But... I am so glad that they didn't give up on the Cyberpunk universe, because this show is a triumph.
Despite my previous disappointment with the video game, I was intrigued leading up to the release of this anime, and it was one that I was really keeping my eye on. It seems to have flown under the radar a bit for the general public due to a lack of promotion, but hopefully that will change as people see the critical reception it's receiving.
All I expected was a well-animated action show, but I got a lot more than that here.
Unlike what happened with the game, the trailers were a pretty good representation of what Edgerunners was going to look like. The art style is great. Everything about the creative direction of this show was spot on to what you would want and expect. A color palette full of vibrant greens, yellows, and purples, along with some striking character and world designs. It really brings the city to life. You can tell how much fun the animators and production staff were having toying around with the Cyberpunk world.
Something that elevates the artistic vision even farther though, is the pacing of the show itself. It really likes to jump back and forth between flashbacks and real-time without any major indicators, which can be a little confusing, but I think the high tempo really fits the show. The speed of Edgerunners very rarely slows down, which helps to immerse you into Night City itself. Every scene on the streets of the city is loud, bright, and flashy, never giving your eyes a rest. But in the few scenes where the characters find a secluded spot or leave the city, everything quiets down. The shots and scenes themselves are longer. The music slows to a crawl, or doesn't play at all. The colors change from the buzzing neon glow, to a dusky, pale set of grays and browns. It's just brilliantly done.
The action scenes are great as well, and are one of the best things about the show. Edgerunners is absolutely GRUESOME, so much more so than I anticipated. I have never seen an anime get this explicitly graphic with it's violence, and I am all here for it. When someone gets shot, or stabbed, or smashed they will show you EVERYTHING. There is no censorship here, unlike the majority of more traditional anime. I'm really glad that the studio was allowed to go all out here, and make this show as wild and over-the-top as it needed to be.
The animation quality itself is a little bit inconsistent however, which is one of my only complaints I have with the show. The majority of the action is amazing, as I stated previously, but towards the latter half of the show, there is a pretty noticeable drop-off in animation quality, with the studio relying more on 3D models rather than pure animation during the climax of the show, which is really the only place I can say that the show came up a little short. It doesn't really affect my opinion on the show at all, but it's something I felt inclined to mention.
Now, I said in the beginning that I was just expecting a pure action show, but this is not that. Edgerunners really blew me away with the depth and thematic value shown in it's story. There's a lot more going on than just 'gang shoots and does crime stuff' that it looked like in the first bit of the show. David and Lucy's characters were some of the best I've seen in anime, at least in recent memory. Everything about David and his arc were so much better than anything I could have expected from a show like this, and I was truly blown away. I do wish the show was a little longer to space out the story beats and make the events that happen a bit more of a slow-burn, but with the time they had, I think they did an excellent job. I didn't expect to be emotionally impacted by a fucking Cyberpunk show, but I was. There are some moments here that are genuinely genius from a storytelling perspective.
Talking about the story without any spoilers is a bit of a tough task, so for your benefit, I won't go into any more detail than that. This is one of those shows that will leave you wanting more after you finish it.
I'll be looking forward to the next entry into the Cyberpunk universe. If they continue putting out stuff like this, CD Projekt Red could have something really special.
It isn't perfect, but it is certainly incredible.
