Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a show that’s very interesting to think about. The genre that it’s named after has been around since the early 80s when it was popularized by William Gibson in his excellent novel Neuromancer. I feel that the literary origins of cyberpunk is often overlooked for the media explosion that happened in the 90s. In the West we had films like The Matrix and Johnny Mnemonic, both starring cyberpunk poster boy Keanu Reeves. Meanwhile, Japan was churning out all-time classics like: Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Cyber City Oedo 808. Studio Trigger managed to bring together multiple decades of the genre and still make something that feels fresh and authentic. Given their pedigree, I’m not surprised that they were able to accomplish this. What did surprise me was the negative reactions to the show online and how wildly wrong they were.
Statistically speaking, there will always be a contingent of consumers that dislike something once it reaches enough people. I do not think this is a bad thing because critique matters and it is important that it comes from multiple places. Whether it’s positive or negative, constructive feedback is still constructive. Having said that, the negative takes I have seen about Edgerunners are pretty bad in the quality department. Most of it can be summed up as, “Haters gonna hate,” but there are two opinions I’ve seen under the guise of analysis that I really want to tear apart.
“Edgerunners doesn’t get cyberpunk”
I don’t relish calling an opinion “dumb,” so I’m going to go with “uneducated” for this one. There’s this idea that cyberpunk is meant to be grim, gritty, oppressive, and super serious at all times. In my experience, this idea is held by people that only understand the genre through anime. Specifically through Ghost in the Shell ’95 and Stand Alone Complex. Cyberpunk is an infinite city shrouded in darkness, the only light being from hissing neon signs and monumental hologram billboards. It’s always nighttime, it’s always raining, and everyone wears a black trench-coat. For them, cyberpunk is a technological noir and anything that deviates from that understanding is invalid. This only works if you ignore how much of the genre is over-the-top camp.
There’s this moment in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash that is just perfect. Our protagonist, Hiro Protagonist (Deliverator to his friends), is looking at a cop car and this is written on the door:
DIAL 1-800-THE-COPS
ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS
In addition to being dumb, it’s one of the most cyberpunk things ever committed to page. A core tenet of the genre is the corporatization of everything, especially any services that provide for the public. Capitalism unrestrained as security, justice, and medical care goes only to those with the largest bank account. Even something like Ghost in the Shell is not immune to this kind of storytelling. The second episode of SAC is about a man that transfers his brain to a tank. He does this to show off to his religious fundamentalist parents because they wouldn’t let him become a cyborg as a child. That is dumb. That is cyberpunk.
“Trigger is all style, no substance”
I try to be generous with differing opinions; I might not agree but maybe I can at least understand. This take is an exception to that. If you think that Trigger’s productions have no substance, you’re either a contrarian or just lacking in media literacy. Just because there are a lot of colors and everything is exploding, doesn’t mean that a message isn’t being conveyed. As an example let’s talk about my favorite Trigger anime, Kill la Kill and Satsuki Kiryuin.
Spoilers for an anime that came out almost a decade ago incoming.
In the beginning of Kill la Kill, Satsuki functions as the antagonist and foil to main heroine Ryuko Matoi. She rules Honnoji Academy with an iron fist and is effectively a dictator over the student body. She operates on a platform of “The weak need the strong to guide them,” and even orders an imperialist subjugation campaign against Kyoto. Satuski is a militaristic autocrat, loved by her ruling party and feared by all others. Her ultimate goal being the freedom of humanity from the tyranny of the Life Fibers and her mother Ragyo.
Over the course of the show, Satsuki comes to realize that her solution is actually very bad and short-sighted. One tyrant replacing another isn’t exactly social progress. She abdicates her position as Student Council President to join a non-partisan coalition of the people fighting for humanity. What the show teaches Satsuki, and by extension the audience, is that she can’t truly defeat her mother unless she also defeats her authoritarian ideology. Eliminating one evil person only saves one day. If you want to save every day after that, you’re going to need a better ideology.
