Let’s be honest. None of the promotional tie-ins or excessive publicity stunts that the Cyberpunk 2077 videogame received before release (including the massive announcement that actor Keanu Reeves would be one of the main characters in the story) helped soften the blow that came from its disastrous December 10, 2020 launch. From the very first step into the futuristic, cyber-infested world of Night City, players were either greeted with some sort of game-breaking bug or catastrophic performance issues. These massive missteps have completely destroyed the fully immersive first-person experience that the developers of 2077, CD Projekt Red, promised to fans years earlier.
With gamers shaking their heads every time they witness their own avatar suddenly fall through the floor, a car slowly merging with another in a crash, or NPCs casually forced to walk right through some locked doors, Cyberpunk 2077 was downright unplayable in early versions. But rest assured, this just wasn’t acceptable for the same studio that brought us the award-winning video game series, The Witcher.
CD Projekt Red is working hard on its promise to make amends with its loyal fans. Starting even a week before launch and almost every month after that, patches were sent to players that fixed any defects that initially hindered gameplay mechanics and visual rendering. Two years later, and with only a handful of bugs left in the game, CD Projekt Red decided it was in their best interest to go the extra mile to restore trust between publisher and player.
First announced on June 25, 2020, during a promotional “Night City Wire” Cyberpunk 2077 official live stream and released exclusively on Netflix on September 13, 2022, Cyberpunk: Edge Runners is a ten-episode anime series that originated from a joint effort between CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger, a Japanese animation studio.
Among many prominent actors and actresses, Zach Aguilar was cast as David, the main character, Giancarlo Esposito (of Breaking Bad fame) would be the voice of Faraday, the main antagonist, and Matthew Mercer (of Important role fame) would resurrect Falco, an elderly member of the gang that David trains.
What happens in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners?
Building on the already dark and gloomy lore of Night City, the plot of edge runners revolves around David, a poor Hispanic teenager. He chooses to step into the life of an Edgerunner after experiencing the traumatic event in which he lost his mother to a reckless gang war in which they are both innocently involved.
Choosing to be implanted with a military grade body modification called a Sandevistan After his mother was hiding in their tiny apartment, David is soon persuaded by a woman named Lucy to join a band of mercenaries who all team up on robberies to steal hi-tech data and weapons, then turn them around and sell them on. the black market. Things go from bad to worse when David and his crew soon become entangled in a conspiracy involving two of Night City’s most powerful corporations, Arasaka and Militech.
As the story progresses, we also see that David must be given more and more immunosuppressants to counteract the physical and neurological toll that cybernetic enhancement is taking on his biological body.
Making Up With Anime
Ever since Cyberpunk: Edge Runners premiere, positive reviews started pouring in from across the board. Praised for its animation, characters and storyline, CD Projekt Red managed to recapture the hearts and minds of those who were greatly discouraged by all that the world of Cyberpunk 2077 had to offer due to the fiasco on its initial release. Not only is the game itself regaining popularity due to the success of the anime, but the series has a 100% average rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of Google users said they liked the show, and even Forbes called Cyberpunk: Edge Runners a “phenomenal series, harnessing its potential. Evens Night City and go wild in a gory, sexy, strangely sad and compelling action series.”
Anyone who has seen the show can readily attest to that, though Cyberpunk: Edge Runners is still relatively new on the scene and has yet to reach its full audience of both casual Netflix viewers and pop culture fans, the series could easily stand alongside other legendary anime productions such as Ghost in the shell which was released more than twenty years ago or even Akira released over thirty years ago.
Now that the 10-episode first season has already received so much critical acclaim, the question on everyone’s mind is whether we’ll be seeing any more. edge runner adventures coming out of Night City in the near future. While no official announcement has been made from CD Projekt Red, Studio Trigger or Netflix, we can keep our fingers crossed that the Cyberpunk anime will continue sooner rather than later.