Is the TH-camr Second-Thought Cyberpunk? I mean, that Guy sure criticizes and dissects the whole System. Im not just talking about the aptly-named video "Is the US a Dystopia?", but about the whole Channel. I mean, its his Thing to talk aobut Society and how it could be.
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."
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.
The City remembers David as a legendary Edgerunning Cyberpunk who kicked corpo butt and went out swinging. Lucy remembers David as a confused, scared, and lonely boy who she took under her wing on a train. Both are true of who David is, and yet neither are the full story of who he was. It's absolutely beautiful character writing and this anime blows me away.
Exactly. We don't even get to see his death. Therein is the implication that David is a better "human" than he is an "Edgerunner"/inhuman. We, the audience, are stripped of the possibility of remembering him by how he died.
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.
I'd word that middle one a bit differently. He succeeded in leading the crew. But in leading them to their end (except kiwi she took care of that herself) Really basically the same end Maine lead them too... Only worse.
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
The thing is that Becca's love for David in both a platonic and romantic fashion is so unconditional that it is down right the most virtuous thing in all of Night City, it is the kind of person anyone would want regardless of anything, someone who would be there for you when you need someone the most, she is not afraid to tell David that he is going down a bad path but is also willing to stay by his side in hopes that he will make the right decision with support, she is also able to realise the concept of "I don't care if they don't love me back, I just want them to be happy". It is true selflessness in a world where everything has a price, the fact that she is willing to jump into the fire to help David makes her fate hurt even more, the fact she knows when she can't help David herself and wants to get him to Lucy who knows might be able to actually do something is commendable.
I think she's also one of the saddest cases of unrequited love in anime. Sure, it was only 10 episodes and there wasn't much development on that front, but it was quite clear what she felt for David. And in most anime the rejected girls are a great subject to make fun of because they were designed from the very beginning to play that role and are often pretty flat in the way they were written. Becca is her own character that just happened to fall fo David knowing he loves Lucy which wasn't a defining feature of her character, far from it actually. It was a pretty down to earth realistic depiction of this kind of situation. She focused on being the best goddamn friend that David could ever have and she succeeded in that. All of that makes it pretty sad she didn't get what she wanted.
@@ilo3456 You nailed it, man, fuck that would hurt if it was me. Seeing the person you love love someone else, I would do the same thing she did. I prefer my friend to be happy even if it’s not with me. Call me a cynic/simp; I wouldn’t care.🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
@_____ There's a big difference in being a simp and genuinely caring for someone well being at the cost of your own well being. Rebecca rather have the guy be with someone else just because its the best thing that could happen to him, a big simp will be so focused on getting his own way by constantly acting like a lapdog in order to finally get her.
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.
It's fitting within the genre though. In cyberpunk, the whole world is incredibly bleak and you only survive with money or power. These Chooms had neither so no one survived.
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.
@@justsomeguywithaforeheadmu6209 Thank you sir. Look at your son. Look at the world. Think about tomorrow. That's what I was trying to get at. Glad somebody picked it up.
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.
It's really usually also a VERY preventable break and cause by the very systems and city that refuses to provide mental health support for the variety of issues it gives it's people and would rather shoot the problem Cause life is cheap and death is cheaper
What's your source tho? Pretty sure that in game it is only stated that "some people" believe it's possible to reverse cyberpschosis, but I don't remember it being a proven thing. It's true you're asked not to kill the cyberpsychos but was it ever confirmed that any of them were cured? Not that I know of
@@lesscrement1448 For one, the cyberpsycho girl in the game's original trailer. You later find her as a MaxTac officer and I think its heavily implied that a lot of MT soldiers are former cyberpsychos themselves.
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.
In the anime, using cyberware is shown to cause severe neurological stress. To the point of using a sandy more than a few times a day is considered extraordinary. In the game however, the player can put military grade cyberware all over, and use them without any side effects.
@@kerbodynamicx472 Your neurological state is constantly degrading throughout the game, there's even a tracker on the character menu showing a percentage like the gear showed that David was wearing. And even if it doesn't change faster depending on how much cyberware you have, in the end... Spoilers The player can't change the world either
@@KiraNightV That’s a nice post hoc rationalization but in reality it’s actually because the game was rushed and the devs did not really care about making the player feel any actual impact around using cyberwear. there is no way for the lore and the gameplay to match in their current state they just can’t no human being,no robot.ect on earth in all of cyberpunk lore anywhere can do something like use a sand vein,a heart pump,a bio monitor, Jetleg‘s,mono wire arms. and a flurry of other neural system related cybernetics. use them all completely simultaneously and repeatedly every three minutes all the time all day every day for an entire week+ without just falling over dead never mind going cyber psychotic. The game was just rushed and they didn’t care or consider adding in a mechanic to make the player feel like there was any actual negative downside to using these incredibly overpowered abilities aside from a very very very short three minute cool down or less.
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
The game has a subtle version of this in the first act, where an AI taxi tells you that your ride package includes free disposal of your remains should you die during the ride service. It's a small, almost comedic thing if everything else up to that point hadn't been warning you that life is cheap in this world.
There are still Funerals in Pondsmiths cyberpunk, its just burials that are uncommon in the mega cities. No replace to put the bodies and if you did the graverobbers would dive all over it.
There is also the small, almost comedic thing in the background of the game that literally has no influence on anything that matters to you, but is there: There is literally a lottery going where you can win money if you just guess the amount of people dying in a certain timespan (not quite clear what timespan, but it feels like your average weekly lottery) in the city. A bloody deadpool. And the numbers are usually in the triple digits, it seems.
Very cost effective, the board loved it, and facility management received a bonus for cutting the expenses by 0.2%, another success story in Night City
An anthology series, perhaps. But in that case I would prefer it being named Cyberpunk: [something else], since we'd no longer be following the edgerunner group.
Turning the series into an anthology about all those who named drinks in the Afterlife would be a wonderful way to take the series, see just why the city remembers these Cyberpunks for how they died, and more importantly… why those close to them remembered them for how they were in life
@@SkeleGem or following the life paths in the game. Like this technically counts as the street kid story what about a corpo or nomad. Your idea is better though especially if we could get more stories of the legends night city has but just something i figured would be a good way to play into the game and rpg.
Never could I have expected that the anime would perfectly capture the themes of 2077, but damnit it did. "You don't make a name as a cyberpunk by how you live. You're remembered by how you die."
TBF, the cyberpunk genre is DEEPLY linked to Japan, with several of the genre’s classics being anime and manga. And virtually all featuring Japanese corpos prominently.
The creator of the Cyberpunk Tabletop RPG (which the videogame is based on) Mike Pondsmith was inspired by anime when making the cyberpunk world. Now his world has an anime based on it, he's publicly stated that he likes the anime. Truly this is one of Trigger's greatest creations.
@big stink the brapin king good call choomba. CDPR backed trigger up well to make it work. Not to mention that Mike Pondsmith may have had some involvement.
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.
There are three tracks from the game the anime uses to frankly insanely good effect. There's that one, Rat Boy's 'Who's Ready for Tomorrow' which fits David's early journey perfectly, and in my opinion the much more subtle but much more brutal 'Major Crimes' by HEALTH. "If life's short... why does it take so long? Is there no way out?" Woof. Body Heat Radio killing it.
@@AlexiconPrime Cyberpunk had so many banger songs, but it didn't utilize them all properly. So many of them were just songs you MIGHT hear on the radio if you happen to be listening to the right station. Edgerunners truly utilized each and every one of the ones they used to an artistically masterful effect. Each beat in the show stood out in any given scene. Honestly even as a longtime Studio Trigger fan, I just have to say that this is so far their greatest masterpiece yet. Their current Magnum Opus. I say that even despite each and every one of their shows thus far being defining factors in my development as a person. They are not only masters of animation, but masters of storyboarding, storytelling, character creation, worldbuilding, and most certainly soundtrack design. I just wish we could have more of Studio Trigger all the damn time. Oh, and i've had Rat Boy's 'Who's Ready for Tomorrow' basically on constant loop for the past week or two, as it's such a fucking mood.
@@AlexiconPrime I'm also partial to using Gazelle Twin & Trash Generation's History for his cyberpsychosis breaks, on the edge of becoming history in the messiest way possible.
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.
Yeah, knowing the tiger claws are Japanese and speak Japanese, it made perfect sense to see them speaking it in the anime. A varied city like this always has people like that. I love that kind of detail
That was one thing I loved in the game too. The Valentinos speak Spanish. The Tiger Claws speak Japanese. The Scavs have Russian accents and there's a few other languages sprinkled in between as well. Really shows that the city is as diverse in culture as the lore makes it out to be both in game and in the anime
Fun facts: MaxTac actually recruits cyberpsychos whom they get to capture. They go through therapy and their cyberpsychosis is redirected rather than treated.
Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk IP praised the show. Man's been making this setting since the late 80s for table top and seeing it bridge mediums from games, music and anime is great to see. He actually did a seminar not to long ago about how he made Cyberpunk a IP that could be adapted into other forms of media. I recommend watching it. Kojima also praised it :D
Pondsmith was one of the first people to directly inject anime influences into Western geek culture when he published Mekton, a mecha tabletop RPG, back in 1984 (same year as Battletech, another early vehicle for introducing anime into Western SF). The man's a real pioneer of so many genres and media.
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'.
Normally I'd be somewhere between completely indifferent and outright dislike for this song but damn you're not wrong about the Pavlovian trigger, I'm still whiping the tears from my eyes after the end of this video.
Like many of you, I can't get "I Really Want to stay at your House" out of my head. The scenes associated with it from Edgerunners both haunt me and give me hope that we will see more of these characters in some way in the future. Edgerunners is amazing in every way I can think of. Story telling. Visuals, music, animation, world building. I wish we got more than 10 episodes, but then I wonder if it would have left such an impact if it were longer. God it's so good.
You're not alone, its gone up 2mil streams on spotify in roughly 24 hours (from 4mil to 6mil). I've also listened to it for 90% of my waking hours since finding it on spotify.
If you loved the world building, I suggest you try the game. The story/quests in the game will flesh out Night City more~ and V's story is also one that's super interesting. The decisions you make in the end are crucial. They play the song on the car radio/radios around the city too
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
Yup, Cyberpsychosis isn't actually some supernatural fantasy disease that just magically turns someone into a berserker terminator if they become too much robot. It's a fake scapegoat label created to cover up a wide variety of anti-social behaviors that result from the trauma of living in a cruel ultra-capitalist society and the mental dysmorphia from installing defective black-market implants and replacing your normal body parts with weapons and turning yourself into a killing machine (people who get proper natural-looking medical prosthetics don't go cyberpsycho, only those who get inhuman chromed up gun arms and sword legs from shady unlicensed ripper docs.) Cyberpsycho attacks could be prevented if Night City invested in social programs to reduce poverty and crime, as well as comprehensive free medical care for their citizens and those displaying symptoms were treated with compassion and given extensive therapy. But admitting that unregulated capitalism and lack of universal free medical care makes people snap would be inconvenient for the ruling elite, so instead the victims are ignored and demonized until they become dangerous, then get shot down by government stormtroopers.
