Cyberpunk Edgerunners (animated series)

Intro

Cyberpunk Edgerunners is an animated series created by video game developer CD Projekt and production company Studio Trigger, released on September 13th, 2022 . The series is based on the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and the cyberpunk board game series created by Mike Pondsmith where Cyberpunk Edgerunners serves as a prequel to the game, taking place approximately one year prior to its start . Cyberpunk Edgerunners explores themes of poverty/social mobility, crime, and doing what you have to to survive in a hyper-advanced futuristic world.

Setting

Cyberpunk Edgerunners takes place in Night City, a futuristic megacity located in modern North California after the region has become independent from the United States. It has come to be controlled by competing megacorporations more than the government . As such, Night city is in constant turmoil, with clashing megacorporations on a large scale and a plethora of gangs clashing in the neglected undercity .

Every aspect of life is infused with robotics, whether it's transportation, surveillance, public maintenance, or most importantly cybernetic implants and augmentations to the human body to give its inhabitants extraordinary abilities.

Characters

Major Characters

David Martinez - Latino American teenager who lives in Santo Domingo (a poor industrial district of night city). David is a top student at Arasaka academy, which is a prestigious school run by the Arasaka megacorporation. David is bullied for being the only student in his class from a poor household and thus finds himself resenting the school, classmates, company, and city as a whole .

Lucy - Lucyna Kushinada is a netrunner (someone augmented and trained to use their consciousness to interact with the internet/network that runs the city) and David's romantic interest throughout the series . She introduces him to the world of crime in Night City after tracking down a stolen good David happens to possess. She hates Arasaka for making her a netrunner and dreams of visiting the recently colonized moon .

Maine - Maine is the leader of the gang Lucy belongs to. He accepts David into the gang expecting him to die. Eventually, David proves himself capable and Maine shifts to a mentoring role for him, teaching him about leadership and the underpinnings of Night City .

Faraday - Faraday is the corrupt middleman between the Militech megacorporation and gangs, taking jobs and finding the right crew to do the undesirable and often illegal work of the corporations. Through him, we can see that the gang violence and crime rate is largely a proxy war between corporations as they indirectly hire gangs to disrupt and destroy each other

Minor Characters

Maine/Davids gang (Rebecca, Dorio, Pilar, Kiwi, Falco) - These five characters round out Maine’s gang (eventually Davids as well). Rebecca and Pilar are siblings and some of the gang's main firepower. Dorio is Maine's girlfriend and second in command. Falco is the gang's getaway driver. Kiwi is the gang's main netrunner

Ripperdoc - The Ripperdocs are undercity doctors specializing in cybernetic enhancement. Before he becomes an edgerunner and cyberpunk, David works for one testing new ‘Brain dances’ for some complimentary income .

Gloria Martinez - Gloria Martinez is Davids mother. She works long hours as a first responder to afford David's tuition at Arasaka Academy to help her son have a better life .

Adam Smasher - A living myth and head of Arasaka security, Adam Smasher is a fully cybernetic supersoldier who once terrorized the streets of Night City but has been reigned in by Arasaka and now acts as their secret weapon .

Katsuo - One of David’s classmates, the son of an Arisaka executive and the main perpetrator of David’s bullying .

Tanaka - Katuo’s father and Arisaka executive. Tanaka takes great interest in David after seeing his immediate affinity for cyberware and wants him to test Arasaka's extreme and experimental cyber products .

Plot

The show begins with David Martinez attending Arasaka Academy, one of the most prestigious schools in Night City run by the Megacorporation Arasaka to educate and train its future employees and leaders. Despite the near guarantee of upward social mobility, David is contently at odds with the school and his mother because he is ridiculed by classmates for coming from a poor background and by teachers/administration for pirating cyberware updates required by the school. After his pirated cyberware crashes the system, he faces expulsion but Gloria Martinez agrees to pay for the damages, furthering their financial duress. On the way home from the meeting, they are caught in the crossfire of a gang fight on the road and Gloria dies .

In her possessions, David discovers a stolen military-grade piece of cyberware called a Sandevistan- a spinal implant that grants inhuman strength, speed, and reflexes for short periods of time. After trying to sell it, David instead asks the local Ripperdoc to install it on him and he exacts revenge on classmate Katsuo for his years of bullying and insulting his mother. He shows an exceptional affinity for using cyberware which catches the eye of Arasaka executive Tanaka who happens to be Katsuo’s father, and David is expelled from Arasaka academy but is offered re-entrance and a scholarship if he agrees to work for Arasaka as an asset to test new cyberware, but David resists .

