Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 5u5w6q

One of the best animr ever. It's intense, full of action and emotion. The anime is an adrenaline injection and the same time there are emotional parts that made me cry. The animation is a masterpiece, studio trigger is incredible.
The story is very surprising, you don't expect some things are going to happen with the main characters.
Cyberpunk is a very unique genre of science fiction, and I have to say, this anime has all elements of a very good cyberpunk story. We have the social critics, the femme fatale persona, the nihilist characters, the rock music, thr hight tech - low life ambience ... etc.
The characters are not easy stereotypes, the are people like us, with flows and strengths. But it's a cyberpunk story, it's very difficult to resist the temptations.
I think people will love it, there is a lot of slangs from the series universe to learn, but it will be a easy job to learn during the watch time.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners is definitely an amazing show. I recommend.

Every now and then, an anime will come along that walks across a tightrope. And, depending on which angle you view it from, it either falls off spectacularly, or miraculously makes it to the other side. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is one of those anime. And that’s because, at the end of the day, what you take from it will be highly dependent on how much you can connect with a work that is fundamentally struggling to maintain equilibrium. Or rather, wasn’t even trying to maintain it in the first place. Either because of its short ten episode run time, its roots as a spin-off to a ... game which is already a spin-off of a novel, or because of its various Triggerisms, Edgerunners isn’t really trying to be a complete package. It’s trying to get in, get out, and leave you with the message carried by its world, its narrative, and all the themes that accompany it. Does it succeed at this? The answer will differ from person to person, for it's a little complicated…

Perhaps the greatest benefit to Edgerunners is how it uses its cyberpunk roots. When dissolved to its very core fundamental nature, the genre is essentially a dystopian view of the future in which entities - usually corporations but not exclusively so - have taken control of the world, in a sort of emblematic portrayal of late-stage capitalism gone berserk. Yet, when you examine how cyberpunk has been interpreted in pop-culture, rarely do we see a focus on the perspectives which are most largely affected by the suffocating nature of this socioeconomic oppression. We don’t see the perspective of the oppressor or the oppressed, instead we almost always view the world through the eyes of a bystander - a “third party”, one who usually has good intentions and wants to make the world a better place, but doesn’t really fit the lower or higher end of the socioeconomic ladder. Bladerunner and Ghost in the Shell are traditionally the biggest names in cyberpunk film history, and they are testaments to this - both feature characters which have more power than the average citizen, but despite that aren’t really active parties in the continued oppression of the lower class. Bladerunner comes close to commenting on this, but it muddies it by focusing on the oppression of Replicants rather than an entire social class (which, for various reasons, wouldn’t really work as a metaphor). Even Akira, which is probably the closest thing to Edgerunners on paper, barely counts as cyberpunk - it has that sort of imagery in the beginning of the film, but almost none of its themes relate to technology or the consequences of technological advancements. It just happens to take place in the future (relative to its release) with some cool imagery that has been very influential to the genre, but that’s about it, it’s almost entirely a psychological tale. That’s not to say that any of these stories aren’t valuable, they’re just different.

This is what makes Edgerunners so compelling - it’s a cyberpunk show where the central focus is a cast of characters struggling to survive day by day thanks to the oppression of the society in which they live. David, the main character, is a poor dropout barely scraping by. His only way to fight against the system is to cyberize himself further and further, and even when he does eventually rise up from his roots as a bottom feeder of society, he can’t sustain the lifestyle that allows him to be free. As if out of a Shakespearean tragedy, every time a character finally manages to get out of the place they’ve been forced into, there’s a consequence. Every time a character chromes themselves up further, they become less redeemable, less sane, less human. The most dystopian aspect of the world of Night City isn’t its rundown neighborhoods, shadowed alleyways, or crooked thieves waiting to bleed you dry, it’s the fact that every time you manage to make something of yourself, you either end up a disfigured inhuman monster, or worse off than when you started. The dramatic irony of the show is all too palpable - David’s only form of liberation is in the very technology that created the society around him, the same society that allows corporations to profit ad infinitum, and the same corporations that make the back-alley deals that give the edgerunners their jobs. It mimics real life in a way that’s all too, well, real - you spend all of your time trying to make something of yourself, that you either end up forgetting who you are in the process, or burnout entirely. The edgerunners accept the potential physical and mental consequences of fighting against the system to an almost ridiculous degree, because they hate where they’ve started to such an extent, that they don’t stop to ask if it’s worth where they’re going.

This sort of subtlety or thematic depth isn’t something that’s typically found in your average anime, but it's especially surprising coming from Trigger, a studio which has largely rested on its laurels since Little Witch Academia in 2017, and hasn’t really had this sort of thematic framework since Kill La Kill all the way back in 2013. Some might say that giving too much credit to Trigger would be a mistake given that so much of the subtext of Edgerunners is inherently part of the pre-established world it inhabits, but I would say that’s a ludicrous notion. It’s not like the show barely acknowledges these aspects or that the way they are used is an afterthought, they’re given a lot of care and attention and are put front-and-center. The writing quality in of characterization and character dynamics is surprising, as it's one of the greatest assets that Edgerunners has. Trigger has somehow been able to make a cast which feels perfectly non-anime yet anime at the same time, down-to-earth yet larger than life when needed. If you’ve seen even a decent amount of anime, you’ll probably come to appreciate how real to life some characterization feels, either within the context of the Cyberpunk universe or within our own. There are so many examples of this: When a particular tragic event happens in the beginning of the show, David does not have an overdramatic response meant to elicit emotions within the viewer. When comrades-in-arms die in front of others, nobody makes a lengthy ordeal out of it, they simply accept it for what it is: a part of the social contract they’ve signed when becoming edgerunners. This type of characterization is done so frequently that I can honestly see this being off putting to some people; the show almost denies the emotional catharsis of overdramatizing traumatic events. It could come off as if someone forgot to create a scene or two, if it wasn’t so clearly intentional. And yet, at the same time, this is a quality that could be easily overlooked or underappreciated, because it's one of the more subtle aspects of the show. The central cast in general is something I really grew to appreciate, because while none of the characters here are great, they all manage to be likable without coming off as completely unrealistic. In such a harsh world where stabbing the back of your friends would leave you with a hefty profit, this crew of thieves and bandits somehow finds a perfect middle ground between the idealism of anime friendship and the realities of living in a dystopian future.

One of the reasons why I can appreciate the simplicity of the cast so much is because the character designs are just that good. Given that the talents of Yoh Yoshinari, the designer for Little Witch Academia, were used to create these designs, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Yet this sort of visual dynamic isn’t something that’s felt completely captured by a Trigger show since Kill La Kill, and now Edgerunners has picked up the torch and ran with it. Every character looks visually distinct and detailed, but not overly complicated. No one character looks remotely similar to another, and they're all so readable that you can get a general idea of who these people are just by looking at them. It’s honestly insane just how much this has been knocked out of the park, because to put it in caveman , Yoshinari did not have to go this hard.

For all of the good the show does though, there are definitely a lot of negatives. I mentioned how great the character designs were, but honestly the overall presentation is a mixed bag. The visual quality of the show usually straddles somewhere between very good and great, but there’s some parts that are just not up to par. Particularly, the action direction came off as very uninspired for the majority of its run. Yes, it’s Imaishi, yes, he’s a legendary action director, but the worst here has no sense of space or flow, and a lot of the best here just feels like Trigger spinning its wheels - which is ironic, given that the only impressive action sequences involved characters driving cars. In contrast, the slower more quiet moments of self-reflection, where characters are given time to breath, have comparatively consistently great directing. It’s a confusing contrast in a show that really needed to exceed on both fronts to sell its narrative. Thankfully the visual aesthetics of the show, including the fantastic color work, can usually make up for this, but there’s some other odd choices. The music selection is something I came to appreciate more and more as time went on, but even then I couldn’t get over how poorly placed some of the tracks were. Certain scenes are downright obnoxious because of this, and the final scene is perhaps the most bizarre in of the soundtrack not really meshing with the tone. It seems to have gone down well with the majority of fans given how much praise “I really want to stay at your house” has received, but while I understand the sentiment, it just didn’t work entirely. I’d also be remiss if I failed to mention how uniquely bad episode 5 looked. It’s an episode that plays to almost none of the strengths of the show - it has little animation despite being one of the episodes that needed it most, the colors are mostly dark, there’s a lot of really bad shot composition where the camera is way too close to characters’ faces to cut down on animation, and the action can be really hard to follow. There’s a scene that just focuses on David’s face for a full 18 seconds, and the only thing that happens in that entire time is that the camera starts zooming in on him more and more, despite the fact that it was already too close to begin with. It’s so baffling how much that episode was screwed up compared to the rest of the episodes, that I imagine this had something to do with production constraints, which is odd given the short episode count and the long production time.

