Review Of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 1- A bloody good neon-soaked anime

Review Of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 1- A bloody good neon-soaked anime

Edgerunners doesn’t deserve to be as good as it is. Edgerunners was inspired by Cyberpunk 2077. It builds on the lore and ideas seen in Night City and turns them into a high-octane, fast-paced anime with 10 episodes. Edgerunners is a lot of fun from start to finish. There is a lot of violence, blood, and depth to the characters.

The first two episodes set the scene and introduce us to David, a street kid. His mom Gloria works too much, and she dies in a car accident because of it. David decides to get implants to improve his body because he is sad and has been hurt by bullies. But those implants belong to a crazy man named James Norris, and there are worries that David might become crazy like him.

But before any of this happens, David meets Lucy and her group of friends. They want David to get the implant, but he makes a deal with them and agrees to work one gig at a time to pay them back. With Maine keeping an eye on the group, the show becomes more episodic as David learns the ropes, gets trained by Lucy, and gets to know the other members of the group while taking out targets. Then, everything comes together nicely during one last mission, which is spread out over two big, action-packed episodes to end the show on a high note.

Edgerunners looks great because it takes cues from the game and uses locations from 2077. Here, Night City is a cyberpunk metropolis that is alive and well. Unlike the game, which sometimes felt empty and hollow, everything here has been carefully made from the ground up. The streets have a familiar hint of neon, and there are many different kinds of people on them. The violent, sexual, and bloody side of this place is shown in all its seedy glory.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 1

Even if you haven’t played Cyberpunk 2077, there’s enough to like here, no matter how much you know about Night City. Especially the characters are well-drawn, and there’s a clear lack of plot armor, which helps to build up the tension. Characters get killed off often, and both David and Lucy have a lot of history and depth that is nicely explored over the course of the story. If there’s one big problem with this, it’s that the show is too short. It could have used an extra 3 or 4 episodes to let everything breathe and get to know the rest of the gang.

Even though we learn more about players like Becca, Falco, Maine, and others, a lot of this seems to take a back seat to David and Lucy, who take up the most time. Even though the other characters don’t have much depth, David’s journey is emotional and easy to follow, which makes it a wild ride.

The soundtrack, which is a heady mix of pop and sci-fi soundscapes, is going to be much more of an acquired taste. It fits the show pretty well, but the last song in episode 10 feels a little out of place, especially because of the lyrics.

Even so, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a well-written anime adaptation that is a hell of a lot of fun. This series is a home run for Netflix, which has been doing surprisingly well with animated videogame adaptations.

Plot summary

A young boy in Night City named David Martinez goes to the Arasaka academy. David isn’t rich like most of his classmates. He lives with his mother, who is just a primary medic.

David always gets A’s, but he doesn’t get along with the rest of his class. With the help of his friend Ripperdoc, he finds ways to save money on his cyber implants. His mother wants him to do well in school and work his way up at Arasaka corporation.

One day, David and his mother are caught in the middle of a drive-by shooting, which hurts his mother very badly. She goes to a cheap doctor because that’s all they can afford, but she doesn’t make it.

David looks through her things and finds the Sandevistan, a cybernetic implant from Arasaka that is made for the military. He recently saw a soldier who had cyberpsychosis and was killed by an elite Max Tac team while using it.

Even though he has never used such complicated technology before, he decides to ask the Ripperdoc to implant him with the Sandevistan. Once he has the tech, he goes to the academy to see his bully and beats him up badly.

He meets Lucy, who also has implants, on the train. She looks at his technology and talks him into working with her. David uses his improved skills to help her get some implant chips that she can sell for quick cash before he passes out from the stress.

He is taken to the Ripperdoc, who gives him some immunoblockers and tells him to only take Sandevistan two or three times a day. He takes Lucy back to his house, where they talk about their dreams. She tells him that her dream is to go to the moon, which is a very popular place to visit.

He is caught by a group of people with cybernetic implants called “edgerunners.” One of them says that David stole technology that was meant for him. David tells them that it used to belong to his late mother. Maine, the leader of the edgerunners, says that his mother bought him the Sandevistan.

David wants to be an edgerunner, so he asks to join their team and pay off the debt. They agree to let him join and send him on a job to get Mr. Tanaka’s limo’s navigation data. Tanaka is a very important executive at Arasaka.

Maine is in charge of the crew, which also has Lucy, Dorio, Kiwi, Pilar, and Rebecca. They try to do the job quietly, but things go wrong and they have to make do with what they have. After a long chase, David finally gets the limo to where it needs to be.

The rest of the crew and how to be an edgerunner are taught to him over time. He also gets together with Lucy in a romantic way. One day, while they are having a party, a random person with psychosis shoots Pilar. David and the others then kill the person.

David and his team set up a trap to catch Tanaka, but as they try to get the information out of his head, Maine goes through cyberpsychosis and puts Kiwi out of action. Lucy has to help because she is a netrunner. A netrunner is someone who goes into a network to get information.

