Every now and then, an anime will come along that walks across a tightrope. And, depending on which angle you view it from, it either falls off spectacularly, or miraculously makes it to the other side. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is one of those anime. And that’s because, at the end of the day, what you take from it will be highly dependent on how much you can connect with a work that is fundamentally struggling to maintain equilibrium. Or rather, wasn’t even trying to maintain it in the first place. Either because of its short ten episode run time, its roots as a spin-off to a
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game which is already a spin-off of a novel, or because of its various Triggerisms, Edgerunners isn’t really trying to be a complete package. It’s trying to get in, get out, and leave you with the message carried by its world, its narrative, and all the themes that accompany it. Does it succeed at this? The answer will differ from person to person, for it's a little complicated…
Perhaps the greatest benefit to Edgerunners is how it uses its cyberpunk roots. When dissolved to its very core fundamental nature, the genre is essentially a dystopian view of the future in which entities - usually corporations but not exclusively so - have taken control of the world, in a sort of emblematic portrayal of late-stage capitalism gone berserk. Yet, when you examine how cyberpunk has been interpreted in pop-culture, rarely do we see a focus on the perspectives which are most largely affected by the suffocating nature of this socioeconomic oppression. We don’t see the perspective of the oppressor or the oppressed, instead we almost always view the world through the eyes of a bystander - a “third party”, one who usually has good intentions and wants to make the world a better place, but doesn’t really fit the lower or higher end of the socioeconomic ladder. Bladerunner and Ghost in the Shell are traditionally the biggest names in cyberpunk film history, and they are testaments to this - both feature characters which have more power than the average citizen, but despite that aren’t really active parties in the continued oppression of the lower class. Bladerunner comes close to commenting on this, but it muddies it by focusing on the oppression of Replicants rather than an entire social class (which, for various reasons, wouldn’t really work as a metaphor). Even Akira, which is probably the closest thing to Edgerunners on paper, barely counts as cyberpunk - it has that sort of imagery in the beginning of the film, but almost none of its themes relate to technology or the consequences of technological advancements. It just happens to take place in the future (relative to its release) with some cool imagery that has been very influential to the genre, but that’s about it, it’s almost entirely a psychological tale. That’s not to say that any of these stories aren’t valuable, they’re just different.
This is what makes Edgerunners so compelling - it’s a cyberpunk show where the central focus is a cast of characters struggling to survive day by day thanks to the oppression of the society in which they live. David, the main character, is a poor dropout barely scraping by. His only way to fight against the system is to cyberize himself further and further, and even when he does eventually rise up from his roots as a bottom feeder of society, he can’t sustain the lifestyle that allows him to be free. As if out of a Shakespearean tragedy, every time a character finally manages to get out of the place they’ve been forced into, there’s a consequence. Every time a character chromes themselves up further, they become less redeemable, less sane, less human. The most dystopian aspect of the world of Night City isn’t its rundown neighborhoods, shadowed alleyways, or crooked thieves waiting to bleed you dry, it’s the fact that every time you manage to make something of yourself, you either end up a disfigured inhuman monster, or worse off than when you started. The dramatic irony of the show is all too palpable - David’s only form of liberation is in the very technology that created the society around him, the same society that allows corporations to profit ad infinitum, and the same corporations that make the back-alley deals that give the edgerunners their jobs. It mimics real life in a way that’s all too, well, real - you spend all of your time trying to make something of yourself, that you either end up forgetting who you are in the process, or burnout entirely. The edgerunners accept the potential physical and mental consequences of fighting against the system to an almost ridiculous degree, because they hate where they’ve started to such an extent, that they don’t stop to ask if it’s worth where they’re going.
