Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

cyberpunk: edgerunners was sad but i think that’s what makes the cyberpunk genre what it is. not so much a cautionary tale but a truth telling about our soon to be relationship with tech and capitalism. A great highlight of what anime can be in its current iteration outside of its 90s golden years can be.

i think it’s obvious it has the usual anime tropes but it’s not lacking in depth, i find it of the most important of what the anime is portraying of what CyberPunk is: it’s not “shitty people will be shitty” but capitalism will continue to force shitty situations on the lower class, The main character isn’t white (or the most pale person in the show), The Main character isn’t the chosen one, and THE most important is the portrayal of addiction is a result of trauma. i had unfortunately seen a person well versed in tech and tech expressionisms overlook these elements (possible due to a cultural difference) and i also believe you can’t blame people for only taking in the shallow things if you out it in your media but the underlying things listed about is what made the show special for me.

Way too hyped for what it is (like the game before the updates) - cyberpunk anime based on the Cyberpunk universe created by Mike Pondsmith, the anime serves as a prequel to the game and takes place about a year before the events of Cyberpunk 2077. It got the seal of approval by the Polish Developer CD Projekt.

It is set on a future city on California (Night City) in a world where gangs and cybernetic implants are usual. The main "hero" (or "anti-hero" since it runs a gang in the future on the series) is a cocky latin-american cocky kid with a hard working mother and that gets involved on gangs war, getting implants and changing character through the series.

Despite the animation being totally Japanese in the form of anime, the main error probably is the main story that the screenplay is based (written by a Polish team)... it is bad written, dumb and previsible and I had zero empathy with the protagonist. The quality of animation is good, but not phenomenal.

Action is frenetic but unreal to the point of being silly and the characters have no realistic traces at all. Maybe because of this I took 1 and a half year to be able to see it all.

The same can be said of the opening music "This Fffire" by Franz Ferdinand probably one of the worst music chosen for the anime by a band already dead in 2023 (it was a more proheminant band from 20y ago).

It was nominated to a ton of anime awards, but got only the best best anime of the year ("only" because it had more than 10 nominations).

For me it is a 6.0 score out of 10.0 / B. Go play this game game that is a 100% better or go known the Syndicate games and remake on Xbox to see some good cyberpunk and similar stuff, or go see Appleseed or Ghost in Shell series to a good quality cyberpunk anime.