I slowly realized when doing the cyberpsycho missions that we are trying to rehabilitate them, not kill them, so I accidentally killed something like 6 of them without realizing. Saddest part is that most of the ones I killed were the ones who just wanted to live, and not endanger others
@@klo1679 Regina tells you something along the lines "shame you couldn't save all of them" if you kill some of them instead of just incapacitating all of them.
In the tabletop cyberpsychosis is serious enough that my crew's runner can hack into and remotely detach my fullborg's limbs or head, but treating it is casual enough that they can roll my nugget body out the car door in front of the hospital with 500eb pinned to my jacket or after a gig I can visit my ripper and have a wank and watch some cartoons to stave it off for another week.
Except you can't. Unless you are a full-blown psychopath who also happens to not mind that the paths available for you to take through life are very narrow and rigid. Or "save yourself" simply means that you can ensure your own "survival" (which also seems quite dubious). This show also really doesn't tell that story (multiple character live in one sense or another for others and those that don't do not seem that happy about it; unless they are an uncaring psychopath). So it seems to me that either Mike doesn't quite understand his own universe, that I misinterpret the quote, some context is missing, or this show is a misleading portrayal of it. (I was never - at least not before this show - into Pondsmith's Cyberpunk - and really annoyed at the name - but (and this probably explains the annoyance) really into the cyberpunk genre in general; Deus Ex, the world in the background of the The Longest Journey games, the Neuromancer trilogy, and similar).
@@WhoisTheOtherVindAzz I think it's more metaphorical than literal. One of the recurring themes in both the show and the game is the struggle to keep yourself in the face of impossible odds. In Night City, 'saving yourself' could mean a lot of things. You could join a corp and live in comfort at the cost of your soul, or you could fight like hell for what you believe in and go out in a blaze of glory. You could leave it all behind and forget it. The only victory that matters in Night City is not letting it change who you are. But that's like, my opinion, man.
@@HatchetHatter I like it if it means "keep yourself" and that makes a lot of sense; both in the fictional world of Nigth City and the reality in which it exists.
@@HatchetHatter I mean one can even say the only way to win in Night City as some street level punk is to leave Even if you go corpo you're not born high enough in it to get somewhere untouchable the higher ups can one day deem you acceptable losses
This show single-handedly made a game that was the punching bag of the internet be talked in a positive light for the first time since launch,that right there speaks for the quality this anime. We still have one more season full of bangers to go but this for sure is at least top5 of the year imo.
@@berserkerdude People barely cared about previous updates, they would not have cared about this one either if not for the anime. The anime got people back to the game, it's the fact CDPR fixed most of it that keeps people playing. For example the game reached a new peak, 89k concurrent players... on THURSDAY. I can't even imagine how much higher it will be on Sunday, probably at this rate 120k or even more. Without the anime it would have gotten 20k at most. The anime shifted the story around the game, now people all of a sudden are willing to give it another chance, or are just now playing it for the first time. I mean on Sunday it made number 1 on Steam. So yeah, this is the best marketing move CDPR could have ever made for their game, this show right here. Whoever came up with the idea to go with this show to Studio Trigger deserves a massive raise because they might have just saved Cyberpunk 2077 in the process. Don't be surprised if CDPR end up extending the life of the game with more updates, past what they've promised just two weeks ago. So Edgerunners got people back at the table, but it was CDPR actually serving good food now that keeps people playing and pushing the game higher and higher on Steam.
I think the anime help get new players but I know a lot of players return to the game to replay it because they just announced an expansion not long ago
Rebecca is easily best girl. I felt so bad for her the entire show, they really did a good job on humanizing all the main gang and making you care about each of them.
It's why Trigger is a peak studio. She has around 15 minutes of combined screen time in the whole show, but she absolutely steals the show and you know everything you need to in that time. Other studios sometimes can't develop their main character beyond two personality traits in 130 episodes.
I watched 4 minutes of this video, went and watched the entire series without looking away, then hit play on the video again with tears in my eyes. Every character, every narrative thread, every song in the soundtrack, every action scene and fountain of blood, PERFECTLY implemented. What a beautiful work of art, thanks for the rec. I really hope this is the push the IP needs to really lean into it's potential, I can see that mess of a game launch becoming one of the most important things to happen to the genre with another show, movie, or comic book of this quality.
I'm a huge fan of the cyberpunk genre and I really think this series matched or exceeded the bar set by Neuromancer. Which is insane because this was an animé.
23:47 That is canonically correct. One of the simplest ways to prevent Cyberpsychosis in the Cyberpunk TTRPG (Cyberpunk Red in particular is really good) is simply therapy Of course, in the Cyberpunk world this is not cheap. Therapy in Red (That takes place in 2045, the price in 2076 may differ) is 1000 eurodollars, double the price of the arm mounted grenade launcher Maine has on his arm. It's no wonder runners prefer to spend money in more equipment instead of mental health
Even admitting to dealing with psychosis is dangerous. There is a mission in 2077 where a vet struggling with psychosis calls a therapist who then keeps her on the line just long enough for the military clean up crew to come to kill her.
Basically, avoiding or dealing with cyberpsychosis revolves around two main things, assuming the point is to have much cybernetic implants and NOT get insane: - availability of therapy if/when needed - high-quality implants with highly-qualified medical technicians putting them in. Possibly bio-augmentations instead of cyber stuff, if possible. Guess what's relatively easier to get, or not, on the streets. Curing cyberpsychosis is possible, but, well, rare - it's... difficult to capture a rampaging cyberpsycho alive, and that's assuming the attempt is actually going to be made. Even then, curing cyberpsychosis requires removal or deactivation of all implants, except those providing "baseline" human functions (mere cyber-prosthethics and artificial hearts won't make you a psycho, for example)
I would say canonically partial correct since the implants themselves are the root problem in many ways. even a mentally stable person will get problems with cyber psychosis if he has too many implants. and I think the anime and game portray that fact very well. Cyberpsychosisi is mainly triggered by the dehumanization through implants, the more implants the less of a person you become. this is why adam smasher can exist he already was a psychopath, to begin with.
@@adzi6164 the fact that you need high-quality implants and highly-qualified medical tech to install then automatically forbids everyone that ain't corpo from it. You can _maybe_ find decent cyberware and a good intentioned ripperdoc, but they aren't called "ripper" for nothing, specially if YOU can afford to pay then.
The nature of implants is also important. Essentially, things that only emulate the human body put a lot less strain on the brain and nervous system than things that add entirely new abilities and functions. A basic full-body prosthetic that does nothing other than emulate a human body is overall pretty safe. It's when you do things like put a grenade launcher into your arm or install a system that overloads your whole nervous system to supercharge your reflexes or similar that your brain will start to get overwhelmed. As a straight example of that, heavy military full-body cyborgs are essentially halfway sedated and put into a sort of shared control setup with the bodies' integral expert systems to prevent them going full psycho from the strain. It's described as being in a sort of dreamlike state and the users generally dislike it - off-mission they're normally transferred into a much more basic full-body prosthetic that they can live in normally. This is also why they aren't a straight replacement for normal infantry: The way they're essentially sleepwalking means they're less creative and flexible than a normal person and will carry out any orders given in a very literal and robotic manner. This means they're more limited in what kind of missions they can be expected to carry out and that they require more supervision during missions than normal soldiers. (Adam Smasher is about the only exception to all this, and the most common explanation for why he's seemingly immune to cyberpsychosis is that he was a psychopathic nutter already, long before he ever got chromed up. Lest we forget, dude managed to get a dishonorable discharge from the Army while it was fighting what was basically Vietnam 2.0: Even More Warcrimes Edition.)
As someone who was able to play the game on launch without horrific bugs and crashes, something that really stuck out to me about Edgerunners was the attention it paid to the environment of Night City as presented in Cyberpunk 2077. I recognized those intersections and streets and parks because I'd driven through them myself on furious car chases or running firefights. This was a show that was obviously created by people who either played the game or paid a hell of a lot of attention to its map and aesthetic. It's the story I wanted from CP2077, unleashed from the constraints of having a videogame character as a protagonist.
@@mothersbasement actually, the song. "Hold onto your wishes if you can't hold onto me" just cuts to the soul as you envision Lucy's pained smile as she remembers David in their braindance.
It feels like a GitS outro. Lithium Flower maybe? I know several of the intros/outros feature Kusanagi stripped off all her features just diving through cyberspace. It gave THAT kind of tone. I'd love to hear the animators Behind the Scenes on their inspiration. Because I can think of at least 10 examples.
Makes it even worse when you think about it this way, Lucy originally wanted to escape to the moon on a one way ticket out of night city, then the dream changed to wanting David to be there and at the end she’s stuck on the moon now, with no one and no way back surrounded by the never ending darkness around the moon, ofc the suns there and people she doesn’t know and that she obviously doesn’t care about at least not as much as she does David, so she got to live on the moon alone and knowing that she’ll never see David again, she forces herself to smile otherwise davids died for nothing essentially. That makes me sad very very sad
I played the updated Cyberpunk before I watched the anime. I saw a new drink in Claire's inventory called "The David Martinez." I was like, ok that's new, and thought nothing more of it. Started watching the anime and met the lead character. Instantly sad because the drink in her inventory made a lot more sense now, and instantly knew what was going to happen
Some dialogue from the game stuck with me through the series: “A happier ending… for everyone involved” “Here, for folk like us? Wrong City, wrong people.” The true winners were the city and corporations
Only way to win is by playing the game. Found your own business, become a global corporation, enter a violent and unethical war of economics, devastate the lives of millions, dismantle your enemies, throw down their progeny, trample their heritage. Win. Look out of the window of your ivory tower, down at the unwashed masses that you yourself crawled out of and put the barrel to your head. Cry a single tear of shame, then pull the trigger.
Well, at least V and Johnny can fuck up Arasaka pretty badly in some of the endings. Even if it's only for a brief period of time, in 2077 a corp took a major L.
@@1986Hikaru the corpos don’t lose, they are too big to fail. Even with Arasaka taking that hit, they will survive. V and David were a pothole and that was it.
I expected a lot of horny fan service for no reason. And there was some of that in the first three episodes as a hook, but later on i was really surprised to see nudity used more as a way to show intimacy, vulnerability and to question whether shame is still a thing if your body is basically a toaster. At least it felt that way to me.
And even when it was used casually, it kinda just was a thing without making a big deal of it. Feels like it was a good representation of the face of night city (the extremely explicit in your face nudity) vs the more average day-to-day life (more casual and/or personally intimate). I mean, yeah it can get crazy at times but it's still people just living their lives. Or I could be reading into it too much.
If you think about it, even V doesn't get a happy ending. He either has to merge with Alt or has 6 months left to live after he goes to mikoshi. Johnny even says that few get happy endings "wrong city, wrong people" as he says.