The biggest problem with Edgerunners however is that the second half is a significant step down from what came before. Not in the sense that you might expect, it’s not as if the quality of the show becomes worse. Moreso, it just stops trying. No longer content with exploring its ideas or concepts in meaningful ways, it resigns itself to being the action schlockfest that everyone expected it to be to begin with, no longer burdening itself with the weight of trying to be something greater. By the beginning of episode 6, the curtains call, and you can see everything that is going to happen in the next 4 episodes onwards. I don’t want to seem disingenuous and imply that the first half is some great sophisticated masterpiece; it isn’t. But what it is is earnest: an earnest attempt at exploring themes and concepts in a format which relays the Cyberpunk world’s overwhelming cynicism, all while simultaneously wrapping it in a neat package filled to the brim with pop sensibilities. Yet just as the show goes past the halfway mark, it gives up on doing almost anything of note. I could see a counter argument being made that the ending solidifies everything the show setup thematically, and that because of that the second half isn’t worse at conveying its message. This doesn’t make sense as a defense, given how overtly obvious the outcome of the story is long before it happens, and given how insignificant its time frame is relative to the rest of the second half.

What’s really baffling is that even if you don’t care about any deeper meaning or subtext, the plot just starts to lose momentum really fast. Up to episode 5 we’ve been with David every part of the way, we’ve seen him grow as a character, we’ve seen him struggle, we’ve seen what he’s been through. All the sudden there’s a timeskip and he’s a significantly different person. We don’t know how he got there, what he did, how he became so confident. It’s not that the transformation is unbelievable, but rather that it’s something we needed to see for ourselves. The more Edgerunners focused on making its main narrative epic and powerful, the worse it became. We start to lose focus on why we originally cared and instead are supposed to get behind an incredibly generic plot about stopping an evil villain. The show was always going to go in this direction for its finale, and that in and of itself is fine. It’s an easy and sensical way to end the story. But what is absurd is how much something so mundane takes away from the show's focus and runtime. Now would be as convenient a time as any to blame Netflix for only greenlighting 10 episodes, but really I don’t understand why the writers had to go in this direction in the first place. The first set of episodes give you the sense that things might actually follow a fairly logical progression despite the series’ short runtime; it's not until episode 5 that things start to get worrying. If your story can only fit within a certain timespan, don’t make it the story for an incredibly limited series.

Four years after Devilman Crybaby, Netflix has found another show which will capture the hearts and minds of its general audience, but dissuade others and leave them entirely unconvinced of its merits. At the very least, Cyberpunk will certainly be a less controversial or divisive event, but it certainly feels like a spiritual successor to what has come before. I might have come off as overly harsh to the series, but despite how it may seem I can’t say I was disappointed with the final product much at all. What I got from it was a level of intrigue I wasn’t expecting in the slightest, and I’ll carry its lessons, ideals, themes and world with me for a long time. Its value in breaking away from the pre-established norms cannot be overstated, and I cherish it for that. Whether you can learn to love it or not is dependent on how much value you can get from something which is not even remotely trying to smooth out or hide its various rough edges.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is easily one of the greatest anime ever made.

I knew this was gonna be good – it just had to be! An anime made by my favourite studio set in a sci-fi urban setting in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe??? Sign me up! Obviously I had high expectations, but this sured all of them easily. I’ve been waiting for this for two years straight but I had no idea that it was actually all gonna pay off like that. Let me explain why it’s so great and why you should go watch it immediately (after it gets dark)

Animation and art style – 10/10

This is ... simply the most gorgeous anime ever produced. I’ve never seen any piece of media look this good. Every single frame in the show is wallpaper-worthy. Not most frames, all of them. That’s because the backgrounds are meticulously crafted by the Trigger workers, who I am convinced are just as genetically-enhanced and inhuman as the characters in the show. I’ve always been a lover of city skylines, particularly at night, and it’s even better if they are futuristic, but this brings it to a whole new level. Most textures are extremely photorealistic to an extent I’ve never before seen blended well into an anime. Add on top of that the fact that all lighting is with beautiful vibrant neon lights and top it off with excellent fluid cartoony animation a la Trigger and you have yourself a delicious serving of orgasmically beautiful art style and animation. Oh yeah, and the fight scenes are lit, too. Bloody and gory, too. Trigger was the perfect choice for this as the studio has been particularly good with colours, but they’ve really outdone themselves here. The character designs are great, too. This looks like Ninja Slayer, if it was given a gigantic budget and it took itself seriously. I love the transitions, too. They are perfect for this internet-fueled world and make you appreciate just how truly little time you need to spend in a scene to take it all in. As expected with Hiroyuki Imaishi’s work, it’s as fast paced as it needs to be. At no point is there even a hint of a feeling that it’s dragging on. I found myself actually pausing just to appreciate the beauty of each shot and the amount of detail that went into making it. I gotta say that you MUST watch this at night in the dark to fully appreciate the beauty and the neon colours. Watching this in a bright room with a dim screen is just an insult to the show and the team behind it. Experiencing this in the dark will definitely show you why I couldn’t possibly give it any less than a 10/10.

Music – 10/10

The visuals aren’t the only thing that really stand out as excellent in this series – the music was something unique. It has a decent OP and ED, but what I’m really interested in is the background music. It always fitted the scene perfectly. Some extremely sad melodies for the end of episode one, cool pop rock for the cyberpunk city, epic battle music for the fights and some really unique tracks. The music that plays when they’re in a bar is exactly like what you would hear in a real late night bar in the west. I gotta say I didn’t expect to hear (Hungarian? Polish?) rap or some head-slammin’ pig-squeelin’ death metal in an anime series…an anime by Trigger in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe with insane production values. We truly live in the strangest timeline, huh?

Story – 10/10

It’s not just the outside of this anime that’s beautiful, it’s also great on the inside.
The basic synopsis goes something like this: David Martinez is a troubled highschooler who lives with his mom in poverty, struggling to pay the bills for his school gear or even the public washing machine. He gets picked on at his high end school for things that aren’t really his fault but continues to struggle on because he knows he’s doing it for his mom, who singlehandedly raised him by working all day every day. It is not explicitly stated, but is strongly implied that she works as a prostitute or something equally shameful in a world where sexual satisfaction comes with the click of a button and placing of the VR set. One day their normal life comes to a halt when a gang warfare on the highway ends with a car crash, injuring him and his mother gravely. From then on, he vows to take revenge on those who’ve wronged him and rages against the decadent city that has abandoned him by acquiring a robotic spine that allows him to travel at super speeds for a brief period of time, in exchange for exhausting his body and slowly turning him mentally unstable. He meets a girl that pickpockets for a living who forces him to her criminal gang. One thing leads to another and before you know it, he’s done some pretty fucked up things. What’s genius is that at (almost) no point in the show does he have much of a choice. It is difficult to blame him for what he becomes when you consider how little control he ever had over his own life. Similar to a show like Breaking Bad, this anime shows how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The moral dilemmas in this show are amazingly well made. Should he let himself be viciously bullied or should he fight back in an unfair match? Should he stay loyal his friends in the gang who provide him with money and necessary medication or spare the life of the father of his bully, that wants to bring him back to the academy? Should he give himself in to the cops? Is there turning back from the criminal life? How long can this gang life last and does he have any future now?

It all leads to a very intense and satisfying ending.

Characters – 9/10

David is just an example in how to write a good protagonist. He goes to an elite academy, but isn’t an elitist or a smartass, he is a delinquent but not an asshole or a dumbass, he’s poor but not a lowlife, he’s talented but not overpowered, he’s awkward but not cringy, etc. Above all, he’s a believable teenager, period. Something that's hard to come by as far as most anime are concerned.

Lucy gives off some very intended Blade Runner vibes and has an interesting role throughout the entire show and backstory towards the end.

Even someone like Maine who seems like a simple brute early on is surprisingly nuanced.

Overall – 10/10

This was something else. An amazing experiences from beginning to end. Every episode was a 10 and went by extremely quickly, every moment looked absolutely stunning, every action scene was blood-pumping, every edit and plot turn was on point. There are very few shows that I know are gonna be in my top 5 just from watching episode 1. There are also very few shows that force me to watch till the end in one sitting, even deep into the night. Kudos, Trigger has done it again. They’ve once again forced me to change my anime rankings. I don’t know how I could possibly give this anything less than a 10 or how anyone else could, either.

This anime was super overhyped.

Studio trigger did what studio trigger always does....some of the coolest animation you have ever seen with a story that is just....boring.



