Netflix’s ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ anime is everything that the CD Projekt Red video game aspired to and fell short

The mere existence of ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ is certainly intriguing, but the result should make us science fiction lovers happy, because it goes far beyond a great genre proposal. We all know the story behind CD’s projected game Project Red: a turbulent development and rushed release that led to a game riddled with bugs and fodder for memes.

Months after its launch, the title has managed to survive its own devastating shadow based on patches that, at least, have made it a playable product (although far from the promises of a vibrant and immersive future world that promised a study undoubtedly grown by the expectations born of the success of the memorable ‘The Witcher 3’). But the fame of ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ doesn’t seem like much after the launch debacle. ‘Edgerunners’, the Netflix anime based on the world of the game, had a doubly tough challenge before it: it had to prove that it was a powerful product and make the shadow of the father forget.

Fortunately, the base world of ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, whose foundations are certainly not the creation of CD Projekt Red, but rather draw from a long literary tradition founded by authors such as William Gibson and is more or less officially based on the role-playing game of the same name, is sufficiently rich and suggestive. The only thing ‘Edgerunners’ had to do was channel the vibrations of the game so as to be recognizable as an adaptation and from there carve out a personality distinctive.

In ‘Edgerunners’ we find everything that popularized the original role-playing game and that the video game (at least aesthetically) adapted exhaustively: description of a futuristic underworld, with implants for mass use that turn humans into beings cyber. The city that we are shown goes through all the tropors of the depressing future of rigor: neon lights, highways, practically constant night, apartments in which it seems that a bomb has just fallen, advertising everywhere and communication and data transmission at the blow of floating screens, with continuous immersions in cyberspace.

thieves of the future

In ‘Edgerunners’ we follow the story of David Martinez, a boy who overnight finds himself expelled from the academy where he studies, sees his mother die and implants an improvement of military origin that turns him into a beast prone to violence and destruction. When the true owner of the implant comes to claim it, he will have no choice but to join his gang. to be able to pay for the expensive upgrade that has made him the perfect thief.

And although the story is full of conventions and clichés (the immersion of an innocent kid in a criminal underworld), luckily the infallible Studio Trigger is in charge. Mixing some of its own aesthetics (those vibrant colors and character design are partly reminiscent of ‘Promare’) with the absolutely recognizable style of the video game, we have a festival of brutal violence, incessant action (also exposed in a particularly clear and devastating way ) and funny humor. The future that awaits us.

In addition, ‘Edgerunners’ does not waste the possibility of reminding us what cyberpunk really is as a genre, something that the CD Projekt Red video game was far from achieving: genuine cyberpunk is not synonymous with futuristic adventure, but rather a satire of the present. ‘Edgerunners’ avoids the temptation to present us with a desirable future, and as attractive as the implants that turn the protagonists into supercyborgs are, the series makes it clear that this world torn apart by an extreme and inhumane version of capitalism is far from a desirable future. To whom we are heading as we do not remedy, etc., etc.

Although from the first images this Netflix and CD Projekt Red production looked great and the platform had already given us some very positive surprises in terms of animation with proposals such as ‘Arcane’, ‘Farzar’ or part 3 of ‘Love, Death & Robots’, ‘Cyberpunk Edgerunners’ has exceeded expectations. A must for lovers of science fiction, intentional ultraviolence and extreme aesthetics.