Arguably the best anime I’ve seen this year so far in terms of visuals, music and execution. We still have more shows to look forward to this year, but as of now this show blew away my expectations.
I was going to say "What about Arcane" Then I realized it's been almost a fucking year since Arcane released Where tf have the past few years gone. They just zipped ny
13:04 Fun fact: His VA, who did have roles in Jojo, was never told to go all Jojo. He just did it at his own volition and the team just decided to keep it.
no idea how true that is, but because it worked well and was enjoyable I'm gunna pretend to know this as factual and nobody can convince me otherwise lmfao.
@@unigon794 Yeah, Aleks Le has been doing quite abit these days with the dragonball super superhero movie that passed as Gamma 1 and now Luke for the upcoming street fighter 6. Him and Zach Aguilar have been really seem to be on the come up in the English VO world
Its kinda tragic that no matter what path David picks, its still ends up in misery. If he didnt choose to come with Lucy and took the scholarship instead, he would end up being a lab rat. But the other options aint good either, he's just slowly digging himself a bigger hole.
Truly a devil’s choice. Either become a corporate crook or a street criminal. If he had some better guidance he probably could have survived with the crew, but nobody was equipped to help him with his hero complex.
This was great characterization for Night City. I really got that impression playing the game too. This is not a good place. That's just life in Night City. When I was playing the game, it was really jarring to go from the optimistic Jesse to the extremely cynical view of Silverhand, but it makes complete sense.
16:08 just peeped Lucy is doing the breach mini game to hack the limo the attention to detail and tie ins to the game are amazing. Trigger didn't have to go this hard but they did it for us.
oh yea, this anime pulls a lot of UI elements from the game. the map they pull up in the final episode, the font of the texts, the call sounds, the money indicators... if there's, like, any digital element in this show, it's probably a UI thing from the game. it's such a cool decision that it ends up retroactively making the UI of the game feeling much more diagetic, like it's an actual part of how characters in the universe experiences reality instead of just game features.
@@mori2037 Same with most of the music and locations, if there's an exterior shot in the show you can probably find it somewhere in-game and if there's a song in the show it probably plays on the radio.
You’re forgetting an important Co-Creator and Co-writer on this series; Mike Pondesmith, he’s the creator of the Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red table top games as well as co-writing Cyberpunk 2077. His creation is such a rich and vastly detailed world. Edgerunners plays out exactly like one of his scenarios
when david shot that innocent arasaka employee i knew any hope of a happy ending was gone. they nailed the cyberpunk theme so hard, wouldnt have that ending any other way, as painful as it is.
I do want to point out that Lucy was also there for David even if she did an actual terrible job telling him about it. Her time off was really her hunting down the people trying to find her and David, and she was willing to sacrifice herself for him on several occasions by the end. It was solely his determination to get her out and her finally understanding that it was the best thing she could do for him that let her leave. Rebecca is a goat for sure but honestly so is Lucy. David was more blessed than he realized and if he stopped trying to follow Maine's dream for him of becoming super chromed up and just took it a little slower and more cautiously he may have actually been able to carve a decent life out for himself and some of his friends by the end.
Sad part is David's fate was sealed the moment he displayed his sandy to arasaka. Lucy killed runners to keep him hidden, but that drew their attention more. She couldn't tell him since he'd just try to stop her or worse get involved. He went out the best way he could given the circumstances.
You either go quietly, Mr. Nobody... Or else you can go out in a blaze of glory, to become a legend... Ain't no other path in Night City choom... If there is, well, I ain't seen it yet...
I have never felt more fear and dred rhen seeing the mom being left to die when they completely had the means to save her because she wasn’t paying for the too expensive medical insurance
Going with Trigger to produce the animation was the best choice they could have made. At worst it would've have been very good like LWA, at best it's a classic talked about for decades like Gurren Lagann or Kill La Kill. If they decide to sell a box set I'll absolutely buy it.
If any other studio did this anime it wouldn't work It's a very grounded very human story. The over the top violence could contrasting that could have been jarring. But Trigger made it work perfectly
@@Cyromantik if Cyberpunk 2077 didnt launch in such a garbage state they could sell an Edgerunner collector edition that had the box set of the show, a hard copy of the game in a steel case, an art book from the shows concept art and story boarding.
“Oh and one more thing V, quiet life, or blaze of glory” After seeing this show it’s given me a new appreciation for just how strong V became by the end of their story, or rather that chapter of the story because the canon ending is set already for V which I won’t say you’ll have to do a little bit of research but there’s only one that you’ll know is canon considering it’s the only way Phantom Liberty could happen, I digress.. Adam Smasher was just a slightly above average boss level threat, but in the anime he is a monster killing machine. People will say that’s due to balancing issues but I think it’s more due to V just being OP with the resilience that the relic chip and neural cyberware gives him.
V is a shit character and the game fundamentally has a broken core loop and power creep. This show is amazing but as someone who wants to see video game consumers hold companies accountable, cyberpunk 2077 is a failed project artistically.
I definitely think V is much stronger, keep in mind V not only has years of experience in merc work, but also 10 years of gradually using implants, so while V burns twice as bright, half as long, I still think V did it more gradually than David. Plus I think the creators singled out the Relic as a reason for V not being susceptible to cyberpsychosis.
V is canonically stronger than Adam Smasher, but the boss fight isn't an indication of that. You can have a canonically powerful character be an easy fight in a game, doesn't change the actual lore.
@@polskiwyrob7650 Wow, 2022 has been a weaker year compared to 2021. So far this and Made in Abyss S2 are contenders for the year for me. But just wait until we get Chainsaw Man lol.
In original TTG cyberpunk your ability to install cybernetics without going cyberpsycho was limited by your Empathy stat. And it was both told and shown to us as that David was unusually empathetic for the NC.
Which is why V is also so powerful with cyber ware, literally everything V does, is to help others before themselves, they will rarely ask for money upfront, and will help others on goodwill, something that the rest of NC just doesn’t understand. One mission is saving some random corpo from corrupt cops, you can do that mission without receiving a single Eddie, but the reward is more xp and street cred. V is helpless in their own situation, but still helps anybody else who needs it, usually without question of reward.
@@klo1679 you forgot the fact that V can be as heroic/villainous as you want them to be, yet still won't succumb to this. the reason is that he already died once, and the chip with Johnny Silverhand's engram had ''restarted'' V's brain and brought them back to life. this basically cancels out V's potentiality to cyberpsychosis.
@@xenn4985Adam never had empathy to begin with. He took the Arasaka deal because he was dying, and he wasn't changed beyond the fact that he's on a leash now.
I think you really captured the perfect descriptor for an anime like this: *A Studio Trigger masterpiece without the usual sense of optimism* As tragic as it is, sometimes a devastating ending proves all the more powerful than a satisfying conclusion. Great video, man.
Watching Cyberpunk Edgerunners gave me a sense of melancholic nostalgia that I hadn't felt in awhile. Like I was 16 years old again and hanging out with a couple of friends, watching some anime we torrented over a long summer day. It was sad, maybe even bleak, but the sadness didn't overwhelm it. Instead, it made its moments of tenderness shine all the more brightly.
I binged this show in a day. I can't believe how fucking good it is. This is peak cyberpunk. Not cyberpunk the game, but cyberpunk the style and esthetic. This is the only piece of media that has ever lived up to what cyberpunk is. It's incredible power fantasy crossed with its darker than black world. Glorious life burning itself away at warp speed all in the pursuit of fighting an inhuman system that is so massive and powerful that any struggle against it is doomed from the start no matter how righteous that fight may be. If any of you people play ttrpgs, I strongly suggest finding a group to play something like Cyberpunk or Shadowrun around a table. It's the closest you'll ever get to this beautiful tragedy of a show.
There is a hell of a lot of media that lived up to what cyberpunk is. A good video game example is deus ex mankind divided. Sure you could just follow to main story and ignore most of the darkness but the second you start doing the side quests it’s all sorts of messed up
Barely any compare to the portrayal of Cyberpunk like edgerunners or the larger 20XX format. The original Deus ex holds a candle to it without a doubt but it loses focus. Especially within HR and MD. The top cyberpunk pieces of media in my opinion are mostly books by authors you've never heard of, the 20XX series and 'do androids dream of electric sheep'@@thepowerof2307
9:06 Don't forget the fact that, in the game, there is a drink named after Edgerunner's protagonist at the Afterlife. The only way for someone to get a drink named after them in the Afterlife is by dying spectacularly. Night City doesn't remember how you live, but how you died.
@@Greifenkitty Johnny was thought to be dead after the Arasaka tower bombing(I mean, with the actual Lore behind Soulkiller the real Johnny is dead), so him having a drink at the Afterlife is pretty on point. If someone's fate is unknown, like Morgan Blackhand's, they won't get a drink.
Fun fact. Every single background and location that you see in the anime is in the game. If they had walked around the entire city in the show, you've essentially seen the entire city in the game. Everywhere from David's apartment to that spot where he and Lucy were talking under the beautiful moonlight. I also really appreciate the fact that Rebecca's gun is near arasaka Tower where she died.
The fact we're getting edgerunner, Demon slayer s2, Mob psycho s3 and Chainsawman all in the space of 1 year is incredible to me this year stands be one of the most visually stunning in anime history.
A fun bit of lore that's essentially an "open secret" in Night City is that, in some cases, cyberpsychosis can truly be cured, at least to a certain point. Of course, actually curing cyberpsychosis is a lot less cost effective to these corps and the governments they control than a bullet to the head, so someone will only receive the proper treatment for it if they have something to offer, that usually being their displayed ability to fight. And thus, we have MaxTac, the members of which are themselves mostly recovered cyberpsychos.
@@gaymansupreme I mean that’s the thing though. There isn’t a cure in a traditional sense because the affliction itself is just poor mental health and the society that perpetuates it. If they weren’t chromed up they wouldn’t be cyber psychos, just regular ones. That’s the only difference. Technically speaking they even exist today, only they’re called school shooters.
Then it's even more cruel that MaxTec are literally gunning for people that they know could be (or could've been) saved. The system really swallows everyone.
@@OnlyRoke Yep, and it should be considered as well that that is likely partially by design. MaxTac members have already shown their low humanity, so they care much less about who they kill and much more about being able to kill. In all truthfulness, they still tread the line between cyberpsycho and not; they just have enough resources to stay cognizant and a short enough leash. A *truly* fully recovered cyberpsycho through traditional treatment is a completely different person from their former cyberpsycho and non-cyberpsycho selves, and more humane treatment is technically still experimental, though we know through our own lens that there's no reason it shouldn't work. Also of course, cyberpsychosis comes in all kinds of forms due to it being a blanket diagnosis to ignore the real problems, so it's likely that cyberware-induced cyberpsychosis is completely different from trauma-induced cyberpsychosis, and then there's always the psychopaths who just so happen to use cyberware to do more damage.