Music:8/10
The music was pretty good. It was as intense as it needed to be and felt great with the cyberpunk vibe

Animation 10/10
... It's studio trigger. The blood, the violence, the colors, the lights. It was all awesome


Story: 2/10

The story was basically the first, fast and furious movie but more boring somehow. And at the end you're feeling like the whole thing was pretty pointless because it just kind of ends. Overall, no emotional connection to the characters whatsoever built upon the story, the world building is great, but the storyboarding overall is terrible

At first, I thought this show could’ve benefited from an extra episode or two. Then, by the halfway point, I figured it could’ve benefited from having no episodes at all. I spoil a tiny bit in this review, but just a little bit from the first two episodes.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners takes place in a world where everything is monetized to hell, bastardizing every social interaction and invading even the most private space, leaving crime as the only true avenue left for survival for many. It almost made me believe it was set in the modern day. Unfortunately, any meaningful criticism of capitalism stops right there, making ... this show a complete failure in the realm of the cyberpunk genre, whose entire purpose is to critique capitalism.

Visually, this is Trigger’s least interesting production. There are so many static shots where the composition and colours are an afterthought at best. Even the coolest action scenes suffer from lethargy, like the show is tired of itself. Like it expects us to marvel at the concept, at the promise of delivery, without actually delivering. I’ll say now that I’m strongly biased against the neon cyberpunk aesthetic. It makes me sick to my stomach, and I can’t put a finger on why, but even then, I can see that this possesses none of the visual flair of Kill la Kill and the Little Witch Academia short films.

Sonically, this has to be the worst soundtrack I’ve heard in a long time. The show seems proud of its song choices. It blasts them at every opportunity it gets. You will get sick and tired of the soulless garbage it pushes into your ears. I guess I should give Edgerunners points for representing the death of music under capitalism.

The worldbuilding? Don’t get me started. Edgerunners loathes worldbuilding. It hates the idea of looking inwards at itself, of looking at humanity, which is the very core of science fiction (of most stories, tbh). Getting cybernetic augmentation makes you go crazy. Why? Why in the hell does getting strong robot arms installed slowly turn you into an insane person? This seems like an important question to answer, but Edgerunners takes it for granted.

The show more focused on being a fun romp, which is not entirely a bad thing. I wouldn’t mind a cyberpunk story that goes hard into the fun and leaves the rest to implication, but this show is boring as dogshit, so it doesn’t even fulfill that promise. Edgerunners is satisfied with the surface. It shows us everything we expect of a cyberpunk story, and nothing more. And it seems to have a distaste for doing even that.

Honestly, my biggest problem with the show is the lack of humanity. David’s mom’s death feels less like an actual event in David’s life that he needs to get through and more like a catalyst for the plot to move forward. It’s fine for the event to be the latter, but it’s not fine that it lacks any of the soul it pretends to have. David seems more invested in Lucy, who he meets for the first time immediately after his mother’s death. I’m not saying the guy has to mourn for the requisite 20 episodes, but it doesn’t even feel like he’s had a life before the first episode of the show. None of the characters do.

The dynamic between David and Lucy makes for the most boring romance this side of Sukitte Ii na yo. It’s not just that “newbie kid gets taken in by hot girl and shown the ropes” is played the fuck out. If it was just that, there wouldn’t be a problem. Taking established tropes and executing them strongly is a great way to tell a story. It’s that Edgerunners does not care about its characters in the slightest.

Once Lucy comes to with her feelings for David, she instantly loses whatever character she had. Then the story tries to fool you by having Lucy infodump her entire backstory to David on a big rock outside the city, as if backstory is a substitute for character. Her backstory also doubles as boring last-second worldbuilding that adds jack shit to the story. You don’t understand her better after learning her backstory. It’s the kind of tragic shit you come to expect from stories like this. In a way, it’s fitting for the entire area immediately outside the city to be completely barren wasteland. It’s almost like a metaphor for the fact that the writers didn’t think about anything beyond the scope of these ten episodes.

At the end of the day, a lackluster cyberpunk story is the perfect evidence for the failure of the made-to-order anime production model. I’d be surprised if the staff had enough time to even work on this. It’s ironic. A story with its roots in criticism of capitalism ends up falling prey to the system it mocked so relentlessly. Edgerunners is satisfied with the same surface level critiques of capitalism that its investors are. It can’t go deeper because if it did, it would scare the investors off, funding would get pulled, and the staff would go hungry another day. So instead of a work of art, we get a 10 episode walk in which we’re taken sightseeing like tourists, along a road where we are made to look at familiar events and plot points that we’ve seen a hundred times in a hundred other stories, like deaths and first kisses, and we’re asked to feel emotions at these scenes because we felt emotions at the ones we saw in the past.

TL;DR Cyberpunk Edgerunners is not a good anime. It’s a glorified checklist made to satisfy investors.

Ok, this is my honest response to the tremendous hype I noticed within a week. I grew up buried under sci-fi books, comics and such; so at some point I had an interest in the Cyberpunk original RPG franchise, though never had a chance to explore when I was still obsessed with crazy techno-paraphernalia. And I'm not a gamer or anything, I have no idea how's that Cyberpunk 2077. Before start bashing on this atrocity called Cyberpunk: EDGYrunners, I'll point some remarkable titles I'll use as basis for you to compare with and notice is not even a question of taste. I'm certain a good ... number of people who are rating this 8 or 9, within a few years, if going further into the genre or consuming more of any other media than Netflix produced and season anime, will change their minds. I'll not include who rated it 10, they're mostly the ones who'll never change and are dog-like enthusiasts about anything - in a way, I envy them.

Perhaps this anime intented to reach the kind of more hot-blooded cyberpunk fans. So I'll be realistic: there's no way to compare this to classic Ghost in The Shell or Tehxnolyze, neither a more frenetic thing like Tetsuo Iron Man or 964 Pinnochio, those are another level of depth and experimentalism, and they had a philosophical meaning, after all. Akira? Maybe, but still too deep. Cyber City Oedo and those OVAs? Perhaps some, but I'm taking in consideration something with high quality standards since folks seems to love Edgerunners visually and I don't wanna be the old prick telling some kid my old shit is better than theirs. Let's take equal to equal. Hot-blooded cyberpunk with supposed high production values that doesn't feel dated in quality or artstyle. I'll pick 3 examples.

1. Redline; a racing sci-fi anime movie, and it's an example of how you never need Legend of The Galactic Heroes plot twists level to achieve a perfect score. Funny enough, Imaishi Hiroyuki (Edgerunners' director) was in charge of the key animation. It's totally based on action sequences and catchy visuals. It's too detailed, yes it took 7 years of production, but I don't think it's an unfair comparison: Cyberpunk is a 30yo+ franchise and Netflix at this point is one of the biggest money-making factories out there while literally providing in their catalogue 10 good classic film, series and anime titles that everyone already watched then filling the 99999999 remaining slots with sufferable leftovers from the industry and cringe self-releases.

2. Mad Max: Fury Road; The oldschool 2000ad comics are perhaps the best example of GAR and testosterone-filled sci-fi, those classic series such as Strontium Dog and ABC Warriors were a showcase of detailed grotesque art, contrasting stylish and deformed characters in intelligent, very creative settings full of machines and robots. It certainly influenced a lot of old mecha anime. The closer you can get from it, visually, is the Fury Road entry in Mad Max series. It was co-written/produced by Brendan Mccarthy, an icon of avant-garde and surrealist comics, who was Peter Milligan's main partner for his sci-fi titles. So you have a filthy tone (I don't mean sexually), acid writing, well produced action and a big load of bizarre ideas and mechanical gadgets and weird characters.

3. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann; Not exactly cyberpunk, I'd say, but a real hyperactive sci-fi that again, was directed/produced by Edgerunners' staff, Imaishi and Wakabayashi. TTGL and Kill la Kill are the kind of "mixed feelings" series, with its lovers and haters. I particularly loved TTGL when I first watched, it turned into a favorite. I rewatched it partially around 2014 and wasn't the best thing, but my last experience was still enjoyable enough to update the perfect rating to a 9/10 (that's still a very high score). TTGL is very exaggerated, and while now I'm not sure of its meaning and depth, I well how the series was well done for its time and had an entertaining development, plotwise and characterwise. It's also a good title to compare with since it was mostly hated by people who tend to take everything too seriously. It was primarily a mecha show and genre elitists had plenty of disagreements about it. I always loved mecha and never had a problem with TTGL style, and bad or not, it was artistically groundbreaking in a number of points.

OK, so knowing the staff involved in Edgerunners' production have released actual high standard shows, there's no apologies. The artwork has nothing new, it has the less appealing character design from their own staff team, and although Netlix kinda hold the hideous FULL CGI thing in this case, I can clearly see the Netflix hand ruining something more in this series. One of the highlights of Imaishi's works I've watched previously were the colors and contrast + crazy animation. Seems they even tried here, but it was a definitive failure. Everything is graphically ugly, from the opening sequence to the tiresome palette and texture of the whole environment. There are a few.. animation techniques? used at some action sequences that were different, but the complete bollocks of it all and lack of anything interesting makes it just ridiculous and useless. So it fails even as a cheap blockbuster entertainment.