Even though what she finds scares her, Maine goes crazy outside and kills Dorio and a lot of police officers and Max Tac agents. David and Lucy get away, but they are scared by what they saw.

After some time, David gets stronger and has a lot more technology put into his body. He gets jobs done with the help of Kiwi, Rebecca, and Falco, who is his main wheelman. Lucy lives with David, but no matter how many times David asks, she won’t go on jobs with them.

David finds out that Lucy was raised as an Arasaka operative and trained to look for legacy information on the old net before she was able to escape and hide from the company. Faraday, the person who got them the job with Tanaka in the first place, gets David a job.

Faraday used to work for Militech as a fixer, but Arasaka hires him to do a certain job. Arasaka has been trying to get back the date that Tanaka’s netrunners stole, but Lucy has been killing the netrunners who were trying to get that date.

Arasaka has been working on a cyberskeleton, and he wants David to try it out because he knows how to use high-quality implants. Lucy cares about David and doesn’t want Arasaka to touch him.

Faraday and Kiwi, who are working together, trick Lucy into a trap. They send David and his crew in the direction of a convoy carrying the cyberskeleton and then force him to put it on himself by putting him in a tight spot.

David finds out that Faraday and Kiwi betrayed them and now have Lucy, so he plans to get her back with the help of Rebecca and Falco.

What exactly are Arasaka after?

Arasaka makes money by selling military-grade implants, and their newest technology needed to be tested in the field. Militech, one of their biggest rivals, found out about the cyberskeleton and had Faraday hire Maine’s crew to find out more about it and try to set Arasaka back.

Lucy found David’s file in Tanaka’s mind. She learned that they wanted David to be the one to test it in the field because he didn’t have any bad reactions to Sandevistan.

Faraday’s plan was for them to let David kill the Militech strike team with cyberskeleton and then get it back, but David was too strong for them.

What happens to Kiwi?

After betraying the others, Kiwi tells Faraday that she did what she was supposed to do because David put the cyberskeleton in her. She asks for her money and says she’s leaving town to escape the noise.

Faraday asks to see her one last time in person, but he also betrays her and shoots her because he needs to get rid of everyone who knows about the Arasaka technology. She stays strong long enough to tell Falco where Faraday and Lucy are going before she is taken away.

Who is Adam Smasher?

Adam Smasher is an edgerunner whose story has been told for a long time in Night City. There are rumors that he is more tech than human, but he handled it like a pro and didn’t go crazy.

He was supposed to get the cyberskeleton from Arasaka, but when David implants himself and loses control, Arasaka hires Adam Smasher to take the cyberskeleton off David.

Does David save Lucy?

David is starting to feel the effects of cyberpsychosis, and he is also running out of immunoblockers. He still gets to Arasaka tower with the help of Falco and Rebecca, where he meets Adam Smasher.

The two big guys fight each other, but not before David saves Lucy and tells Falco to get her far away. David keeps up with Adam for a while, but in the end, he is no match for the experienced fighter, who kills him.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 1

Does Lucy get to live out her dream?

Falco gets Rebecca and Lucy, as well as their payment for the job, out of Arasaka Tower. David also tells Falco that he’s sorry he couldn’t take Lucy to the moon.

Later on, Lucy does go to the moon and see its beauty for real. She does this while thinking about David and what he meant to her.

CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS (SEASON 1) REVIEW AND ENDING, EXPLAINED

Faraday’s performances hurt Arasaka’s political moves, so they decide to kill David with the help of the legendary full-borg solo mercenary, Adam Smasher. Faraday is dangling Lucy in front of the Arasaka executives, but David gets there just in time to save her. Adam Smasher shows up, and he and Arasaka start fighting. Lucy is safe in the car with the rest of the crew, who block Arasaka’s shots. But after Rebecca is killed by Smasher, David and Smasher fight to the death, and David dies of cyber psychosis.

David is no match for Smasher, no matter how hard he tries, and Smasher kills him. But before he dies, David has no regrets because he has done what he set out to do: become a legend and make sure Lucy is safe and can go to the moon by leaving her half of the money from the gig. Even after years have passed, David Martinez will always be remembered in Night City for what happened with the cyber skeleton.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a beautiful and loud tribute to the world of Cyberpunk 2077. At its heart is a sweet love story. Lucy and David are both broken, but they did everything they could to protect each other. When David knew that the only person he loved was safe, he chose to die. The show focuses on the political and social themes of the game, making comments about the gap between the rich and the poor and how greed makes people act like animals. Under Night City’s shiny surface is a seedy, ugly world of poverty, death, degradation, and madness, from which most people can’t get away.

The look of the show is top-notch and based on the games with care, and every frame is beautiful. The anime’s darker parts are shown in a stunning, larger-than-life way, and the world of Night City is full of bright colors that capture its spirit. David wants to be famous, just like V. Their stories are very different, but their goals are the same. You can’t get out of Night City unless you have a huge amount of dumb luck. And that’s a big, unlikely stroke of luck in a city where dreams are often broken.