I absolutely loved Cyberpunk Edgerunners. The episode with Maine becoming a cyberpsycho is one of the best anime episodes I've seen all year, and the final fight was pretty damn intense too. At least Lucy got her dream fulfilled as a tiny sliver of hope in a depressing ending.
Seeing the entirety of the anime community praising this show this much make me so happy. I can’t wait to rewatch it and catching new details. A true passion project and a masterpiece.
Me seeing David Podsiadło, guy who looks like the nicest person you can meat on the street pull out a cyberpunk ost, blew my mind also that one Nieważne track in the party scene hits home like a truck.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners has finally kicked Eden of the east out of the #1 spot of my top 10 favorite anime of all time, and it's been there for nearly a decade at this point.
Fuck watched the show in 2024 and i have to admit that it gets to its point...i was expecting a cliché ending or atleast that the mc would have survived but i think that the one we got is the most well resembling one of the lore and the reality itself, where you couldnt powerup randomly or beat everything or everyone on the verge of death only thanks to your will or hopes. Afterall life is life and it doesnt forgives anyone. 10/10 with honesty 🎉🎉
I think it's worth mentioning that much of the music in the anime is directly from the game. HEALTH - Major Crimes and I Want To Stay At Your House by Rosa Walton and Hallie Coggins featured majorly in the show are both from the game. Big props to Trigger for working them in the way they did and seeing as the story of the anime was at least hashed out at the time of the games release, David has a drink named after him in the Afterlife, they might have even used them as inspiration.
Don't forget 'Who's ready for tomorrow' by Rat Boy, which is basically David's theme. The music is just SO FITTING and it ties the worlds together so beautifully. First time I heard Major Crimes in the show I almost teared up.
I've heard so many good things about Chainsaw Man, that's the only thing it has going against it. I've heard that it's like the second coming of christ, but Edgerunners came out of no where. I started watching expecting absolute shit, I'm just a sucker for cyberpunk anime, fuck was I surprised.
@@xXAkirhaXx so the anime is only gonna adapt the starting of the manga with like 12 episodes. We won't be getting into the main story until the second season sadly
To quote Lucy “ In this city you’re not remembered by how you live, but by how you die.” I think it exactly what happened to the game it surely was a memorable launch when it became what it is at launch.
Your reading on cyber-psychosis is bang on, by the way. It's a direct parallel to drug addiction and the attendant destruction it causes to the person who experiences through it: nearly all addicts become so because of the severe untreated trauma they experienced.
Yeah - I interpreted it as a microcosm of addiction as they're shown often KNOWING that they're slipping and won't stop. It's very similar to a lot of addicts stories.
@@SRCepTer cdpr voted Becca out of the show cuz there are no lolis in nc. Trigger said she stays or they walk. Cdpr let her stay and we got the best character of the show
@@albasu_ When I first saw an image of her without watching the show, I thought "loli" because it was an anime, but after, she just seemed like a a very short woman with anger issues and a couple screws loose. Which is a compliment, because sis was bursting with personality way beyond "loli".
@@joyc.e.7511 completely agree. The whole crew has their charms but Becca is exploding with personality. And along side being a little murder gremlin she genuinely cared for our mc and his happiness. She was tragically human in such an inhuman world
Rebecca's original augment's were probably just related to her eye's visual accuity and detection but by part 2 the giant hands had 2 major reasons. The first reason was a dedication to her fallen brother who had hand Augmentations and even danced at the parties in his place and as for the second reason, it was to reduce recoil in her dual wielding nature because she saw she failed when she had the first shot the Cyberpsycho but all she could use were pistols and a normal shotgun flung her. In part 2 She was able to Dual Wield Automatic heavy guns and fire a shotgun multiple times when David Froze.
I totally know what you mean. There are several anime that get the same reaction out of me. FMAB, Hunter X Hunter, AOT, Made in Abyss, etc. It's like, the story and characters are very well written without the obvious anime tropes that can make anime exhausting sometimes.
for a guy who doesnt watch anime at all, i actually think the show is amazing. some badass deaths, extreme gore, great characters (rebecca is my favorite, crazy yet charismatic, just like Vaas), and a great (but also expected) ending. the only sad thing about it was that it only was 10 episodes long. 😅
David taking short cuts to edgerunner was his first mistake. Trying to be main after how main went out was his second. Not leaving the city and buying a but load of upgrades and swanky penthouse was his third.
I think the most amazing part of it all is how influential this show has been on the cyberpunk fandom itself. The game has shot up in players, both new and old, and I think this gives a lot of hope for future anime adaptions of games.
Funny thing, you mentioned having not played the game at this time, and yet you managed to hit the nail on the head for what Cyberpsychosis actually _is,_ according to the game. The fact that you managed to figure this out from the Anime _alone_ is a sign of great writing. Cyberpsychosis is, at its core, a catch-all term for when stuff like defective or poorly-installed technology, drug use, nervous breakdowns, PTSD, and the like all build up to the point where the affected finally _snaps,_ with the implants often serving as nothing more than a catalyst for those underlying issues to boil to the surface in a violent way. The residents of Night City just find it easier to sweep all of those issues under the mantle of "Cyberpsychosis" rather than actually deal with those problems. Hell, corpos who believe themselves to be undergoing cyberpsychosis get taken out by corporate _hit squads_ rather than be taken to a medical retreat as they would have outsiders believe.
@Ra's VRTG Mike Pondsmith himself said the "humanity" stat was essentially one's mental stability - as he puts it, "Humanity is not just a measure of one aspect of personality, but an overall measure of several elements including the subject's ability to emphasize and relate with others, their ability to absorb and rebound from mental and physical stressors, their ability to show compassion and flexibility to others, and whether they are able to balance their worldview through other methods." As he puts it, David, in spite of his socioeconomic status, was arguably a lot better off than most people living in NC. Think about it. He actually had a shot at the golden towers, a loving mother, and even when it all went to crap, he was still able to bond with Maine's crew and meet Lucy. V is able to handle everything you slap onto them because having Johnny in their head means they have someone to bounce off of and talk to when dealing with all the crap they see throughout the game.
The most tragic character is actually Gloria. Just imagine what she would feel if she would see her son descend into downward spiral into villainy and became exactly what she did not wanted him to be. Once he murdered that woman in episode 8, he became everything that is wrong with Night City.
Yeah, unfortunately they didn't spend a whole lot of time setting up Gloria, they kindof just gave us some exposition dumps in the first episode (albiet, that was latter elaborated on slightly). I'd say that was one of the flaws of the show, because as a consequence we didn't really get invested in Gloria as much as we could have been. I think people got the point, but I don't think it was delivered quite as well as it could have been. I feel like it could have done better as a 12 episode series, because some parts felt a bit rushed. But it can also be the case that the setup overstays its welcome. It is what it is though, still a masterpiece.
I don't agree with this. I've seen people say this, but I think she still would have ultimately been proud of David. For the most part at least. Obviously he did bad things that she would not condone, but the dream she had for David was not David's dream, he found his own dream in helping those he loved achieve their own dreams. And he died doing that. I think at the end of the day Gloria would have been proud of that. I think she would recognize that he did the best he could with what he was left and made his life and death mean something. Which is way more than almost anyone else in Night City.
This anime went way harder than it ever needed to, but thankfully did and really added flourish to the created world. Between the foreshadowed events, the building sense of dread, the futility, it still gave you glimpses of hope through the show. It perfectly sets you up for heartbreak, in the most beautiful way. Im really curious to see how they could possibly do a season 2. Possibly making the series a consortium of vignettes of different fatally fated protagonists fighting the system, or leading to something where our heroes from season 1 still persist. Either way, this anime got me back into the game (that even at its broken state at launch) that I love.
Jokes aside it makes me so happy seeing how many people are watching and loving this anime. I was afraid it would become underrated but it wasn’t thank god “I really want to stay at your house 😭😭”
You know a video is well written when you can't tell, just from listening, when the speaker transitions from segment to segment (save for that corpo shillery sellout segment). Subbed.
How I desperately there was 3 episodes between 6 and 7 instead of a time skip to witness the growth of David and Lucy's relationship and David's cybernetic growth, rather than a time skip.
Yeah, that's probably the only criticism I have of the show- it feels a bit too quick in the middle. I'd want to see more of David's time in the gang, get to know the others more. For instance, as it is, Dorio hardly gets anything to do by herself, like she doesn't get any kind of big moment of her own.
This is probably one of my all time favorites in recent memory, and the fact that this is technically an adaptation of a video game/ttrpg just blows my mind.
for anyone who dosent know David Martinez has a drink in his name in the game that has been there ever since release so yes they didnt come up with this characters , they have been in the lore from the start .
Well, yes and no. Production wise Edgerunners was actually in the works well before release. Studio Trigger was working on this with CDPR since 2019 at the very least according to interviews so it’s very likely they just put the drink in to get ahead of things since they already had enough of the plot figured out by then to do it.
@@svankensen With the 1.6 Edgerunners update, areas you see in the anime (that already existed in the game at launch, but obviously had no meaning) now in game are tied to the Edgerunnners questline and you can find easter eggs from the anime in the game world. Such as being able to enter Rebecca's apartment, finding guns that were unique to the anime characters and upon completion of the Edgerunners questline you get David's jacket as a wearable outfit. So I think it is safe to say CDPR, had all this planned from the beginning and the game may have been rough technically at launch ...but lore, world and character wise...even day 1 you could see the passion. Only NOW are a lot of people seeing the bigger picture of how much passion was thrown not just into the game...but the whole Cyberpunk acquisition as a whole. And with CDPR giving the blessing to the modding community to go to town...who knows what we will see.
@@AtmonTheExectioner I don't feel a power fantasy game is the best medium to tell cyberpunk stories. There was a fine bladerunner adventure game. And games like syndicate, with emphasis on the setting and in teams, not the individuals, were also a good way to tell cyberpunk stories. Hell, even shadowrun, with all their silly stuff, does good work. But a game where you are a singular force, changing the world, go completely against the themes of the genre. It is just aesthetics, not the content. This anime, on the other hand, did a great job communicating the tragedy of living in such a world.
@@svankensen I never said that, though building David's Sandevistan build in Cyberpunk 2077 is OP... The game of Cyberpunk isn't about saving the world as a one man army. It's about trying to save yourself from your inevitable death. And depending on your choices...you may walk away with your soul intact...you may die a legend...or you may fade away with no one remembering who you were.
They just nailed it. They didn't cheap out, got the best people for the job and it just works. Amazing show and great addition to the franchise and genre alike.
(smallest possible spoiler for ending) The one thing I have to say is that I respect Trigger's restraint with the whole final scene. They could've made me "ano-hana bawl my eyes out" but instead chose to really focus on what little happiness the show had left, and THAT is the most punk thing they could do in the face of the negativity surrounding each and every one of us. Excited to watch it again and really figure out how much I like it
While the implants can cause cyber psychosis, its suggested the blockers/injections they take to combat it actually increase the rate that they lose control in the long term. It brings them back in the moment, but its suppose to cause neurol degeneration which seems to be the biggest contributor to cyber psychosis. Its a hidden side effect of the injections/blockers which isn't publically known to the people who take it. It's mentioned in the anime's ending song video (actual video).