The plot; there's nothing captivating. I felt sleepy, and far from it being the results of a comfortable watch. Characters are mostly shallow or over-the-top edgy. There's a single character development topic I liked at first but in the end, it doesn't save the anime. The way things work in this world isn't coherent at all. Corporations take nonsense risks. The erotic content is totally skippable, just to increase the show's mature weight, and felt like those annoying uncomely ads popping up or at the corner of your web browser. Really, from the first episode already, when it shows that porn hologram screen, like.. why that? Isn't sexy, isn't funny, and adds nothing to the show - even if they meant any social commentary, a statement on sex industry or just showing what kids were into, the emphasis and tone was wrong, so the gory/porn clips rather sounds like trash fanservice. Most futuristic stories have a decadent setting full of violence and sex, isn't hard to pick a random title with a better take on the subject. I know in real life things are random, we had many projects left undone, romances can start then left alone, etc, but that's no excuse for a shitty writing as this show. What about a pseudo outcast character with that haircut looking more like a soccer player than one of those post-apocalyptical punks. Also I honestly don't think this was gory or dark at all. I don't think you necessarily need a perfect context to portray graphic content', but the digital blood and violence here was cheap and even the cyberpunk genre in this case actually seems forced to me, as a way to feed the niche while amusing the masses, though in every aspect it was retrogressive if put beside material directed by same names; except for Netflix - i.e. it was incredibly better than Blame!'s adapation, at least in this case they didn't ruin one of the greatest atmospherical artworks with a cheap digital movie. There was no need for this anime to be done, and there's no need for you to watch it if you're not planning on literally spending free time and have nothing better to do. You can find a trillion of titles with similar premise but better. The saddest part (if it was possible to have feeling for this show) is, it had potential. I tend to exaggerate sometimes, and yes I hated Edgerunners for everything I mentioned, but I felt the storyline had potential. And don't tell me it was in the wrong hands, they could do something better than this hollow cyberpunk casket.

An interesting point of Edgerunners' is how the more accurate ideas were actually part of what makes the overall enjoyment level of it so low. Those are the music and use of technology. One thing that we can stop lying to ourselves is future = nice aesthetics and better art.

On aesthetics and technology. During the past century, people used to believe from the 2000s on the whole Earth would look like an upgraded version of Tokyo with hover machines and thousands of wires and buttons everywhere. But it actually happpened otherwise because at some point they decided technology is the less, the simplest and smaller - you don't want a giant brick phone full of pushable things but one that is just a screen and fits your pocket. This "let's make things practical" thinking was applied to an extent that generated this era of lazy IRL designs and disposable tools. We live in the future and we don't notice, because is NOT stylish as early fiction - then most of modern science fiction consequently adopted a solid monotone appearance, add that to the repetitive script and you have a list of titles all looking same. While Edgerunner's brings back the multi-gadget cyberpunk outfit, it makes it rather dull, as people live around these things. The anime screen is filled with text messages and things similar to a videogame display. In my opinion, it doesn't look good, and there's nothing brilliant or experimental about that. But the whole technology thing in this series feels more real as if reflecting its role to society, how much of it is useful or just show-off and silly.

On music. When you choose music for your movie, you need to be careful about what you wanna transmit. You can choose something for the sake of creating an atmosphere that fits the mood and links the audience to your work exactly as you feel it; or using music in a more realistic way, just playing what the characters would listen, what was the music of the specific time/place in subject. Edgerunners' music is horrrible. But it's easier to think about people in the future listening to the worst kind of reggaeton than some well composed thing or some sophisticated jazz as in Cowboy Bebop. In fact most of the idea we had for the music of the future were based in the synth/theremin and early electronic music - that would make sense for its time, you know, sounds made by MACHINES... but in popular culture, electronic music went another direction. Then there were AOR kind, hard rock and heroic cheesy punk/metal, funky pop.. We relate that to cyberpunk sometimes but only because sci-fi was huge in the 80s, and this kind of soundtrack was just another product of its own age. Whatever was the BGM and in-between music, Edgerunners OST was bad; and random! - why'd they used an indie band such as Franz Ferdinand for the OP? I actually think their couple of first records were somewhat decent, much better than most of their contemporary genre crap, though it doesn't fit the anime, and the specific OP song is terrible. I have a humor for misplaced soundtracks and odd, awful productions, but the mistakes in this show weren't funny. Anyway, other than Franz Ferdinand, the bad music made things more credible.

I know both points that 'made more sense' for me were not intended to be seen that way and is just the aftermath of my own reflection/experience. Please don't take personally my distaste for this show, if you liked it. I felt the urge to write since everyone is praising it and I have a VERY different vision (if everyone thought the same what's the point of writing and sharing thoughts, just leave a reccomendation note goddammit). I knew this show wasn't going to be great, though I decided to give a try since I currently don't have a laptop or a way to watch anime from my bedroom, but a TV with Netlix and MUBI, so I took the risk of watching some cringeworthy stuff. It's a bit of a torture, definitely not the best random pick to watch before sleep - was not too cozy to make me sleepier until actually fall asleep neither too good to lively waking me up but kept me in a sleepy limbo through hours. Other hand, it's far from unwatchable. I've seen FAR worse. It's not an atrocious crime against humanity, it served well the anime fanbase, is an overrated hype without being a 'painintheass of a hype', if you know what I mean, and I already never expect anything from a Netflix production so..

Yep, just totally skippable.

Ah....TRIGGER...and Cyberpunk...two things that should...and for the most part, were awesome as fuck being smashed into each other. The setting of the Cyberpunk game, both its city and its lore/history, the visual aspect, the sounds of the weapons, the music of the game, it's all spectacular wrapped all together with the TRIGGER wrapping paper. However, as of late, the whole TRIGGER formula has, at least in my opinion, become a little stale. No not their visual and audio prowess, both of those are still fundamentally the best in anime. I mean more so that pretty much every TRIGGER product, well save for Kiznaiver and Little ... Witch Academia, start to end the same way. The beginning and middle show so much promise, usually showing us, the viewers a spectacular series of events that help mold the cast together. However, by the end of it all, it ALWAYS ends the same...some big stakes battle that, to some feels justified, and to others, feels...meh.

I sincerely loved the first 6 or so episodes of this one-off series. The characters are fantastic. The opening episode showed so much heart and really made me feel for the main characters. The rest of the cast are, in typical TRIGGER fashion, just impossible to hate. The problem is though, TRIGGER themselves. They always seem to take something so unique and just...make it end the same way over, and over, and over, and over again. Look if you watch TRIGGER to see a TRIGGER anime/film, then you'll probably just love all of this. Me though, I don't know I guess I expected something different for its ending. It thematically makes sense given what happens in the beginning and middle, it just..I wish it didn't go down that route.

TL;DR: It's a TRIGGER anime. If you want to see TRIGGER things then watch it. If you are hoping for this to be a departure from their normal story mold, it is not.

8/10
Ok, we get it gamers, you hate the game and hence you gotta hate the anime (without even watching it) you have proved your point, please leave the anime alone now.

The edge runners series is not the first western game anime, we had Halo before, and this one has done a better job of capturing the initial aesthetic and vibe of the actual game properly. Hence, it does feel like an extension of night city not just another reimagination of it.

The cyberpunk genre fits the medium of anime quite well, Some of the greatest 90 s anime were cyberpunk stories but the genre has ... gone quite under with some newer notable exceptions being this and akudama drive.

plot(8/10)
Tried to go for a more game-type plot with choices in front of the character, the difference is, we don't choose he does. It tries to go for the fun and gritty both and it does nail it to some extent, with the plot being a bit more rushed than necessary, but that is justified since its only a 10-episode anime.

Characters (7/10)
We are treated with Heavily modified cyborgs and great character design since they still feel relatively human but just enough to look uh, cyberpunk? XD. they are great and have personality that fits the original night city vibe of the strong eat the weak.

Art and animation (8/10)
Great cinematography and amazing art style that makes you really feel like you are back in night city again! Some of the in-game UI is also mixed in quite well to really hit it home that this is a cyberpunk2077 anime. The animation of Trigger is fluid and the fight choreography is really good and does have the gamified element to it that would appease the fans.

Sound and VA (9/10)
The best part of this anime, really good tone-setting cyberpunk music is scattered throughout, adding that extra bit of emotion (that was the only thing the game nailed at launch too xD). The VA is great with many notable voice actors being present, as usual, the Netflix subs do a bit of harm but have improved a bit, but if you are able to understand a bit of Japanese the immersion will increase.



An easy watch , if you are a fan of this genre , we need more from this genre TBH.

TLDR: it's a nothing cake. A very disappointing eye candy. Setting is borrowed, characters are dull and expendable, plot is going nowhere. Your typical story about self-insert dude and cool and handsome girl taking him into a "whole new world", I see such every season, each time new wrap. And it only has 10 episodes, which in my experience is a new low.