As David wanders aimlessly through the city following his expulsion, a Netrunner named Lucy tries to steal some of his cyberware but gets caught because of his Sandevistan. They agree to team up to pickpocket targets on the subway for the remainder of the day and eventually, David collapses from using his cyberware too much and needs medical attention from a Ripperdoc, who prescribes immunosuppressants to keep his body from rejecting the cyberware. Afterward, David goes back to Lucy’s apartment with her where she shares her dreams of going to the moon in a vision, but it turns out to be the bait to buy time for one of the Night Citys gangs to show up .

Turns out that Maine purchased the Sandevistan from Gloria, David’s mother. David asks for a chance to prove himself as part of the gang and Maine agrees to honor his friendship with Gloria, largely expecting David to die and just take it from his body later. He accompanies them back to the gang's headquarters and meets the other members. His first job as a member of the gang is to steal navigation data from Tanaka’s car, which succeeds doesn’t go smoothly but eventually succeeds after fighting off Arasaka security and other gangs as they steal the whole car. Arasaka academy continues to try to recruit David, who continues to firmly decline .

David integrates into the gang, getting trained by the different members in their areas of expertise and going on missions like rescuing hostages and pickpocketing with Lucy like they did the first time they met. Over time, David begins to trust lucy again after her betrayal and falls in love. After a night out, Pilar makes fun of a homeless man who is urinating, but it turns out the man had cyber-psychosis and kills Pilar with a concealed weapon. David and Lucy flee, and after Lucy confesses that she had never shared her dream of going to the moon with anyone else, rekindling their romance and they kiss .

The gang is tasked with kidnapping Tanaka, and they have a new lead. Kiwi discovered that Tanaka is a frequent customer of an illegal brain dance creator named JK who David is familiar with from his time working for the Ripperdoc. They track him down but get outsmarted and David is captured. When the gang eventually catches up, JK is subjecting David to traumatic brain dances to get him to turn psycho. When they eventually rescue David and subdue JK, he agrees to lure Tanaka into a trap in exchange for his life. When Tanaka arrives, the gang has to fight with his personal security detail and JK is killed in the crossfire. They secure Tanaka and flee before the police show up .

The gang gets Tanaka to a secure location, and after the prior fight, Maine starts exhibiting signs of cyber-psychosis like violent rampages against anything and everything around him. Kiwi jacks into Tanaka's brain to extract information, but Maine has a cyber psychotic episode and severely injures her. Lucy, as the backup netrunner, takes over while David keeps watch to make sure Maine doesn’t harm her as well. Meanwhile, Tanaka reveals that he was behind David’s expulsion from Arasaka Academy being rescinded and begs him to stop what’s happening, promising David a bright future at Arasaka and that the edgerunners will kill him after this job to tie up loose ends. David hesitates, and Tanaka’s neural implant short circuits, almost killing Lucy as well. With Tanaka dead, his dropped vitals trigger an automatic response trauma team to be dispatched, meaning the gang has only minutes until they’re swarmed by police. Maine sends Lucy and David to the escape vehicle while Maine succumbs fully to cyber-psychosis and buys time for their escape .

After a time skip, David is the new leader of Maines gang, building up his cyberware, and his reputation as an edgerunner. He is approached by Faraday with an opportunity to prove he’s ready to inherit Maine’s last job of stealing data from Arasaka. Clearly rattled by her prior near-death experience, Lucy is no longer part of the gang but is romantically involved with David. Getting this new job from Faraday, David tries to convince Lucy to rejoin the gang since he needs her expertise as a netrunner to succeed. Lucy reveals that she has been working on her own mission, tracking down and killing Arasaka netrunners interested in Tanaka’s data to conceal their role in Tanaka’s death .

David accepts Faraday’s job, tracking down and assassinating an Arasaka lab director. Throughout the episode, he exhibits signs of cyber-psychosis and extreme guilt over killing an innocent lab employee that reminded him of his mother. Arasaka investigates and attempts to assassinate Faraday as an involved party. When Faraday’s current employer, Militech, refuses to protect him because he hasn’t been able to deliver Tanaka’s data, he turns to Arasaka and offers to turn in Lucy for hiding the data and killing their agents. They set a trap and capture lucy as a result .

