Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is Peak Punk Anime

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There in an old story I heard. Two men are walking on a street. One asks the other. "What is punk?" The other one kicks a garbage can over and says. "That's punk." The first man then kicks a garbage can over and asks. "That's punk?" The second man says. "No that's trendy."

The fact that they made a joke about cops spawning out of nowhere just like they did in the game made this the best anime for me

As a dad what hits me hardest is that David was 18 when he died. Everything that went down did so in the span of a year.

One thing about this show is how all of David's quests came to in the most tragic way possible, and spoilers follow: the first, from his Mother, to end up at the top of the Arasaka tower, which he completes by being a mercenary instead of an executive. The second, to follow in Maine's footsteps as the leader of the crew, which he does by losing himself to cyberpsychosis and becoming a chromed out thug. The third, to get Lucy to the moon, which he succeeded only after replacing her dream going to the moon, with a dream of staying with David. All three were completed, and all three were tragic.

One of my favorite details. At the end Lucy doesn't remember David how he died... She remembers him how he lived. Exactly opposite what she said to him.

Rebecca is Davids "Ride or Die". She basically warns him because she wanted to know if she could trust her life with him or if he is unfit to lead. Yet even after finding out he is gonna die, even after seeing him going mad, even when knowing that attacking Arasaka is basically a death sentence; she still followed him. Even if in the end David did it for Lucy, Becca did it for David. Rebecca is a goat.

What got me was when David receives his mother's remains. A simple scene tells EVERYTHING. Not only how dehumanized this society is, since there are no more funerals, mournings etc, prioritizing efficiency over, well, having even a bit of emotions, but also WHAT lead to that. There are so many people dying everywhere, every minute, that they had to create such a method, and making it like a vending machine, which in Japan are literally little Walmarts, so much that they can even give you the ashes of your loved ones. Simple, effective, and terrifying

Rebecca's death was the one death that really hit me. It was so sudden that it made a lasting impression. She was definitely my favourite character in the show too wanted her to survive it all.

There is one immutable truth to the universe; All Cyberpunk Edgerunner videos must have the outro song "I really want to stay at your house"

Becca is legit a strong contender for the biggest homie in media. She does more to help David in the span of 2 episodes than most support characters do in their entire stories

I like that despite how special David is, both in his resistance to cyber psychosis and his good luck, isn't enough to beat the system. It doesn't matter if you are the chosen one, a Luke Skywalker type, no one can beat this oppressive corpo society. David, with more power than most runners can dream of, couldn't even kill an Arasaka mid-level executive. He couldn't scratch his final boss. It's beautifully dystopian.

A really nice touch that I really loved was the dub's choice to keep the Japanese voices of some of the background characters, while dubbing others into English. It really helped sell the multicultural world of Cyberpunk, in my opinion.

Honestly, a season 2 with a completely new set of characters completely unrelated to this story but in the same world would be insane.

I know that “I Really Wanna Stay at Your House” was part of the original game’s OST, but this anime has recontextualized the song beautifully to the point that I’ve had it on repeat for the last few days. Studio Trigger killed it with this one.

the man made of skyscrapers is such an accurate representation of the saying "the city always wins"

My brother and I watched this show together, and what struck us both the most was the constant sense of dread throughout the entire show. You know from the first episode exactly how things are going to end, and deep down you know that no matter what small victories the characters have, they're not going to win. It's honestly kind of uncomfortable at some points - episode six is deeply unsettling because you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing in this show is ever a question of 'if', it's a question of 'when'.

Fun facts: MaxTac actually recruits cyberpsychos whom they get to capture. They go through therapy and their cyberpsychosis is redirected rather than treated.

I think the funniest thing is that cyberpsychosis is entirely reversible, and it’s really just one bad, long psychotic break. In the game, you go through a mission of taking out dozens of them, with an emphasis on not killing them. They can easily recover, it’s just that the city doesn’t bother trying most of the time.

In the video game there's a side story about possibly giving therapy to those showing symptoms of cyberpsychosis and in the original table top game love was a mitigation to the effects of it, once you learn about the details of it the entire cyberpunk world becomes so beautiful and yet tragic at the same time