My ratings:
Animation - 8/10, it is trigger, so it looks decent
Story - 0/10, none
Characters - 3/10, some interesting designs, but no personality whatsoever
Soundtrack - 3/10, was decent in the beginning, went bad
Enjoyment - 1/10, pretty much I wish I didn't waste ... my time on this

Characters:
As I said, all of them are expendable. Since someone dies in almost every episode, there is no need to put a lot of thoughts in it. There are no deep implications behind any deaths, nor it is affecting the story or MC's path. I understand that cyberpunk reality and the character of their work implies high mortality, but it doesn't work well when you're telling a story.
MC has no background, aside from being poor, no life goals, his actions are predictable, and you never really ask yourself - why did he do that? The only person really having backstory here is Lucy, but again, it doesn't affect anything at all. And what is the reason to make a backstory for a character you're going to kill? Unless, of course, you actually want to make it somewhat meaningful, but eh, they clearly didn't bother.

Story:
I have a feeling that they didn't plan to make only 10 episodes in the beginning. First two episodes were semi-decent and promising, but it all goes down from there. With self-insert MC lacking any meaningful destination, it is hard to make anything look worthy.
Not a single death has affected the main course in any way. And accordingly, it does go to nowhere as there was no real "finish" to everything that happened.
A lot of dull dialogs, you will stop listening to it eventually as you won't miss any critical information.

Honestly, I don't really know what else to say. The setting is really good, but even with this dull type of story there are better examples (say, darling in the franxx, despite me not being a big fan of it) with more character development, backstories and meaningful conclusion. Cyberpunk has none. It's a shame it got such terrible writers while having setting this good and trigger team to animate it.

"...Don't make a name for yourself as a cyberpunk by how you live. Make a name by how you die."

I feel that the above quote summarizes my feelings for this show, in more ways than one. At the time of this review, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a freshly released netflix-original anime with a whooping score of 8.7 on both MyAnimeList and IMDB, with many reviews already calling it anime of the season and even anime of the year. Yet while I can see why so many people like this, I personally cannot share the same sentiment. Much like the above quote, the only impact of the ... show, really only came at the end, towards it and the character's deaths. (If you'd care to see if I'd recommend it or not, skip to the last paragraph).

The show is based on a video game, were cyborg humans update their bodies with software and take on illegal missions. Due to various plot developments in the first episode, our protagonist David Martinez is infused with a cybernetic military grade exoskeleton which gives him super speed, and he soon s a band of outlaws. Yet his mechanical upgrades come with a physical and psychological cost, which become more and more important as the show goes on.

I've seen lot of people have been praising the animation for the show, and maybe I'm spoiled, but for me it was average at best. A lot of shots go one for 10 seconds or more with only the character's mouths moving. There were high and low points of course, but nothing overly noteworthy. The music too was pretty average.

A main issue I had was the characters. Nearly every, single, character in the show, is a backstabbing, mentally unstable, money-hungry, untrustworthy, outlaw who only seeks to further their self-interest. I barely felt anything when something bad happened to any of them, especially not our main duo. As with the quote above, most character's only get their defining moments when they die, which happens a lot. With the exception of two innocent bystanders who are caught in the crossfire, in episodes 1 and 8, I didn't feel bad for any of them.

Another issue was how overly edgy the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners tries to be at times. Do we really need to see the female characters taking a nude bath every time they hack into the web, or at the end of every episode? Did we really need to see someone mechanically masturbating in the first episode? The same with the violence, I get that it's suppose to fit the environmental ascetic the directors were trying to build, but for me it just came off as over the top and gross.

There is some good aspects in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, I think the theme of pushing yourself too far, of so blindly following your dream without realizing that it is becoming your death wish is an important takeaway in modern-day western culture were people are always told to be their own individual but never why. And I think the show's critique on a lot of aspects of society nowadays, like our overreliance on technology, overblown capitalism and consumerism, and our addiction to success, were all important points to make. The anime's take on transhumanism and upgrading our bodies with machinery I thought was well done. As I said before the animation was okay, it fit the style the show was going for. The show's ending was well done in my opinion, it wrapped up all the loose ends but still stayed true to the themes and ideas the anime was pushing.

So would you enjoy Cyberpunk: Edgerunners? If you enjoyed edgier grittier anime with dark tones such as "Black Lagoon" or :Ghost in the Shell", and if you enjoyed movies such as "Carlito's Way" or "Baby Driver" than yes, I do think you'd enjoy this show. If however, you are off put by mindless violence and overly bleak atmospheres, then no, I would not recommend it. Personally I did not enjoy this anime, and I do feel a bit guilty saying that despite how many people seem to be loving and enjoying this, but hey that's just me.

I came across a video on TikTok in which a cute futuristic girl had a gunfight. That's how I ended up watching Cyberpunk, for a girl, that hasn't even in the series (Sasha).

I also haven't played the video game Cyberpunk, however I believe everyone have heard of it because of its backlash broke the whole YouTube and it was all around on the internet. Although I haven't played the game, from the reason I mentioned earlier, I somewhat familiar of the concept of the Cyberworld. If there is any chance you might not, which would surprise me I'll try to summarize it's theme without spoil ... any juicy stuff..

Cyberpunk is about humans modification by super high-tech "bio-chips". Just imagine a super computer in your body, now add future weapons and armored body parts and you had yourself on clock. Basically, you can't overclock yourself to infinity as you would expect there are still limits in the future. If that wouldn't be the case everyone would have gone Thanos by then.

Story 3.5/10

Although I rate its story "very bad", there were things I acknowledged and found somewhat interesting.

We can approach the story in multiple ways. (own ways).

As I’ve personally experienced through out the whole series, it mostly made me uncomfortable and triggered. Alternatively, we can also approach a way in which we see the story as "sad reality". In which point things not turn out the way we imagine, or the way we expect, but rather how the universe desire. What I mean by this is that not everything in our life is awfully satisfactory or perfect. From this degree, its melancholy dispositions gives its text a lot more context of realism. All that being said, as much as I appreciate this viewpoint, I can't turn a blind eye on its poor writing in essence.

In my opinion, its story would have justified double of its run time or at least 6 more episodes. That alone would have been enough to clarify characters motives like Kiwi's, Lucy's, Rebecca's or even David's. As my dissatisfaction main point with the story was that so many things weren't really explained or made sense. The characters basis were also hit and miss. Talking about only the main character David's, his goal was to achieve what his mother believed he can do and then also to save someone who is the (only) one left for him. If we just look at this, there are so many things wrong. I would not bend my head down to sleep if someone that I care about told me that she wants to tell me something important later that night and she doesn't come home. If I know the most important person I care about, than I know what He or She cares about, is ME.

The pacing also jumped a few times from the reason they had to mass so many things in their quick pace of time. Overall, the story doesn't gave me goosebump nor jumped out of my seat, but left my mood flat.

Animation 8/10

Who else could have done a better Trigger anime then Trigger itself. Jokes aside, the animation was stunning, the characters were highly detailed as some of the landscape were absolutely outstanding as well.

Ultimately, the animation was spot-on, every gunfight was brutal and well done. They were also able to gave us a perfect example of how the Cyberworld works and looks by presenting some of the most remarkable Night City locations. The lights and effects are mentionable as well, but the most iconic part for me was David's ability, I really liked its cool effect.

Characters 5.5/10

I gave (5.5) to the characters, although I think it's the third best thing that this series has after it's soundtracks and animation.

Lucy, she was reminded me of Zero Two at first, but the way she betrayed David was absolutely crushed me. She should have gotten a better explanation of her actions, OR David should have, about why he is all okay with it and in L with her.. Overall I liked the character (Lucy), but again the writing that really massed up for me on her part.

David, I think he is a good character, but he should have made better choices.. not talking about the overclocking, but life choices. About what he is using his powers and will on. I would've definitely built a rocket ship and leave with Lucy.. (fr) In spite of that, his development is somewhat respectable and bittersweet at the same time.

Rebecca, she was the only well written character in my opinion, cute lil girl. Absolutely the best character of the series for me.

Other characters were there, helped the story and characters to progress even if it felt forced sometimes.. but nothing interesting. Overall characters design beats its characteristics.

Song/Soundtrack 8.5/10

Cyberpunk really do have some of the best soundtracks I've ever heard. I'm currently listening "I Really Wanted to Stay at Your House" as writing this review. There are also songs like "Let you Down" or "Major Crimes" that I can't stop listening to, who doesn't at this point? They're all 10/10 songs. Opening is great, just as the voice acting and the action scenes, sounds effects are all gave me the Cyber vibes.

Enjoyment 3/10

As I mentioned earlier, it really left me uncomfortable. As the characters motives and the story primary concept implementations were irrelevant or negligible. Maybe in the future, our decision making ability is bugged and our destiny is written by an untoward chipware Ripper.