This is just the general arc of a single character in one show that Trigger made. I could give Ryuko, Luluco, or even Inferno Cop the same treatment. Studio Trigger has more than just talented animators and character artists. They also have good writers. No amount of space lasers or giant fighting robots will change that. If you take away one thing from this essay/review, I hope it’s that media can be bombastic and insightful at the same time.
“Isn’t this supposed to be about Edgerunners?”
Cyberpunk Edgerunners is identifiable as a Trigger show right from the outset. One of my concerns when the adaptation was announced was that Imaishi might have to reign in their signature madness for the sake of brand integrity. That’s not the case here and Egderunners goes in hard for the entire series. The animation is slick, Yoh Yoshinari’s character designs are all bangers, and the fights are ones you will only see from Trigger. A special shout-out needs to go to the staff in charge of 3D compositing and lighting for the character models. If you aren’t paying attention, you might actually mistake them for being hand-drawn with how will they are implemented.
It’s hard to not spend the rest of this review talking about how good every aspect of the show looks. I may have never played 2077 but I did watch the trailers and I love that Trigger kept that color palette. Yellow obviously plays a very big role here with the hot pink, purple, and neon blue accents used to make every thing pop. Some might find the use of bright, non-complimentary colors to be garish. However, garish is my favorite kind of aesthetic. Trigger created a Night City that I would love to visit. It’s colorful, bright, partially on fire, and definitely smells terrible. That smell is also likely from a nearby dead body because this place is violent.
Edgerunners possess a level of murder and mayhem that I can only describe as “90s OVA tier.” It’s actually the first thing you see as the show opens on 20-30 cops getting eviscerated by a cyberpsycho. It’s not just about the blood as there is plenty of gore to go around. The way some suit’s skull erupts after taking a .45 to the temple is just one of the highlights that stuck with me. It’s all gratuitous but presented with a level of detail that makes the violence believable if somewhat silly. This is all fun but I think the most interesting part of Edgerunners is how that violence is contrasted with the story and our boy David.
I promise that I will avoid all major spoilers but I do want to talk about thematics and some minor events. Our main character David is a pretty cool guy. He’s the smartest person in his class at a hyper-elite academy and his mom is doing everything she can to put him through school. David has a bit of an attitude problem because his family is poor and his classmates all look down on him. It is his mom’s dream that David will climb to the top of the social ladder to prove them all wrong and he agrees because he loves her. David is really just a shounen protagonist at his core. Despite his baggage he is a good kid and he tends to trust pretty much everyone. This is the case even after story events force him to leave school and join a gang.
Shounen is a genre that rewards trust and doing the right thing. There might be bad guys but as long as you believe in your friends then victory is right around the corner. Cyberpunk is a genre that is very much none of those things. Trust is almost guaranteed to be betrayed, doing the right thing is for chumps, and the bad guy doesn’t really exist. There might be people doing reprehensible things but they are simply of a type. The systems that created the cyberpunk dystopia are the real enemies and they are totally indifferent to your existence. What Edgerunners does is take a protagonist that the story should care about, and puts them in a setting that can’t.
What I find most compelling about Edgerunners is the way in which David as a character is unraveled by his environment. Any other story would reward him for being the shounen good boy but those traits can only harm him in Night City. Lucy tells him to his face that he needs to be more selfish in order to succeed. Trying to live someone else’s dream is a weakness when he should be living for himself and what he wants. David might be special to those around him but he isn’t special to the world at large. It won’t crush him with malice because he is too insignificant to notice, but it will crush him all the same.
There’s a fantastic line from the ripperdoc that installs all of David’s hardware that perfectly distills this tension between character and setting. It’s my favorite line in the entire show:
“Go be a legend, or whatever the fuck it is you kids do.”
This is the show finally giving into David’s demands to be treated like the special main character that he believes himself to be. The part of this statement that David never seems to understand, is that people become legends when their story is over. In a cyberpunk setting, those stories usually don’t end with retirement but in a gutter. That’s the substance in Edgerunners and you should go watch it.
8/10