@@NRG56 I'd say the sonic movies, Detective Pikachu, and the new Mario movie look like decent to good adaptations from their games. It's just that Arcane, Castlevania, and now Edgerunners are superb examples of top-tier representations of the games they stem from. We are finally getting enough content to see a scale of bad (old Mario movie, Warcraft) to all time greats (Edgerunners, Arcane).
The point you brought up about this being a world that doesn’t allow for happy endings, is the whole concept of the dystopia in which Cyberpunk and anything within the genre takes place. There are no happy endings, you either die in a blaze of glory, or live content because you either succeeded or failed completely and have to live with the consequences. You wont have complete victory, you have little winning moments. And Edgerunners is just the best demonstration of this concept
In the original TTRPG the name of the stat you lose when you get more cybernetics is humanity. The old idea is that the more machine you become, the more you lose touch with your humanity.
@@geoffreyprecht2410 yeah they changed it so its only the cyberware prosthetics that give you superhuman abilities. Its nice when companies realize their mistake and fix it.
Cyberpunk 2020 was my first TTRPG, so seeing such an amazing adaptation of Mike Pondsmith’s world (2077 was also really great, despite glitches), just makes me really damn happy.
That other fluid that squirts in this anime was completely unexpected and I was stunned for like a solid 30 seconds like "Netflix really let them get away with that...holy shit" and I loved every second of it
I love how the final shot of the entire series can be seen as hopeful or deeply sad depending on how you interpret it. Is Lucy lifting her arms to bask in the sun just like David did in their shared BD, content to live on with the gift he gave her? Or is she reaching up to take off her helmet so she can be together with him again?
If she offed herself after all the trouble the rest of the team went through to get her to the moon I’m pretty sure Becca would smack the neon out of her hair on the other side 😂
@@slackerswordsman42 Honestly, that is what I was expecting her to do when I was watching it for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised when she didn't.
@@camerontrivett1772 Yup, she recognized that she was up there because of David. She was sad, but there wasn't an air of despair of in that scene. She just reached out and felt the sun like David did during the BD.
This Anime single handedly made me go back to the game which I had not touched since finishing it almost 2 years ago. Trigger did so good and made me fall in love with that world all over again!
"I really want to stay at your house" is now the universal trigger for all the trauma we experienced in this show. Really just brings a tear to your eye 😢
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“Punks not dead”- goichi suda
Is the TH-camr Second-Thought Cyberpunk? I mean, that Guy sure criticizes and dissects the whole System. Im not just talking about the aptly-named video "Is the US a Dystopia?", but about the whole Channel.
I mean, its his Thing to talk aobut Society and how it could be.
will she be able to slay the mighty google overlord i wonder.
Sex Pistols isn’t punk?
@@VlRGlL They are pretty punk and they did live up to the lifestyle it’s just that they became too main stream
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."
I will tell this joke when I'm like 72 and people will be asking me "wth is a punk"? It'll be great.
I heard that story too, only difference being the final exchange goes "Is that punk?" "No, that's being a conformist."
As a writer, this is legitimately the first story I'm actually going to steal for myself and keep alive. Thanks man.
..You actually made me understand the point through a simple story. Amazing.
@@xkavarsmith9322 Playgirism 😭🌯🗿💀🌮🫴💀😭🤑💵🤡🌯😈🤑🌮🏃🏯👨❤️💋👨🦑
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.
And the complete opposite of how people are remembered in Night City.
That went hard bro, got me tearing up like a bitch🤝
The City remembers David as a legendary Edgerunning Cyberpunk who kicked corpo butt and went out swinging.
Lucy remembers David as a confused, scared, and lonely boy who she took under her wing on a train.
Both are true of who David is, and yet neither are the full story of who he was. It's absolutely beautiful character writing and this anime blows me away.
Exactly. We don't even get to see his death. Therein is the implication that David is a better "human" than he is an "Edgerunner"/inhuman. We, the audience, are stripped of the possibility of remembering him by how he died.
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
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.
This is why you always complete the optional objectives to get the better endings in quests like these
This hurt to read
I didn't realize it, but when you lay it all out like that, damn. I just saw the most obvious one, him on top of the tower.
@@joey_youtube this show was so well done I can't listen to stay at your house without tearing up
I'd word that middle one a bit differently. He succeeded in leading the crew. But in leading them to their end (except kiwi she took care of that herself)
Really basically the same end Maine lead them too... Only worse.
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
Wait I missed that joke. Where was it?
@@PlebNC when Main was going crazy after they messed up the Tanaka job and trying to move the body
@@aPimpNamedSlickback4484 don’t Rebecca an Falco also have one in the final shootout?
@@cristianl1516 not sure, If they did then that one slipped past me lol
@@PlebNC when main and his woman were fighting the cops before they died
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
The thing is that Becca's love for David in both a platonic and romantic fashion is so unconditional that it is down right the most virtuous thing in all of Night City, it is the kind of person anyone would want regardless of anything, someone who would be there for you when you need someone the most, she is not afraid to tell David that he is going down a bad path but is also willing to stay by his side in hopes that he will make the right decision with support, she is also able to realise the concept of "I don't care if they don't love me back, I just want them to be happy".
It is true selflessness in a world where everything has a price, the fact that she is willing to jump into the fire to help David makes her fate hurt even more, the fact she knows when she can't help David herself and wants to get him to Lucy who knows might be able to actually do something is commendable.
When David was taking about going to the top of the tower and Rebecca just going with it, man that scene really stuck to me
I think she's also one of the saddest cases of unrequited love in anime. Sure, it was only 10 episodes and there wasn't much development on that front, but it was quite clear what she felt for David. And in most anime the rejected girls are a great subject to make fun of because they were designed from the very beginning to play that role and are often pretty flat in the way they were written. Becca is her own character that just happened to fall fo David knowing he loves Lucy which wasn't a defining feature of her character, far from it actually. It was a pretty down to earth realistic depiction of this kind of situation. She focused on being the best goddamn friend that David could ever have and she succeeded in that.
All of that makes it pretty sad she didn't get what she wanted.
@@ilo3456 You nailed it, man, fuck that would hurt if it was me. Seeing the person you love love someone else, I would do the same thing she did. I prefer my friend to be happy even if it’s not with me. Call me a cynic/simp; I wouldn’t care.🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
@_____ There's a big difference in being a simp and genuinely caring for someone well being at the cost of your own well being.
Rebecca rather have the guy be with someone else just because its the best thing that could happen to him, a big simp will be so focused on getting his own way by constantly acting like a lapdog in order to finally get her.
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.
@Peachiekeen within the last 6 minutes of the show
Same
It's fitting within the genre though. In cyberpunk, the whole world is incredibly bleak and you only survive with money or power. These Chooms had neither so no one survived.
@Peachiekeen true the last few minutes of the show made your heart stop beating
I'm glad that her final words were "FUCK YOU!"
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"
Yes
This is facts
And every time it will make me tear up a bit.
It's one of Newton's laws, I am sure of it.
This is a fact. Did it myself hehe
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.
Rebecca is indeed the GOAT, Ride or Die and Best girl!!!
Rebecca da goat 🐐
True that!
R.I.P best girl
So whachu telling me, is she is a good simp
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.
Dude came a long way in just 365 days.
Lived too fast.
Ah yes. You being a dad was relevant here.
@@grilledleeks6514 it is because a child becoming an adult then dieing in the same year is a parent's worst nightmare
@@justsomeguywithaforeheadmu6209 Thank you sir. Look at your son. Look at the world. Think about tomorrow. That's what I was trying to get at. Glad somebody picked it up.
@@JustAJauneArc died too young
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.
It's not that they can just recover the chick is using them to see if you can cure them shes literally just going to send them to be tested on ☠️
It's really usually also a VERY preventable break and cause by the very systems and city that refuses to provide mental health support for the variety of issues it gives it's people and would rather shoot the problem
Cause life is cheap and death is cheaper
What's your source tho? Pretty sure that in game it is only stated that "some people" believe it's possible to reverse cyberpschosis, but I don't remember it being a proven thing. It's true you're asked not to kill the cyberpsychos but was it ever confirmed that any of them were cured? Not that I know of
@@lesscrement1448 Even if not fully cured, they’re brought down from the violent state enough that they don’t need to be shot at constantly.
@@lesscrement1448 For one, the cyberpsycho girl in the game's original trailer. You later find her as a MaxTac officer and I think its heavily implied that a lot of MT soldiers are former cyberpsychos themselves.
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.
he did kill him
He's dead, Jim
fell down a hundred stories and painted the streets red when he landed
In the anime, using cyberware is shown to cause severe neurological stress. To the point of using a sandy more than a few times a day is considered extraordinary.
In the game however, the player can put military grade cyberware all over, and use them without any side effects.
@@kerbodynamicx472 Your neurological state is constantly degrading throughout the game, there's even a tracker on the character menu showing a percentage like the gear showed that David was wearing.
And even if it doesn't change faster depending on how much cyberware you have, in the end...
Spoilers
The player can't change the world either
@@KiraNightV That’s a nice post hoc rationalization but in reality it’s actually because the game was rushed and the devs did not really care about making the player feel any actual impact around using cyberwear. there is no way for the lore and the gameplay to match in their current state they just can’t no human being,no robot.ect on earth in all of cyberpunk lore anywhere can do something like use a sand vein,a heart pump,a bio monitor, Jetleg‘s,mono wire arms. and a flurry of other neural system related cybernetics. use them all completely simultaneously and repeatedly every three minutes all the time all day every day for an entire week+ without just falling over dead never mind going cyber psychotic. The game was just rushed and they didn’t care or consider adding in a mechanic to make the player feel like there was any actual negative downside to using these incredibly overpowered abilities aside from a very very very short three minute cool down or less.
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
she literally pops out of a vending machine......that scene is so fucked
The game has a subtle version of this in the first act, where an AI taxi tells you that your ride package includes free disposal of your remains should you die during the ride service. It's a small, almost comedic thing if everything else up to that point hadn't been warning you that life is cheap in this world.
There are still Funerals in Pondsmiths cyberpunk, its just burials that are uncommon in the mega cities. No replace to put the bodies and if you did the graverobbers would dive all over it.
There is also the small, almost comedic thing in the background of the game that literally has no influence on anything that matters to you, but is there:
There is literally a lottery going where you can win money if you just guess the amount of people dying in a certain timespan (not quite clear what timespan, but it feels like your average weekly lottery) in the city. A bloody deadpool. And the numbers are usually in the triple digits, it seems.
Very cost effective, the board loved it, and facility management received a bonus for cutting the expenses by 0.2%, another success story in Night City
Honestly, a season 2 with a completely new set of characters completely unrelated to this story but in the same world would be insane.
An anthology series, perhaps. But in that case I would prefer it being named Cyberpunk: [something else], since we'd no longer be following the edgerunner group.