In conclusion, despite it was an experience, a somewhat awkward experience.. I would recommend to you if you like Real-Life based themes and futuristic vibe, because it definitely gives the right mood. It has decent characters, but with really bad writing and characterisation. You'll either found yourself on the Moon, or left betrayed - edgy.

After I've finished the series I found the title "Let You Down" that the "TikTok" girl was featured in who made me watch this series at the first place.

Even tho she wasn't even in the series, nor I have more free slots to add her as favorite, she deserves to get a place in my personal liked characters list. As I found her past more impactful and colorful than the whole anime. Even though the show was really bad.. I'm happy.

She also hasn't spoken once.

Thank you for reading!

The initial response from the community regarding this show was nothing but praise and lots of 10s flying around. On the other hand my reaction to it was complete apathy since I was looking at the whole thing from a neutral perspective. Once you do that most shows are nothing special and Edgerunners is no exception. Let’s get this out of the way right away. The reasons so many people liked it are:

1) It did not suck like the videogame it was based on (the bar was set very low)
2) Anything by studio Trigger is always praised and is well animated (the studio’s fame played ... a part)
3) It has an ‘underdog in a ghetto going up the ladder’ type of story that appeals to most young people (especially those living in large cities).
4) The ending is tragic (most people are used to happy endings).

Although these reasons can be enough for someone to like such a show without needing to elaborate any further, the moment you see past them and you focus on more technical aspects, you realize the show is nothing special. The plot is fairly typical, the characters are average people, and there is no big objective they have to fulfill. It’s essentially a social drama set in a sci-fi setting. It has action as well, but it’s not the focus of the show. If anything it exists as a break from the drama as well as for keeping awake the impatient sakugatards.

Anyways, watching the show with no biases in favor of the above reasons results in boredom. The biggest issue is how it doesn’t try to explore a profound message about humanity in bigger than life situations, which is what cyberpunk used to do in its glory days. Watching classics like Bladerunner, Johnny Mnemonic, or Ghost in the Shell make you question everything, they stick to your brain with their superb atmosphere and never leave. Edgerunners on the other hand is… a social drama about people living in a slum and doing petty crimes for making lots of money. There’s nothing to explore or ponder. Take out the sci-fi angle and it’s a show that could happen in any lowtech society. Touches like the implants gradually making you insane can easily be swapped with drugs. So basically the core genre is underused and as a result the whole show becomes able.

Another issue is the characters who are average people. None of them is super important or has a high enough position of power for feeling like someone worth following for 10 episodes. Their objectives are also petty and shortsighted as they never go beyond making money through petty crimes. They ain’t even as cool as the gangsters in games like Gran Theft Auto or Yakuza . You are just not made to care about them and when someone dies you feel nothing was lost.

The third issue is more like a result of the other two. Although there is a lot of action, it’s about typical people doing petty crimes. Despite being well-animated it doesn’t feel epic because it’s about nobodies doing nothing of importance. Thus even the sakuga goes to waste. It didn’t feel like that when I was watching Akudama Drive or Rage of Bahamut, since the characters there feel important and so does everything they do.

The fourth issue is the pacing which gets really wonky because of a time skip in the second half of the show. Character dynamics change out of screen and the rest of the plot goes on overdrive because it is not given enough episodes to develop properly the new status quo. Basically, the changes are sudden and are not given the time to settle in before the anime ends.

The verdict for the show can best summarized as EEEEEEHHHH. Compared to the far more popular titles of the same genre it is very simple. It doesn’t explore the setting much, it doesn’t have a charismatic cast, all the effort in the action and animation department goes to waste since there is not much to hold you in, and even when there is it is ruined by a rushed second half. Edgerunners may seem highly regarded for now, but it will be forgotten by most as soon as the next season comes up and everyone will be dancing around the sakuga of Chainsawman.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an excellent example of a game adaptation. The story is extremely fast-paced, features characters that you do not care for, and is a cacophonous mess.

Ultimately, what Cyberpunk: Edgerunners boils down to is its story. Yet, the story's not that great and ends up being generic despite the endless possibilities in the setting. If you're going to sacrifice character development and growth for the story, at least make it memorable.

Less is more here. David Martinez is a smart, high school kid that grew up poor, but with a mother that makes great sacrifices to get her kid into a good school. The ... problem is that this setting gets long abandoned for David going on a journey towards becoming a mercenary. Why? Who really knows? His explanations are flimsy at best. Most of the episodes become largely focused on David's escapades as a mercenary, but a revisit to the mundane school life or just slice of life would have suited the theme of this show much better. The beginning episodes are the only good ones. It's slow-paced, so you get to peer into the everyday life of a person living in this dystopian hellhole. If the show focused more on the daily life of David, then it could have shown off its amazing art and the world-building that the game's setting has to offer.

What do we get instead? Yeah, shootouts, guns, and drinking. Basically, the most generic mercenary stuff that shows as Black Lagoon does. In of Black Lagoon, it's fine, since the whole point is shooting up stuff. Cyberpunk, with its unique world, feels like it's just a waste to see all of the world-building fade away. The only things regarding the setting that really ever gets shown in the anime are the great art style of Studio Trigger in the cyberpunk universe, and the implants. Even the guns and other weapons are just...well, guns. Yet, the implants are just one of the biggest glaring inconsistencies of the show as well.

*Spoilers ahead


David Martinez first takes up body augments out of desperation. He's out of money, and he's just lost his mother. He takes up the body augment to make money in order to live another day. This reason is good and fine, but it eventually gets distorted and blown out of proportion with no explanation. He s a mercenary corps and gets itted under Maine. Maine goes full psycho because of his implants, a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of David's future. Despite this, David forges on with his implants to become stronger. Why? Maine's death should have been a catharsis to stop putting himself at risk, especially since his circumstances are different. He's not poor anymore, living on the streets. He's got loved ones to protect. Yet, he takes implants...to protect his friends? From what? The bogeyman? He says he's taken up Maine's and his mother's wishes, but both just wanted him to live well. Neither of them would have wanted him to continue taking dangerous implants, especially his mother. What's with his reckless abandon at missions? He puts the people he loves the most and his friends in great danger for what, money? It's a contradiction. In the end, it's proven right. Most of his comrades die in these missions to create shock value. There's no reason for David Martinez to willingly wreck his body and take on bigger and bigger missions. He's not super strapped for cash. Sure, his wish was for Lucy to get to the moon, but I believe both David and Lucy wanted to be together on the moon. Lucy certainly did not want David to waste himself. He could have skipped town with his crew if he really wanted to be safe from whatever dangers he could be alluding to. He starts to understand that he's falling apart near the very end, and it could have been a great recovery, or even just a mental breakdown of the consequences of his actions, but instead, the story forges on. His mental instability just got rushed over by the cyberskeleton, making his indecision no longer waver since he's gone too far off the edge already.

Then there's Lucy and David's relationship. It's really rushed. They get together with not too much foreplay or interaction. As a result, I cannot really feel the connection or care for the relationship. There's just a lack of buildup, and it just sort of happens. Even after they get together, it's only the forced story buildup that makes them understand each other's affection. This is similar to basically every character. I think Falco, Rebecca, Lucio, Maine, Kiwi, and the whole gang of mercenaries are a fun bunch with stylized cyberpunk appearances. The show would have been a lot better if it showcased these characters at the forefront in more mundane episodes, but instead, it's just an action-packed story with no sense of pacing. If even David's motivation and character are a complete mess, then what about the others? Maine's a good leader, and Rebecca and Falco are also affable comrades. Even Lucy's initial standoffish attitude was good, and David and Lucy could have had a much better relationship if it were not for the story.

Story this, story that, in the end, what was the story? It's just an action-packed adventure, one with predictable betrayals involving missions that the story doesn't even care enough to explain fully. There's no deeper meaning. There's no poor vs elite despite it alluding to it in the beginning episodes. There are no "good" or "bad" guys. There's no moral outcome or crisis. There's no secret bomb that's going to destroy everything. It's just two megacorporations politicking and fighting over benefits and market share. These two corporations might as well be nameless for the lack of worldbuilding or details given to their structure or what they do. It's just...fighting and stuff. Sorry if I say that I really don't give a shit about this generic story.

Studio Trigger just about was the only thing that was good about this show. Yes, the art style is great, and I love the direction the studio went with this show. Yet, it doesn't feature the fight scenes that I'm familiar with like in Kill la Kill. There's a clear lack of budget in certain areas, and the fight cinematography is just not on par with Studio Trigger's standard. It feels like there are slideshows here and there, and I'm sure it's just that Netflix didn't give enough budget for the show. There isn't even an animated ED, and it's only 10 episodes. Yet, Studio Trigger made with what they did, and it looks great.

Still does not offset how bad this show is, though.

This is one of the worst anime I've seen in my entire life. Had I been able to follow the three episode rule, I would have dropped this faster than a girl in an NTR manga drops her virtue. Japanese animation meets Western tropes was a massive mistake and this is the triumphant example.

