Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a fresh push of new players after Cyberpunk: Edgerunners premiered on Netflix, including a flood of mods within the game to mimic the characters from this animated series.
The series tells a standalone, 10-episode story about a street kid trying to survive in Night City — a technology and body modification-obsessed city of the future. Having everything to lose, he stays alive by becoming an edgerunner — a mercenary outlaw also known as a cyberpunk.
Review
Based in the world of the Cyberpunk 2077 game, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners focuses on the story of a young street kid who is just trying to find his place in a world filled with violence, technology and CHROME. The main character David has tragedy hit him early on and finds himself out of place at a high end school that his family shouldn’t be able to afford. David loves the idea of edgerunners, cyberpunks and wants to be one. When he comes into possession of a piece of military grade chrome, he joins a crew and starts to prove himself more than a noob.
Studio Trigger did the animation for this which was stunning. The feel of the world is very much Blade Runner meets Ghost in the Shell. There are many callbacks to classic anime, including Akira, which is something that the game Cyberpunk 2077 also does. The all star Japanese voice cast includes KENN, Aoi Yuuki, Hiroki Tochi, Michiko Kaiden, Takako Honda, Wataru Takagi, Tomoyo Kurosawa, Kazuhiko Inoue, Yurika Hino and Kenjiro Tsuda. The English dub was also very well done with names like Zach Aguliar voicing David (Demon Slayer), Emi Lo voicing Lucy, Matthew Mercer as Falco, Aleks Le as Katsuo and Giancarlo Esposito as Faraday.
Combined with a simple yet well written story and stunning visuals from Studio Trigger, we also get a truly cyberpunk soundtrack with opening and ending theme songs that are both catchy and catch the mood of the series so well. The opening song was a bit unexpected but also very fitting the further along I got into watching the series. Franz Ferdinand is a band I had listened to extensively in the past so I instantly remembered it the moment it came on. And I didn’t skip it once during my watch of all 10 episodes.
Like anything truly Cyberpunk, happy endings are never a sure thing. Yet the story comes full circle and completes the mission that the story set to tell from the very first episode. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an action packed cyber thrill ride from start to finish.
You can catch all 10 episodes on Netflix today. You can also check out the op and ed music videos below.
Opening Credits – This Fffire by Franz Ferdinand
Ending Song – Let You Down