Faraday learns the whole truth of Lucy’s plot Arasaka’s interest in David as a test subject and plans to sell them both to Arasaka to secure a position in the company. To capture David, he sends him on a mission to intercept an Arasaka convoy containing their prototype cyber skeleton, the weapon Tanaka wanted David to test since the start. At the same time, he tips off Militech to the convoy as well, guaranteeing that after David steals the Cyber skeleton he will have to install it and use it to defend the rest of the gang from the Militech force. Faraday's plan works, and for a moment Lucy escapes and can tell David about Faraday’s double cross, enraging him and setting him on a path for revenge .

David fights through forces from both Arasaka and Miltech on his way to Arasaka tower, the headquarters of the Arasaka corporation. Having second thoughts, Kiwi, who worked with Faraday to capture Lucy, reveals their location to David, leading Faraday to kill her. David rescues Lucy and tells the gang's getaway driver to get her to safety. With the rest of his crew, David forges on to Arasaka tower to tear down the company whose cruelty can be directly tied to so much of his life's misfortune. Armed with their own experimental arsenal, Arasaka is forced to call in Adam Smasher- a living legend to stop David. In their clash, David and the rest of his gang prove to be no match for Adam Smasher and they are all killed .

Critical reception

On release, Cyberpunk Edgerunners was met with very positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 96% audience score with 2377 ratings and a 100% critic score with 14 critic ratings . As Kambole Campbell of IGN says, “Edgerunners feels exciting and new enough as it pushes the boundaries of its exciting and hugely inventive visual representation of in-game concepts.” .

It was nominated for “best adaptation” at the 2022 game awards, losing out to riot game’s Arcane . It was also nominated at the 50th Annie Awards for best storyboarding, which will be held on February 25th, 2023, and has received 13 nominations at the 7th annual Crunchy Roll anime awards including Best Anime, Best Score, and Best Character Design . The Crunchy Roll Anime Awards will be held on March 3rd, 2023 .

Ethics

Crime

The portrayal of crime in the media has been controversial since the public perception of the moral value of an action and the type of people who would commit a crime is heavily influenced by the media. Cyberpunk Edgerunners takes a contrary stance to most media where the protagonist is actively trying to destabilize society for the last episode . Most of the show's runtime is spent in a violent gang where the “degree of bloodshed would normally be numbing”. Since this show depicts “the psychological unmooring of its characters” while keeping the viewer on their side, some ethical considerations must be made in desensitizing children to crime with its cartoonish portrayal of deep and disturbing content .

Sexual Content

Edgerunners is not shy with its sexual content. Shown through suggestive costume design, and explicit scenes. It takes a unique approach of treating most of its sexual content as part of the background wherever the characters go. Since it is not part of the plot, many people see it as unnecessary and prohibitive to younger audiences since the prevalence of sexual content means simply skipping sexual scenes is not a viable option for young viewers or viewers who are not comfortable with it .

Additionally, Lucy’s revealing costume design has come under scrutiny for unnecessarily sexualizing the main female character. This has become somewhat of a trend in video games and media whose target audience is young men . This alienates women, and many women have reported symptoms of body dysmorphia, lowered self-esteem, and more as a direct result of the prevalence of overly and unnecessarily sexualized female characters .

Cyber Security

Edgerunners portrays a world where everything is hyper-connected. Humans have cybernetic implants that grant us direct access to the web and can master a skill by inserting a chip, allowing a higher functioning society than we could achieve today simply because the friction of learning new skills simply doesn’t exist . In some ways, this improves the quality of life in night city compared to modern technology, like constantly monitoring vitals so medical trauma teams can be dispatched to your exact location instantly when you have a heart attack or near-zero police response times..

On the other hand, we see those same implants being used to forcibly access someone's mind and steal thoughts, or expose everyone to additional risk of rogue AIs and viruses that no longer just affect your phone or computer, but your brain. We also repeatedly see those same medical teams that can be dispatched instantly leave civilians behind in critical condition because they do not have the right insurance policy and the police often disregard bystanders' lives .

The access to data has also led to the social stratification we see in the show, with the wealthy employees of the megacorps’ owning every aspect of the city and designing it for each other, while the majority of the population lives in the slums . Beyond the divide itself, Cyberpunk Edgerunners also clearly shows that the avenues for social mobility like education and entrepreneurship are controlled by the corporations, along with politics, the military, etc. so even those who are willing to dedicate their whole life to improving their children's prospects like Gloria Martinez rarely succeed.