Let's get this out of the way: I had to watch the whole thing because it was a group watch, and the group was morbidly curious to see how this awful trainwreck would go. The strongest praise was "it was ok" while about 3/4s of the group ed me in various levels ... of boredom and exasperation.

The writing is awful, for starters. The protagonist, David, is an idiot. This youth, whose mother busts her ass to get him into a top school, successfully fries his very expensive school's very expensive infrastructure in episode 1 because he tries to apply street smart tricks to an academic environment. Spoilers: sophisticated systems do not like the equivalent of script kiddie code injected into them.

From there, David fails at life and makes friends along the way. I am not even mildly exaggerating, as David's decisions go against everything the people who love him want to do. You can't even attempt to use his youth as a defense because the shit he goes through is stuff he (and we) see happen right before his eyes. What makes it even worse is the bad pacing: there were two points in time that it felt like we skipped an entire episode. In media res only works if you do it well, guys!

Speaking of the writing, I did mention that it is Japanese animation with Western tropes, and boy oh boy does it show. There were at least seven instances of what we dubbed "porn with friends," with porn beamed directly into the brain, automated onaholes, and other nonsense sprinkled on top of the crappiest cyberpunk sundae. Given that cyberpunk draws heavy influences from Japan, the most Japanese thing in this overhyped mediocrity is the animation. The music is this awful rendition of electronica and scream on chalkboard, which makes the series even more of a teethgrinder to get through. The were also obvious references to William Gibson, the godfather of cyberpunk, and far superior science fiction anime, like Ghost in the Shell, which just made it more annoying. So the writers *do* know what good cyberpunk looks like, but ground this out instead?

The only reason this doesn't get a 1 is because some of the jokes actually landed. Transhumanism has been done far better than this rubbish. I don't require that every piece of media I consume innovate and change the very foundation of the genre. I find subversion for subversion's sake imbecilic. But unfortunately, I do see how this could have been made far better, so the sins of bad writing are magnified by the sin of wasted potential. At least it's mercifully short, if you want to hate watch.

In short: don't watch it. Go watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. You'll be far better rewarded.

So much potential. So much disappointment. Studio Trigger and Imaishi rank amongst my favourite studios/directors, and I had been waiting for a very long time to see what their next work would be after Promare, so this was a big disappointment.

The plot just feels like every generic cyberpunk trope mashed together, but without the purpose they originally had - for example, social inequality is briefly mentioned as a source of conflict and unease in the first episode, but isn't explored much further, despite a fear of capitalism and coporations being central to the birth of cyberpunk genre. They also kept the not-so-great aspects of cyberpunk, ... aka techno-orientalism, with the Japanese characters and corporations being depicted as the villains. In the original American cyberpunk works, there is a combined fear of corporations and foreign economic power - specifically that of Japan - which usually comes together as fear of Japanese corporations, 'zaibatsu'. Sadly, Cyberpunk Edgerunners keeps all of the orientalism, and none of the genuine critique of capitalism.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners is the opposite of Arcane: Arcane made me care about a franchise I didn’t originally care about, Edgerunners made me disappointed in a studio and genre I cared about. The world building is poor, villains aren't well fleshed out, many characters lack depth. The show doesn’t use its time well, with screentime being 90% violence, with little time left to develop the cast, world and conflicts. In the end, I don’t really care about the stakes between the Militech and Arasaka, and don't really understand it.

The animation is great, but it's without the spirit of gun-ho rebellion, subversiveness and chaos which makes other Trigger/GAINAX shows like Promare and Panty & Stocking so great. It's Trigger animation without the bold Trigger plots and chaotic shenanigans. It's washed out Trigger - flashy, beautiful, violent animation without the heart that makes Trigger shows. It's Promare for straight people.

Lucy had potential as a character, but she ends up just being another femme fatale who needs saving by a man. There were many interesting threads, like David's upbrining, immigrant family and working class background that could have been more richly explored that weren't really picked up later on. The first half of the anime is decent, but I felt the plot and pacing in the second half was rushed and disappointing.

NB: My original review getting way too popular and I kept on getting comments about it, so I thought I should rewrite it to explain things better rather let a review that I hastily typed when I was tired and frustrated one night spiral out of control. Annoyingly MAL wouldn't let me edit the original review so I had to delete and make a new review.

Most of the time, watching a show or a movie, reading a book or playing video games can be summarized by seeking and consuming entertainment.
Once done with it you hop onto the next one, pick and repeat.

But sometimes pieces of media hold much more value than that of simply being entertaining, sometimes they become dear experiences that mark you big time.

And that it was I got with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. So I'll try my best to put into words what I felt after watching this GREAT anime.

- NO SPOILER :

Considering that my prior knowledge to the video game Cyberpunk 2077 is "this game has more bugs ... than drug needles in a crack house", the studio really delivered on immersing the audience into the futuristic punk world that is Cyberpunk.
Every part of Night City feels like it has a story to tell.
The colors are vibrant and alive, backgrounds, movements and designs are beautifully detailed. Even the varied soundtrack, though overall not particularly striking, feels right at home every time.
While the show's main objective was a marketing attempt at reviving a poorly launched game, it's clear that it ended up being a magnificent work of ion.

It also looks really different from the Japanese animation we're used to.
The world building is mostly devoid of Japanese tropes that you'd usually be expected to see in an anime, the movements are fast paced in a way that almost gives the impression of watching a cartoon at times, but it still keeps that clear Japan-made artistry which creates an intriguing identity.
The Japanese sub is great, but for the first time in my life I found myself watching an anime in English dub, the well put cast of voice actors and actresses with different accents provide with a greater immersion and authenticity to the debilitated punk city feel.
I still can't believe I'm saying this, but the English dub is definitely something to consider if you plan on watching this show.

Action, it would be impossible talking about a story on a dysfunctional robotic dystopia where people have the same gun laws and healthcare as they have in America today without focusing on it's fight scenes.
And man, it blows up everywhere, people are screaming, cursing, running, shooting... deaths aren't censored, they're magnified by explosions of organs, every action is a macabre but fun bloody spectacle.
Part of the senseless carnage is here for entertainment, but it's also aiming at giving a sense of numbness to death, ing it off as a daily occurrence that can happen to anyone down in Night City.

The main and ing characters are surprisingly fleshed-out and memorable for having barely any backstory or exposition scene.
The way characters interact between each other gives you everything you need to know about them, whether vocally or through animation.
In the matter of less than 10 episodes, the writers and animators managed to create a genuine and authentic feeling of care and connection for various characters, hell, Rebecca became fan favorite within like 3 lines of dialogue and 20 seconds of screen time.

Technology is evidently a prime focus in the story, though it doesn't take its toll too much on the big picture by not overwhelming every bit of dialogue with nonsense and useless talk about tech ware and buzz words, or maybe it does but it somehow adds to the tone of the world.
Expressions from the inhabitants such as "choom" and "nova" really added that touch on the dialogues, which were great if you forget about the... "I'm built different" incident.
That being said, the weak side would definitely lie in it's antagonists, there is only so much motivations and resentment to create in the span of a few episodes, so much that the decisions for certain actions in the end might seem out of place if not weirdly forced.
Some characters are really hard to be properly introduced to without the game references, and considering that the big world boss fits the description is definitely a miss.

The anime is quite short but not rushed, it's breathtaking in many ways but it's also because you can barely catch your breath through the density of content packed in each episodes. There is so many unique scenes and plot points to live through that it's only wrongdoing is that I wish I could've seen more of it.

- SPOILER :

Feel good stories are not my go to drug, I hold stories that have the audacity to take risks in higher regard.
"Open and shut cases" stories is what resonate the most for me, if you start something then you have to finish it, that's how complete experiences are made.
In the case of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, we are presented with this, but with an incredibly bittersweet ending, and it hits you harder than those Becca guns.

David feels like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, everyone around him think he is special so he starts seeing himself as unique.
He has no dreams for himself so he makes it a goal to achieve the ones of the people who are dear to his heart, even if it means at the expense of his own well-being, which he eventually "succeed" to do.
He manages to get "all the way to the top" of Arasaka tower just like his mother wanted, he successfully pick up and lead the crew just like Maine would've done, if not better, and Lucy leaves for the moon and fly from the city thanks to him.
But in reality, he became the very thing that each of these characters never wished for him to be, respectively an Edgerunner punk, a chromed out Cyberpsycho and a not very moving or functional person.

"You don't make a name as a Cyberpunk by how you live. You're ed by how you die."
But the ones who were close to you will sure as hell you for how you lived, and once you're gone from Night City, you'll only have left a trail of regrets for the people left.
Ultimately, the crew lived through so much yet were merely a spark of light in the colossal dome of lights that is Night City.
And that's how the story concludes, Lucy's face says it all, it's bittersweet, it's painfully ironic and unfair, there is no happiness, no hope, no friends, only regrets and aching memories.

