Cyberpunk 2077 was a online game that defied description.
You could not name it bizarre, as a result of in some methods it was banal. And also you could not name it a flop both. Regardless of the very fact it was slaughtered within the media for being borderline unplayable upon launch, it offered over 20 million items and generated upward of $600 million in income.
So what was Cyberpunk 2077? A recreation that drowned within the floods of its personal hype? Kinda. An Icarus-like morality story about biting off greater than you may chew? Presumably. Regardless, in the event you’re related to online game tradition you in all probability had an opinion about Cyberpunk 2077. It was a recreation that, within the months and years after its launch, developed fairly the status.
All of which is all to say in the event you advised me, after Cyberpunk 2077’s controversial launch in 2020, that my favourite TV present of 2022 can be an anime primarily based on this online game, I would not have laughed in your face. I might have walked backward fastidiously, like Homer Simpson retreating into the bushes. I might have known as you a idiot. A witch, even. I might have demanded you be burnt on the stake.
However that is my fact. I’ve watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. I’ve seen the sunshine. And if in case you have any good sense you’ll comply with in my footsteps. This present is unbelievable. I firmly imagine extra individuals needs to be watching and speaking about it.
Fly me to the moon.
Netflix
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a one-of-a-kind, standalone anime set within the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. A heart-wrenching story concerning the long-term impacts of violence and trauma. A thought of examination of the ability buildings that drive subsets of younger, poor individuals into a lifetime of crime. It is the tip results of a bizarro world collaboration between the sport’s Polish creators, CD Projekt Purple, and Japanese animation studio Set off Inc.
Very similar to the online game it is primarily based on, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is dense with environmental element. Followers of the sport will probably acknowledge areas they’ve explored just about. The present’s administrators fairly actually requested CD Projekt Purple for a model of the sport they might discover freely to take in-game reference pictures. A lot of the present’s surroundings artwork is a Studio Set off model of the online game’s intensive but dense world.
Episodes are brief, however tremendous intense.
Netflix
However whereas the present piggybacks on CD Projekt Purple’s world class universe constructing, Edgerunners is razor centered by itself little story inside that area. Its central characters are nicely written, however the visible designs themselves are the standout. An unbelievable quantity of thought has clearly gone into the appear and feel of each single individual on this present, from the primary forged throughout to incidental bystanders.
It is pushed by a cutting-edge soundtrack that units the tone completely. To this present day I am unable to take heed to Rosa Walton’s I Actually Wanna Keep At Your Home with out shedding just a few tears.
Studio Set off, the oldsters behind Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, has a legendary status. The animation studio’s founder Hiroyuki Imaishi burst onto the scene with the unbelievable (and unhinged) Gurren Lagann again in 2007. Extra not too long ago, you may need seen Little Witch Academia or the studio’s work on the Star Wars: Visions anime sequence.
All have a novel aesthetic. Hyper violence, an nearly pathological obsession with vibrant, fluid movement ramped as much as the nth diploma. Anime is stylized by its essence, however Studio Set off is past the pale. All the pieces it produces strikes at hysterical, supernatural velocity.
However, if something, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is extra withdrawn in comparison with, say, Gurren Lagann or Kill La Kill – a present about [checks notes] highschool college students that acquire superpowers from their sentient highschool uniforms. In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, motion scenes have extra room to breathe. The violence, when it comes, is brutal and visceral, however feels weightier due to the dialed again frenetics. It happens in a approach that is not simply excessive, however subversive, unique and unusual.
Brutally lovely and endlessly kinetic, everybody ought to spend time in Cyberpunk: Edgerunner’s world. In a 12 months that is been dripping with high quality — from the pointed satire of Severance to the excessive wire stress of Andor — this has been my favourite present of the 12 months. I think I will be watching and rewatching it for years to come back.