Turning the series into an anthology about all those who named drinks in the Afterlife would be a wonderful way to take the series, see just why the city remembers these Cyberpunks for how they died, and more importantly… why those close to them remembered them for how they were in life
I wouldn’t be surprised if season 2 is about Lucy
@@SkeleGem or following the life paths in the game. Like this technically counts as the street kid story what about a corpo or nomad. Your idea is better though especially if we could get more stories of the legends night city has but just something i figured would be a good way to play into the game and rpg.
@@jeremiahbates1870 The entire collection of different path stories could collectively be called "Cyberpunk: Tales from Night City"
Never could I have expected that the anime would perfectly capture the themes of 2077, but damnit it did.
"You don't make a name as a cyberpunk by how you live. You're remembered by how you die."
The anime might have just saved the game by getting people to overlook its horrifically buggy launch and take a chance on the game as it is now.
@@Kvantum yeah the released a 40gb update like a week and a half ago I think
@@blobfish8265 and it was needed.
TBF, the cyberpunk genre is DEEPLY linked to Japan, with several of the genre’s classics being anime and manga. And virtually all featuring Japanese corpos prominently.
*captures the themes of the universe
the man made of skyscrapers is such an accurate representation of the saying "the city always wins"
The creator of the Cyberpunk Tabletop RPG (which the videogame is based on) Mike Pondsmith was inspired by anime when making the cyberpunk world. Now his world has an anime based on it, he's publicly stated that he likes the anime. Truly this is one of Trigger's greatest creations.
Hopefully this anime will inspire others and continue the cycle.
As a wise man from the Andes once said: "Oh yeah, it's all coming together."
@big stink the brapin king good call choomba. CDPR backed trigger up well to make it work. Not to mention that Mike Pondsmith may have had some involvement.
@@RutraNickers where’s that from ?
@@roachies4242 - The Emperor's New Chombatta
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.
It’s retroactive meaning at its finest!
There are three tracks from the game the anime uses to frankly insanely good effect. There's that one, Rat Boy's 'Who's Ready for Tomorrow' which fits David's early journey perfectly, and in my opinion the much more subtle but much more brutal 'Major Crimes' by HEALTH.
"If life's short... why does it take so long? Is there no way out?" Woof. Body Heat Radio killing it.
@@AlexiconPrime Cyberpunk had so many banger songs, but it didn't utilize them all properly. So many of them were just songs you MIGHT hear on the radio if you happen to be listening to the right station. Edgerunners truly utilized each and every one of the ones they used to an artistically masterful effect. Each beat in the show stood out in any given scene. Honestly even as a longtime Studio Trigger fan, I just have to say that this is so far their greatest masterpiece yet. Their current Magnum Opus. I say that even despite each and every one of their shows thus far being defining factors in my development as a person.
They are not only masters of animation, but masters of storyboarding, storytelling, character creation, worldbuilding, and most certainly soundtrack design. I just wish we could have more of Studio Trigger all the damn time.
Oh, and i've had Rat Boy's 'Who's Ready for Tomorrow' basically on constant loop for the past week or two, as it's such a fucking mood.
I cant listen to it or I start crying
@@AlexiconPrime I'm also partial to using Gazelle Twin & Trash Generation's History for his cyberpsychosis breaks, on the edge of becoming history in the messiest way possible.
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.
Exactly, glad they kept the lore friendly bits in their respective language (like the tiger claw bike chase for example).
Yeah, knowing the tiger claws are Japanese and speak Japanese, it made perfect sense to see them speaking it in the anime. A varied city like this always has people like that. I love that kind of detail
Ripperdocs creole accent sold me on the dub entirely. Dudes a straight g
That was one thing I loved in the game too. The Valentinos speak Spanish. The Tiger Claws speak Japanese. The Scavs have Russian accents and there's a few other languages sprinkled in between as well. Really shows that the city is as diverse in culture as the lore makes it out to be both in game and in the anime
Fun facts: MaxTac actually recruits cyberpsychos whom they get to capture. They go through therapy and their cyberpsychosis is redirected rather than treated.
Some do, as shown in the game. Some are just blown to bits. Either way they're treated as inhuman, which is just... fitting but so upsetting.
Redirected against what?
@@ricoambro other Cyberpsychos instead of random chooms.
@@AlexiconPrime aah makes sense
@@AlexiconPrime yup.. that’s why I said “whom they capture”
Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk IP praised the show. Man's been making this setting since the late 80s for table top and seeing it bridge mediums from games, music and anime is great to see. He actually did a seminar not to long ago about how he made Cyberpunk a IP that could be adapted into other forms of media. I recommend watching it.
Kojima also praised it :D
Weird, because I also remember him saying the game itself was generic sci fi, so it’s confirmed then. The show is more Cyberpunk then the game.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 he never said that.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 The game got the cyberpunk feel on the spot, just didnt do as well on the "game" stuff
Pondsmith was one of the first people to directly inject anime influences into Western geek culture when he published Mekton, a mecha tabletop RPG, back in 1984 (same year as Battletech, another early vehicle for introducing anime into Western SF). The man's a real pioneer of so many genres and media.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 Would be weird as he himself did also help on the game..
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'.
Black Lagoon is another show that carried a sense of dread throughout it
Ooof i hate shows like this but I’m gonna watch it… kinda for that reason 😂 also it looks beautiful
when will i get bitches
@@alchemistofsteel8099 maine reminded me of dutch a lot
Thats a well pointed comment about waiting for that other shoe to drop. Even in the moments of victory, everything was Pyrrhic at the end.
Wild how this show was able to take one of the best club tracks from the game and make it a pavlovian trigger for bawling my eyes out
Lmao so true.
I know right? Everyone seems to have agreed it's the "cry now" song.
Ikr? I always thought the song had some kind of bittersweet vibe but now it's the new Dango Daikazoku for me 😭
Normally I'd be somewhere between completely indifferent and outright dislike for this song but damn you're not wrong about the Pavlovian trigger, I'm still whiping the tears from my eyes after the end of this video.
Yeah, just hearing it at the end of the video broke me. No need for any anime clip.
Like many of you, I can't get "I Really Want to stay at your House" out of my head. The scenes associated with it from Edgerunners both haunt me and give me hope that we will see more of these characters in some way in the future.
Edgerunners is amazing in every way I can think of. Story telling. Visuals, music, animation, world building. I wish we got more than 10 episodes, but then I wonder if it would have left such an impact if it were longer.
God it's so good.
You're not alone, its gone up 2mil streams on spotify in roughly 24 hours (from 4mil to 6mil).
I've also listened to it for 90% of my waking hours since finding it on spotify.
Listen to "Let you down" everyone is just ignoring It but it really sounds like Davids song
Honestly, I prefer "I let you down"
@@EyelessWolf_
Ye. I'd say it fits his, and possibly even Maine's death more than "I want to stay at your house"
If you loved the world building, I suggest you try the game. The story/quests in the game will flesh out Night City more~ and V's story is also one that's super interesting. The decisions you make in the end are crucial. They play the song on the car radio/radios around the city too
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
Yup, Cyberpsychosis isn't actually some supernatural fantasy disease that just magically turns someone into a berserker terminator if they become too much robot. It's a fake scapegoat label created to cover up a wide variety of anti-social behaviors that result from the trauma of living in a cruel ultra-capitalist society and the mental dysmorphia from installing defective black-market implants and replacing your normal body parts with weapons and turning yourself into a killing machine (people who get proper natural-looking medical prosthetics don't go cyberpsycho, only those who get inhuman chromed up gun arms and sword legs from shady unlicensed ripper docs.)
Cyberpsycho attacks could be prevented if Night City invested in social programs to reduce poverty and crime, as well as comprehensive free medical care for their citizens and those displaying symptoms were treated with compassion and given extensive therapy. But admitting that unregulated capitalism and lack of universal free medical care makes people snap would be inconvenient for the ruling elite, so instead the victims are ignored and demonized until they become dangerous, then get shot down by government stormtroopers.
And the implied theories of Cyberpsychosis actually being a weaponized sickness rather than naturally occurring from the overuse of implants.
I slowly realized when doing the cyberpsycho missions that we are trying to rehabilitate them, not kill them, so I accidentally killed something like 6 of them without realizing. Saddest part is that most of the ones I killed were the ones who just wanted to live, and not endanger others
@@klo1679 Regina tells you something along the lines "shame you couldn't save all of them" if you kill some of them instead of just incapacitating all of them.
In the tabletop cyberpsychosis is serious enough that my crew's runner can hack into and remotely detach my fullborg's limbs or head, but treating it is casual enough that they can roll my nugget body out the car door in front of the hospital with 500eb pinned to my jacket or after a gig I can visit my ripper and have a wank and watch some cartoons to stave it off for another week.
Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk TTRPG said it best:
"In Cyberpunk you can't save the world, but you can save yourself".
Except you can't. Unless you are a full-blown psychopath who also happens to not mind that the paths available for you to take through life are very narrow and rigid. Or "save yourself" simply means that you can ensure your own "survival" (which also seems quite dubious). This show also really doesn't tell that story (multiple character live in one sense or another for others and those that don't do not seem that happy about it; unless they are an uncaring psychopath). So it seems to me that either Mike doesn't quite understand his own universe, that I misinterpret the quote, some context is missing, or this show is a misleading portrayal of it. (I was never - at least not before this show - into Pondsmith's Cyberpunk - and really annoyed at the name - but (and this probably explains the annoyance) really into the cyberpunk genre in general; Deus Ex, the world in the background of the The Longest Journey games, the Neuromancer trilogy, and similar).
@@WhoisTheOtherVindAzz I think it's more metaphorical than literal. One of the recurring themes in both the show and the game is the struggle to keep yourself in the face of impossible odds. In Night City, 'saving yourself' could mean a lot of things. You could join a corp and live in comfort at the cost of your soul, or you could fight like hell for what you believe in and go out in a blaze of glory. You could leave it all behind and forget it. The only victory that matters in Night City is not letting it change who you are.
But that's like, my opinion, man.
@@HatchetHatter I like it if it means "keep yourself" and that makes a lot of sense; both in the fictional world of Nigth City and the reality in which it exists.
@@HatchetHatter I mean one can even say the only way to win in Night City as some street level punk is to leave
Even if you go corpo you're not born high enough in it to get somewhere untouchable the higher ups can one day deem you acceptable losses
This show single-handedly made a game that was the punching bag of the internet be talked in a positive light for the first time since launch,that right there speaks for the quality this anime. We still have one more season full of bangers to go but this for sure is at least top5 of the year imo.
Well, to be fair it's the anime and the fact that they finally fixed the damned thing.
@@berserkerdude People barely cared about previous updates, they would not have cared about this one either if not for the anime. The anime got people back to the game, it's the fact CDPR fixed most of it that keeps people playing. For example the game reached a new peak, 89k concurrent players... on THURSDAY. I can't even imagine how much higher it will be on Sunday, probably at this rate 120k or even more.