But that's probably why so many people felt "broken" after that ending, myself included.
God I couldn't go without cryin' like a little bitch writing the review and listening to THAT song.

- CLOSING STATEMENT

There is so much more that I'd want to talk about, so many more feelings to put into pixels, but we're getting a bit lengthy here.
Seeing this show as a whole, it's a well earned 10/10 for me, all my thanks go to everyone involved for crafting such an amazing experience. If this is what the future of anime holds for us then I'm unequivocally all in.
Thank you for reading choom !
PS : Rebecca deserved better.

My initial reaction to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was confusion. Who was this made for, exactly? On the one hand, you have a simple, predictable story with every character being cliche to the point of parody. Any popular 80's shounen you can think of had more nuance and complexity. So it's an anime for kids, right?

Well, on the other hand, there is a bunch of nudity, sex, drug consumpion, and endless amounts of gory death, with mangled body parts and pieces of brain scattered everywhere. So is it for adults?

I recall back in the 90's when critics would dismiss anime as "children's cartoons ... with a bunch of sex and violence" and with Edgerunners they would have a perfect argument.

I arrived at an answer to this conundrum by the very end of the series, but it's one you will have to wait for at the bottom of this review, too.

To Edgerunners' credit, the action scenes are plenty of fun, being hyper-stylized, violent, and plentiful. If there's one thing Imaishi excels at, it's style, and the anime has it in spades.

The first four episodes are fairly mediocre, being a nonsensical set-up for the world and its bland characters (more on that later), but the fifth and especially sixth episodes are a notable improvement. In fact, in many ways episode 6 functions as a better, more touching ending than the actual one in episode 10. Imaishi brings all his powers of style to the anime's big emotional moments, and while it works to a certain degree, it ultimately rings hollow for two reasons which go beyond even the cardboard characters or countless plot holes.

Firstly, Cyberpunk's Night City is an insane hellscape. Secondly, it's an insane hellscape that makes no sense.

There is nothing in Night City that is true, good, or beautiful. Not a single damn thing. However, even the ugliness and sin here isn't remotely original. It's simply everything awful about our own modern world pushed to the limit. Crime has exploded in 2022, but in Night City, random people being gunned down by thugs or psychos is a normal part of life. Pornography, pot, and video games is the bane of the modern bugman, and in this futuristic hell, all of them have become even worse, with virtual reality porn, games, and movies, and a slew of narcotics, including the deadly allure of stripping away one's human body to be replaced with metal. Modern man is atomized now, but in Night City, the concept of family has largely been eradicated. Speaking of which, while current elites may be trying to abolish man, as CS Lewis once warned, in this future man has literally been abolished in his entirety, to be replaced with chrome. What hope is there? What is there to root for? Night City makes Sodom and Gomorrah look like the most austere Amish community, and one wishes it condemned to the same fate, although there may be no survivors this time.

However, it's all utterly unrealistic. For one obvious problem, the technology has expanded incredibly since modern times. How is this implemented, let alone maintained? In 2022, much of the Western, "modern" world is struggling to heat their homes through the winter, keep the lights on, fill their cars with gas, or buy groceries for their family. That's if they even have a home or car, of course, as both have become prohibitively expensive and no longer affordable by most in the US. We're going backwards, getting dumber, and unable to maintain the technology of our forefathers. How in the world is the advanced, cutting-edge tech in this series going to be implemented everywhere? It will take tremendous intelligence and hard work. Who in this dystopian hellscape will have that, especially with the allure of being in virtual reality all the time?

Nothing else about the society makes sense. Powerful cyborg alterations that allow a man to kill dozens of police and destroy armored cars are freely traded on the streets, with no oversight or restriction. It's laughable. At present, Western governments are hell-bent on preventing access to mere handguns, let alone rifles, and they have long since banned automatic weapons. Yet, in the future, they will be okay with devices that gives a person a thousand times more power?

The idea of corporations being the only powers in the future is stupid, too. Through all of human history, corporations have been subservient to the state, and will likely always continue to be so. We don't need to go too deep into political theory to understand why; if a corporation could, it would BECOME the state, set up a government, and of course, use that to destroy all competitors. In practice, that doesn't occur for a variety of reasons, but regardless, the main power would still be tied to a government, not mere companies. They would at most be pawns, much as they are now.

However, my biggest problem is that nothing about Night City is self-sustaining. It should die out in a year or less. Without spoiling anything, the last two episodes see incredible devastation to the two main corporations, Arasaka and Militech. The latter loses an entire battalion, and Arasaka loses countless tanks, armored cars, helicopters, and dozens upon dozens of soldiers. Oh, and there are a slew of police and parademics killed, and a specialized, uber-powerful police/military vehicle destroyed. This from a single cyborg. And, based on what we've seen, large losses from a cyborg going psycho, if not quite as disastrous, happen frequently.

How does any of this make sense? Each corporation has lost the equivalent of multiple billions of dollars in modern currency. They would go bankrupt. The police and parademic force would be decimated, and everyone working for them would likely quit for fear of being made into strawberry jam on the pavement.

On a more fundamental level, how does Night City even sustain a population? The modern world has below replacement fertility now, and in this future, it looks vastly worse. Hardly anyone has kids and, given their cyborg alterations, many may be incapable of it. Meanwhile, the number of people killed from violence is immense. I also can't imagine many immigrating to this hell on Earth, while many would likely flee for their lives rather than be decapitated by a cyberpsycho. Thus, the population should be decreasing steadily until it reaches zero. So again, nothing about this hellscape is even genuine or logical.

But it doesn't have to be. Let's go back to my question about who the hell this series is mainly for.

It's for exactly the type of atomized bugman whose mantra is porn, pot, and video games that the series shows an extreme version of. They're technically adults, or close to it, but like their stories simple. Just add enough "mature" elements and oodles of cool stylistic presentation, and all is good.

Maybe our modern world isn't so much better than the fake yet horrifying hell of Night City.

Damn, goes hard.
Was predictable, but the way it is written n directed, makes this like a journey, i love that it literally is only it's history n nothing more. not like.. A certain anime around one thousand chapters, ya know..
The animation style made by bones is perfect, as always
The presentation n making of the characters, fits completely with the history, since the are no "refill" characters other than the ones that contribute to the main character development.
Also they were completely aware of what they were doing, since they all reacted the way they should.
I think it's not a series for everyone, to be honest, the ... end just doesn't makes you feel anything, not love, neither sadness.
It's just, empty, like if you couldnt process what you had witnessed.

Show definitely manages to get cyberpunk dystopian atmosphere right from the first episode. Its just that animation quality and overall length of it all is too short. There are times during the show I couldn't tell what I was looking at whether it was character silhouttes or just random objects in the background. Animation is just way too rushed and its borderline unacceptable in my opinion.

There are few characters introduced in the show but almost all of them don't seem to have personality of any kind. Oh, and don't get your hopes up for happy endings because there will be none of that stuff here. ...

Music is one of the better things and it manages to really set the stage for scenes where animation horribly fails. Its either very hard metal or screamo.

Overall the show could have used some more time on the drawing board and 10 episodes is not nearly enough for a show that has a setting like this. I cannot understand how anyone can give this show 10's and 9's when its more closer to a 6 or lower.

One of the great anime of 2022, and without a doubt, one of the best on Netflix. It´s an audiovisual wonderful. The plot doesn´t decay or bore, you will want to see one episode after another.

Cyberpunk is a subgenre that overwhelms me for the simple fact of being a world in which I wouldn´t like to live; full of vices, technology... A world full of neon lights but very dark, that's Night City.

The social messages released are very good.

Capitalism in that city suffocates the most vulnerable social classes, because there, the rich are very rich and the poor are very poor. Moving up in social ... class is very complicated, even if you kill yourself to work.

What exit is there? It's hard to get by in a hostile city full of perversion.

David met Lucy, a breath of fresh air, a light at the end of the tunnel... So he ends up being a gang member in order to survive. They are simply two young people who will fight against the system that excluded them, the system that hurt them so much, because after all, they have nothing to lose.

They will face enemies in fights full of blood, violence and hacking, having to reach their own limits. In this city, morality doesn´t exist: you have to fight to survive.

Having body mods helps, but it's expensive, giving you unique abilities. But everything has its bad part, cyberpsychosis or addiction to implants.

"I'll take you to the Moon", what a beautiful phrase, usually used metaphorically, but in the series it's literal. Escape from the noisy Earth, from that damned city, go to a quiet place like the Moon...

The characters are charismatic, for whom I felt empathy. The character design is incredible, with good personalities, although I would have liked more of the secondary background.

The animation and soundtrack are fantastic.

The ending is beautiful, unforgettable.

"Because I did everything impossible to be by your side."