleading to say. But through it all, you could tell that at the very least, the world they’d built was an interesting, engaging one, and that’s what Edgerunners is exploring.