Without the anime it would have gotten 20k at most. The anime shifted the story around the game, now people all of a sudden are willing to give it another chance, or are just now playing it for the first time. I mean on Sunday it made number 1 on Steam.
So yeah, this is the best marketing move CDPR could have ever made for their game, this show right here. Whoever came up with the idea to go with this show to Studio Trigger deserves a massive raise because they might have just saved Cyberpunk 2077 in the process.
Don't be surprised if CDPR end up extending the life of the game with more updates, past what they've promised just two weeks ago.
So Edgerunners got people back at the table, but it was CDPR actually serving good food now that keeps people playing and pushing the game higher and higher on Steam.
@@berserkerdude oh for sure,this was such a good decision from them. Fix the game and make people want to play because of a banger of an anime
I think the anime help get new players but I know a lot of players return to the game to replay it because they just announced an expansion not long ago
@@Ebosan87 edgerunners and the new expansion thats coming out
Rebecca is easily best girl. I felt so bad for her the entire show, they really did a good job on humanizing all the main gang and making you care about each of them.
It's why Trigger is a peak studio. She has around 15 minutes of combined screen time in the whole show, but she absolutely steals the show and you know everything you need to in that time. Other studios sometimes can't develop their main character beyond two personality traits in 130 episodes.
I watched 4 minutes of this video, went and watched the entire series without looking away, then hit play on the video again with tears in my eyes. Every character, every narrative thread, every song in the soundtrack, every action scene and fountain of blood, PERFECTLY implemented. What a beautiful work of art, thanks for the rec. I really hope this is the push the IP needs to really lean into it's potential, I can see that mess of a game launch becoming one of the most important things to happen to the genre with another show, movie, or comic book of this quality.
did the exact same thing lol
I'm a huge fan of the cyberpunk genre and I really think this series matched or exceeded the bar set by Neuromancer. Which is insane because this was an animé.
Bro I di the exact same thing the ending on the moon broke my heart so hard I was bawling like a baby
Literally same
Same
23:47 That is canonically correct. One of the simplest ways to prevent Cyberpsychosis in the Cyberpunk TTRPG (Cyberpunk Red in particular is really good) is simply therapy
Of course, in the Cyberpunk world this is not cheap. Therapy in Red (That takes place in 2045, the price in 2076 may differ) is 1000 eurodollars, double the price of the arm mounted grenade launcher Maine has on his arm. It's no wonder runners prefer to spend money in more equipment instead of mental health
Even admitting to dealing with psychosis is dangerous. There is a mission in 2077 where a vet struggling with psychosis calls a therapist who then keeps her on the line just long enough for the military clean up crew to come to kill her.
Basically, avoiding or dealing with cyberpsychosis revolves around two main things, assuming the point is to have much cybernetic implants and NOT get insane:
- availability of therapy if/when needed
- high-quality implants with highly-qualified medical technicians putting them in. Possibly bio-augmentations instead of cyber stuff, if possible.
Guess what's relatively easier to get, or not, on the streets.
Curing cyberpsychosis is possible, but, well, rare - it's... difficult to capture a rampaging cyberpsycho alive, and that's assuming the attempt is actually going to be made. Even then, curing cyberpsychosis requires removal or deactivation of all implants, except those providing "baseline" human functions (mere cyber-prosthethics and artificial hearts won't make you a psycho, for example)
I would say canonically partial correct since the implants themselves are the root problem in many ways. even a mentally stable person will get problems with cyber psychosis if he has too many implants. and I think the anime and game portray that fact very well. Cyberpsychosisi is mainly triggered by the dehumanization through implants, the more implants the less of a person you become. this is why adam smasher can exist he already was a psychopath, to begin with.
@@adzi6164 the fact that you need high-quality implants and highly-qualified medical tech to install then automatically forbids everyone that ain't corpo from it. You can _maybe_ find decent cyberware and a good intentioned ripperdoc, but they aren't called "ripper" for nothing, specially if YOU can afford to pay then.
The nature of implants is also important. Essentially, things that only emulate the human body put a lot less strain on the brain and nervous system than things that add entirely new abilities and functions. A basic full-body prosthetic that does nothing other than emulate a human body is overall pretty safe. It's when you do things like put a grenade launcher into your arm or install a system that overloads your whole nervous system to supercharge your reflexes or similar that your brain will start to get overwhelmed.
As a straight example of that, heavy military full-body cyborgs are essentially halfway sedated and put into a sort of shared control setup with the bodies' integral expert systems to prevent them going full psycho from the strain. It's described as being in a sort of dreamlike state and the users generally dislike it - off-mission they're normally transferred into a much more basic full-body prosthetic that they can live in normally. This is also why they aren't a straight replacement for normal infantry: The way they're essentially sleepwalking means they're less creative and flexible than a normal person and will carry out any orders given in a very literal and robotic manner. This means they're more limited in what kind of missions they can be expected to carry out and that they require more supervision during missions than normal soldiers.
(Adam Smasher is about the only exception to all this, and the most common explanation for why he's seemingly immune to cyberpsychosis is that he was a psychopathic nutter already, long before he ever got chromed up. Lest we forget, dude managed to get a dishonorable discharge from the Army while it was fighting what was basically Vietnam 2.0: Even More Warcrimes Edition.)
As someone who was able to play the game on launch without horrific bugs and crashes, something that really stuck out to me about Edgerunners was the attention it paid to the environment of Night City as presented in Cyberpunk 2077. I recognized those intersections and streets and parks because I'd driven through them myself on furious car chases or running firefights.
This was a show that was obviously created by people who either played the game or paid a hell of a lot of attention to its map and aesthetic.
It's the story I wanted from CP2077, unleashed from the constraints of having a videogame character as a protagonist.
Right there with you choom. Its preem that we runners can be there with all that history.
The ED has been living in my head for a week now. Can't fucking stop listening to it as my brain replays the ending visuals of Lucy.
Wonder how much of that is the song and how much is Lucy
@@mothersbasement It's all Lucy my guy
@@mothersbasement actually, the song. "Hold onto your wishes if you can't hold onto me" just cuts to the soul as you envision Lucy's pained smile as she remembers David in their braindance.
It feels like a GitS outro. Lithium Flower maybe? I know several of the intros/outros feature Kusanagi stripped off all her features just diving through cyberspace. It gave THAT kind of tone.
I'd love to hear the animators Behind the Scenes on their inspiration. Because I can think of at least 10 examples.
Makes it even worse when you think about it this way, Lucy originally wanted to escape to the moon on a one way ticket out of night city, then the dream changed to wanting David to be there and at the end she’s stuck on the moon now, with no one and no way back surrounded by the never ending darkness around the moon, ofc the suns there and people she doesn’t know and that she obviously doesn’t care about at least not as much as she does David, so she got to live on the moon alone and knowing that she’ll never see David again, she forces herself to smile otherwise davids died for nothing essentially.
That makes me sad very very sad
I played the updated Cyberpunk before I watched the anime. I saw a new drink in Claire's inventory called "The David Martinez." I was like, ok that's new, and thought nothing more of it. Started watching the anime and met the lead character. Instantly sad because the drink in her inventory made a lot more sense now, and instantly knew what was going to happen
yeah it's just so ironic that they use carbonated stuff in that drink tho, he hated carbonate things
The drink was before the anime release tho
@@蘿安娜 maybe its made for lucy
What does the drink do?
@@himesilva Just ingame stats
Some dialogue from the game stuck with me through the series:
“A happier ending… for everyone involved”
“Here, for folk like us? Wrong City, wrong people.”
The true winners were the city and corporations
Only the city, even the corpos loses to Night City.
V's about the only person to buck that trend, depending on the ending you choose.
Only way to win is by playing the game. Found your own business, become a global corporation, enter a violent and unethical war of economics, devastate the lives of millions, dismantle your enemies, throw down their progeny, trample their heritage. Win. Look out of the window of your ivory tower, down at the unwashed masses that you yourself crawled out of and put the barrel to your head. Cry a single tear of shame, then pull the trigger.
Well, at least V and Johnny can fuck up Arasaka pretty badly in some of the endings. Even if it's only for a brief period of time, in 2077 a corp took a major L.
@@1986Hikaru the corpos don’t lose, they are too big to fail. Even with Arasaka taking that hit, they will survive. V and David were a pothole and that was it.
I expected a lot of horny fan service for no reason. And there was some of that in the first three episodes as a hook, but later on i was really surprised to see nudity used more as a way to show intimacy, vulnerability and to question whether shame is still a thing if your body is basically a toaster. At least it felt that way to me.
And even when it was used casually, it kinda just was a thing without making a big deal of it. Feels like it was a good representation of the face of night city (the extremely explicit in your face nudity) vs the more average day-to-day life (more casual and/or personally intimate). I mean, yeah it can get crazy at times but it's still people just living their lives. Or I could be reading into it too much.
@@PhoenicopterusRNah' I'm picking up what you're putting down.
If you think about it, even V doesn't get a happy ending. He either has to merge with Alt or has 6 months left to live after he goes to mikoshi. Johnny even says that few get happy endings "wrong city, wrong people" as he says.
"No happy endings" is a Staple of the Cyberpunk Genre
@@hakuanquietpaws2307the happiest ending that's *ever* possible is your main character/s surviving the end.
Arguably the best anime I’ve seen this year so far in terms of visuals, music and execution. We still have more shows to look forward to this year, but as of now this show blew away my expectations.
I was going to say "What about Arcane"
Then I realized it's been almost a fucking year since Arcane released
Where tf have the past few years gone. They just zipped ny
Does Demon Slayer not count?
@@zaehelhm3099 Same lol
Im a slave for a bit of overlord just for the perspective and characters but enjoyed edgerunners as a whole package.
Yurei Deco is another from this season. Science Saru did their thing and did it right, again.
13:04 Fun fact: His VA, who did have roles in Jojo, was never told to go all Jojo. He just did it at his own volition and the team just decided to keep it.
no idea how true that is, but because it worked well and was enjoyable I'm gunna pretend to know this as factual and nobody can convince me otherwise lmfao.
His English VA is also Tanjiro from Demon Slayers, another fun fact lol
@@WrayMaxwellVO Double fun fact: the VA of Katsuo, the rich bully who makes the jojo noises, is the same guy who voices Zenitsu.
@@unigon794 Yeah, Aleks Le has been doing quite abit these days with the dragonball super superhero movie that passed as Gamma 1 and now Luke for the upcoming street fighter 6. Him and Zach Aguilar have been really seem to be on the come up in the English VO world
Another Fun fact : Faraday the fixer is voiced by Giancarlo Esposito aka Gus Fringe from breaking bad.
Its kinda tragic that no matter what path David picks, its still ends up in misery. If he didnt choose to come with Lucy and took the scholarship instead, he would end up being a lab rat. But the other options aint good either, he's just slowly digging himself a bigger hole.
Truly a devil’s choice. Either become a corporate crook or a street criminal. If he had some better guidance he probably could have survived with the crew, but nobody was equipped to help him with his hero complex.