This sort of subtlety or thematic depth isn’t something that’s typically found in your average anime, but it's especially surprising coming from Trigger, a studio which has largely rested on its laurels since Little Witch Academia in 2017, and hasn’t really had this sort of thematic framework since Kill La Kill all the way back in 2013. Some might say that giving too much credit to Trigger would be a mistake given that so much of the subtext of Edgerunners is inherently part of the pre-established world it inhabits, but I would say that’s a ludicrous notion. It’s not like the show barely acknowledges these aspects or that the way they are used is an afterthought, they’re given a lot of care and attention and are put front-and-center. The writing quality in terms of characterization and character dynamics is surprising, as it's one of the greatest assets that Edgerunners has. Trigger has somehow been able to make a cast which feels perfectly non-anime yet anime at the same time, down-to-earth yet larger than life when needed. If you’ve seen even a decent amount of anime, you’ll probably come to appreciate how real to life some characterization feels, either within the context of the Cyberpunk universe or within our own. There are so many examples of this: When a particular tragic event happens in the beginning of the show, David does not have an overdramatic response meant to elicit emotions within the viewer. When comrades-in-arms die in front of others, nobody makes a lengthy ordeal out of it, they simply accept it for what it is: a part of the social contract they’ve signed when becoming edgerunners. This type of characterization is done so frequently that I can honestly see this being off putting to some people; the show almost denies the emotional catharsis of overdramatizing traumatic events. It could come off as if someone forgot to create a scene or two, if it wasn’t so clearly intentional. And yet, at the same time, this is a quality that could be easily overlooked or underappreciated, because it's one of the more subtle aspects of the show. The central cast in general is something I really grew to appreciate, because while none of the characters here are great, they all manage to be likable without coming off as completely unrealistic. In such a harsh world where stabbing the back of your friends would leave you with a hefty profit, this crew of thieves and bandits somehow finds a perfect middle ground between the idealism of anime friendship and the realities of living in a dystopian future.
One of the reasons why I can appreciate the simplicity of the cast so much is because the character designs are just that good. Given that the talents of Yoh Yoshinari, the designer for Little Witch Academia, were used to create these designs, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Yet this sort of visual dynamic isn’t something that’s felt completely captured by a Trigger show since Kill La Kill, and now Edgerunners has picked up the torch and ran with it. Every character looks visually distinct and detailed, but not overly complicated. No one character looks remotely similar to another, and they're all so readable that you can get a general idea of who these people are just by looking at them. It’s honestly insane just how much this has been knocked out of the park, because to put it in caveman terms, Yoshinari did not have to go this hard.
For all of the good the show does though, there are definitely a lot of negatives. I mentioned how great the character designs were, but honestly the overall presentation is a mixed bag. The visual quality of the show usually straddles somewhere between very good and great, but there’s some parts that are just not up to par. Particularly, the action direction came off as very uninspired for the majority of its run. Yes, it’s Imaishi, yes, he’s a legendary action director, but the worst here has no sense of space or flow, and a lot of the best here just feels like Trigger spinning its wheels - which is ironic, given that the only impressive action sequences involved characters driving cars. In contrast, the slower more quiet moments of self-reflection, where characters are given time to breath, have comparatively consistently great directing. It’s a confusing contrast in a show that really needed to exceed on both fronts to sell its narrative. Thankfully the visual aesthetics of the show, including the fantastic color work, can usually make up for this, but there’s some other odd choices. The music selection is something I came to appreciate more and more as time went on, but even then I couldn’t get over how poorly placed some of the tracks were. Certain scenes are downright obnoxious because of this, and the final scene is perhaps the most bizarre in terms of the soundtrack not really meshing with the tone. It seems to have gone down well with the majority of fans given how much praise “I really want to stay at your house” has received, but while I understand the sentiment, it just didn’t work entirely. I’d also be remiss if I failed to mention how uniquely bad episode 5 looked. It’s an episode that plays to almost none of the strengths of the show - it has little animation despite being one of the episodes that needed it most, the colors are mostly dark, there’s a lot of really bad shot composition where the camera is way too close to characters’ faces to cut down on animation, and the action can be really hard to follow. There’s a scene that just focuses on David’s face for a full 18 seconds, and the only thing that happens in that entire time is that the camera starts zooming in on him more and more, despite the fact that it was already too close to begin with. It’s so baffling how much that episode was screwed up compared to the rest of the episodes, that I imagine this had something to do with production constraints, which is odd given the short episode count and the long production time.
The biggest problem with Edgerunners however is that the second half is a significant step down from what came before. Not in the sense that you might expect, it’s not as if the quality of the show becomes worse. Moreso, it just stops trying. No longer content with exploring its ideas or concepts in meaningful ways, it resigns itself to being the action schlockfest that everyone expected it to be to begin with, no longer burdening itself with the weight of trying to be something greater. By the beginning of episode 6, the curtains call, and you can see everything that is going to happen in the next 4 episodes onwards. I don’t want to seem disingenuous and imply that the first half is some great sophisticated masterpiece; it isn’t. But what it is is earnest: an earnest attempt at exploring themes and concepts in a format which relays the Cyberpunk world’s overwhelming cynicism, all while simultaneously wrapping it in a neat package filled to the brim with pop sensibilities. Yet just as the show goes past the halfway mark, it gives up on doing almost anything of note. I could see a counter argument being made that the ending solidifies everything the show setup thematically, and that because of that the second half isn’t worse at conveying its message. This doesn’t make sense as a defense, given how overtly obvious the outcome of the story is long before it happens, and given how insignificant its time frame is relative to the rest of the second half.
What’s really baffling is that even if you don’t care about any deeper meaning or subtext, the plot just starts to lose momentum really fast. Up to episode 5 we’ve been with David every part of the way, we’ve seen him grow as a character, we’ve seen him struggle, we’ve seen what he’s been through. All the sudden there’s a timeskip and he’s a significantly different person. We don’t know how he got there, what he did, how he became so confident. It’s not that the transformation is unbelievable, but rather that it’s something we needed to see for ourselves. The more Edgerunners focused on making its main narrative epic and powerful, the worse it became. We start to lose focus on why we originally cared and instead are supposed to get behind an incredibly generic plot about stopping an evil villain. The show was always going to go in this direction for its finale, and that in and of itself is fine. It’s an easy and sensical way to end the story. But what is absurd is how much something so mundane takes away from the show's focus and runtime. Now would be as convenient a time as any to blame Netflix for only greenlighting 10 episodes, but really I don’t understand why the writers had to go in this direction in the first place. The first set of episodes give you the sense that things might actually follow a fairly logical progression despite the series’ short runtime; it's not until episode 5 that things start to get worrying. If your story can only fit within a certain timespan, don’t make it the story for an incredibly limited series.
Four years after Devilman Crybaby, Netflix has found another show which will capture the hearts and minds of its general audience, but dissuade others and leave them entirely unconvinced of its merits. At the very least, Cyberpunk will certainly be a less controversial or divisive event, but it certainly feels like a spiritual successor to what has come before. I might have come off as overly harsh to the series, but despite how it may seem I can’t say I was disappointed with the final product much at all. What I got from it was a level of intrigue I wasn’t expecting in the slightest, and I’ll carry its lessons, ideals, themes and world with me for a long time. Its value in breaking away from the pre-established norms cannot be overstated, and I cherish it for that. Whether you can learn to love it or not is dependent on how much value you can get from something which is not even remotely trying to smooth out or hide its various rough edges.
Sep 21, 2022
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Well-written 
Every now and then, an anime will come along that walks across a tightrope. And, depending on which angle you view it from, it either falls off spectacularly, or miraculously makes it to the other side. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is one of those anime. And that’s because, at the end of the day, what you take from it will be highly dependent on how much you can connect with a work that is fundamentally struggling to maintain equilibrium. Or rather, wasn’t even trying to maintain it in the first place. Either because of its short ten episode run time, its roots as a spin-off to a
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