This was great characterization for Night City. I really got that impression playing the game too. This is not a good place. That's just life in Night City. When I was playing the game, it was really jarring to go from the optimistic Jesse to the extremely cynical view of Silverhand, but it makes complete sense.
In a world where HBOMax is canceling everything animated, I was happy as hell to see this on Netflix.
They still have "adult" animation on there, apparently.
16:08 just peeped Lucy is doing the breach mini game to hack the limo the attention to detail and tie ins to the game are amazing. Trigger didn't have to go this hard but they did it for us.
A lot of the weapons used and quickhacks seen are also things you can use in game.
@@asitallfallsdown5914 you can find Rebecca's shotgun where she got killed, thats something......
the places, the quickhacks, the vehicles... the anime is just the game with a different story. Thats the catch
oh yea, this anime pulls a lot of UI elements from the game. the map they pull up in the final episode, the font of the texts, the call sounds, the money indicators... if there's, like, any digital element in this show, it's probably a UI thing from the game. it's such a cool decision that it ends up retroactively making the UI of the game feeling much more diagetic, like it's an actual part of how characters in the universe experiences reality instead of just game features.
@@mori2037 Same with most of the music and locations, if there's an exterior shot in the show you can probably find it somewhere in-game and if there's a song in the show it probably plays on the radio.
You’re forgetting an important Co-Creator and Co-writer on this series; Mike Pondesmith, he’s the creator of the Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red table top games as well as co-writing Cyberpunk 2077. His creation is such a rich and vastly detailed world. Edgerunners plays out exactly like one of his scenarios
when david shot that innocent arasaka employee i knew any hope of a happy ending was gone. they nailed the cyberpunk theme so hard, wouldnt have that ending any other way, as painful as it is.
Yea. By the point I knew it was a final countdown to disaster
Yup, that right there removed any foolish notions of there being a happy ending for me as well.
He screwed up morally when he accepted to assassinate that head researcher, who was also an unarmed civilian.
I do want to point out that Lucy was also there for David even if she did an actual terrible job telling him about it. Her time off was really her hunting down the people trying to find her and David, and she was willing to sacrifice herself for him on several occasions by the end. It was solely his determination to get her out and her finally understanding that it was the best thing she could do for him that let her leave. Rebecca is a goat for sure but honestly so is Lucy. David was more blessed than he realized and if he stopped trying to follow Maine's dream for him of becoming super chromed up and just took it a little slower and more cautiously he may have actually been able to carve a decent life out for himself and some of his friends by the end.
Thank you for saying this. I fucking love Lucy
Sad part is David's fate was sealed the moment he displayed his sandy to arasaka. Lucy killed runners to keep him hidden, but that drew their attention more. She couldn't tell him since he'd just try to stop her or worse get involved. He went out the best way he could given the circumstances.
Exactly what I think too
You either go quietly, Mr. Nobody... Or else you can go out in a blaze of glory, to become a legend... Ain't no other path in Night City choom... If there is, well, I ain't seen it yet...
@@mlt3496 underrated comment...finally someone actually understands Lucy's character....she's best girl along with Rebecca
I have never felt more fear and dred rhen seeing the mom being left to die when they completely had the means to save her because she wasn’t paying for the too expensive medical insurance
As a Trigger fan, I am impressed by how many Trigger tropes they managed to squeeze in there.
I wouldn't expect or want any less.
Going with Trigger to produce the animation was the best choice they could have made.
At worst it would've have been very good like LWA, at best it's a classic talked about for decades like Gurren Lagann or Kill La Kill.
If they decide to sell a box set I'll absolutely buy it.
If any other studio did this anime it wouldn't work
It's a very grounded very human story.
The over the top violence could contrasting that could have been jarring.
But Trigger made it work perfectly
@@0395gabe Same here! Holy hell I really want them to. I don't want something this great tied to Netflix for perpetuity.
@@Cyromantik if Cyberpunk 2077 didnt launch in such a garbage state they could sell an Edgerunner collector edition that had the box set of the show, a hard copy of the game in a steel case, an art book from the shows concept art and story boarding.
You describing Lucy's skills as 'Wireless Digital Hacking Abilities' and 'Wired Analog Hacking Abilities' is an amazing and apt way to put it.
I enjoyed that wordplay as well lol
It was *chef's kiss*
“Oh and one more thing V, quiet life, or blaze of glory”
After seeing this show it’s given me a new appreciation for just how strong V became by the end of their story, or rather that chapter of the story because the canon ending is set already for V which I won’t say you’ll have to do a little bit of research but there’s only one that you’ll know is canon considering it’s the only way Phantom Liberty could happen, I digress.. Adam Smasher was just a slightly above average boss level threat, but in the anime he is a monster killing machine. People will say that’s due to balancing issues but I think it’s more due to V just being OP with the resilience that the relic chip and neural cyberware gives him.
V is a shit character and the game fundamentally has a broken core loop and power creep. This show is amazing but as someone who wants to see video game consumers hold companies accountable, cyberpunk 2077 is a failed project artistically.
I definitely think V is much stronger, keep in mind V not only has years of experience in merc work, but also 10 years of gradually using implants, so while V burns twice as bright, half as long, I still think V did it more gradually than David. Plus I think the creators singled out the Relic as a reason for V not being susceptible to cyberpsychosis.
I used Rebeccas shotgun with a full gunfighter build and destroyed Adam Smasher so stupidly easy that I felt I cheated myself.
V is canonically stronger than Adam Smasher, but the boss fight isn't an indication of that. You can have a canonically powerful character be an easy fight in a game, doesn't change the actual lore.
This show arrived late but legitimately became best of the season for me.
best of the year
@@polskiwyrob7650 we do have strong contenders next season but I would also argue that it can still be aoty
is by far the best of the season for me, and a strong contender for best of the year.
@@polskiwyrob7650 Wow, 2022 has been a weaker year compared to 2021. So far this and Made in Abyss S2 are contenders for the year for me. But just wait until we get Chainsaw Man lol.
It arrived, what, two years after the game?
You could say Edgerunners was fashionably late to the party.
In original TTG cyberpunk your ability to install cybernetics without going cyberpsycho was limited by your Empathy stat. And it was both told and shown to us as that David was unusually empathetic for the NC.
Literally to remain human... You must remain human. Pretty poetic and tragic.
Which is why V is also so powerful with cyber ware, literally everything V does, is to help others before themselves, they will rarely ask for money upfront, and will help others on goodwill, something that the rest of NC just doesn’t understand.
One mission is saving some random corpo from corrupt cops, you can do that mission without receiving a single Eddie, but the reward is more xp and street cred. V is helpless in their own situation, but still helps anybody else who needs it, usually without question of reward.
@@klo1679 you forgot the fact that V can be as heroic/villainous as you want them to be, yet still won't succumb to this. the reason is that he already died once, and the chip with Johnny Silverhand's engram had ''restarted'' V's brain and brought them back to life. this basically cancels out V's potentiality to cyberpsychosis.
This raises some interesting questions about adam
@@xenn4985Adam never had empathy to begin with. He took the Arasaka deal because he was dying, and he wasn't changed beyond the fact that he's on a leash now.
I think you really captured the perfect descriptor for an anime like this:
*A Studio Trigger masterpiece without the usual sense of optimism*
As tragic as it is, sometimes a devastating ending proves all the more powerful than a satisfying conclusion. Great video, man.
Watched this video.
Binged the whole thing.
Just finished.
Almost cried, wish I did.
Have such an ache in my chest.
Thanks, Geoff.
Definitely got a few tears out of me. Not at the ending though oddly enough. That 6th episode really got me though.
@@FateZephyr Part 2 to this Anime/This-Video-here: 'Is the US becoming a Dystopia?' by Seocnd-Thought.
wish you did? what
Crying would have made it hurt less tbh
YOu can admit you cried its okay i did too.
Watching Cyberpunk Edgerunners gave me a sense of melancholic nostalgia that I hadn't felt in awhile. Like I was 16 years old again and hanging out with a couple of friends, watching some anime we torrented over a long summer day. It was sad, maybe even bleak, but the sadness didn't overwhelm it. Instead, it made its moments of tenderness shine all the more brightly.
The irony of the punk parallel immediately followed by a sponsored advertisement is not lost on me.
I binged this show in a day. I can't believe how fucking good it is. This is peak cyberpunk. Not cyberpunk the game, but cyberpunk the style and esthetic. This is the only piece of media that has ever lived up to what cyberpunk is. It's incredible power fantasy crossed with its darker than black world. Glorious life burning itself away at warp speed all in the pursuit of fighting an inhuman system that is so massive and powerful that any struggle against it is doomed from the start no matter how righteous that fight may be. If any of you people play ttrpgs, I strongly suggest finding a group to play something like Cyberpunk or Shadowrun around a table. It's the closest you'll ever get to this beautiful tragedy of a show.
This show looks like crap bc it’s anime. Anime sucks, how can you look at that crap art work and find any enjoyable aspect of it. It looks terrible
Akira?
There is a hell of a lot of media that lived up to what cyberpunk is. A good video game example is deus ex mankind divided. Sure you could just follow to main story and ignore most of the darkness but the second you start doing the side quests it’s all sorts of messed up
Barely any compare to the portrayal of Cyberpunk like edgerunners or the larger 20XX format. The original Deus ex holds a candle to it without a doubt but it loses focus. Especially within HR and MD. The top cyberpunk pieces of media in my opinion are mostly books by authors you've never heard of, the 20XX series and 'do androids dream of electric sheep'@@thepowerof2307
9:06 Don't forget the fact that, in the game, there is a drink named after Edgerunner's protagonist at the Afterlife.
The only way for someone to get a drink named after them in the Afterlife is by dying spectacularly.
Night City doesn't remember how you live, but how you died.
Oh wow, that's awesome, never would have known. Thanks for mentioning!
@@majnuker Yeah its been in there for like a year or so. There's videos of people going "Who the heck is david?"
Yeah but johnny also has his drink soooo David could have shared the same fate maybe? Idk
@@Greifenkitty Johnny was thought to be dead after the Arasaka tower bombing(I mean, with the actual Lore behind Soulkiller the real Johnny is dead), so him having a drink at the Afterlife is pretty on point. If someone's fate is unknown, like Morgan Blackhand's, they won't get a drink.
I want to mention that the Davids drink contains soda. So David wouldnt like ist
Fun fact. Every single background and location that you see in the anime is in the game. If they had walked around the entire city in the show, you've essentially seen the entire city in the game. Everywhere from David's apartment to that spot where he and Lucy were talking under the beautiful moonlight. I also really appreciate the fact that Rebecca's gun is near arasaka Tower where she died.
The fact we're getting edgerunner, Demon slayer s2, Mob psycho s3 and Chainsawman all in the space of 1 year is incredible to me this year stands be one of the most visually stunning in anime history.
The return of Bleach too
Kaguya s3, Made in Abyss s2, SpyxFamily...
@@arlay3513 Very good shows also I was more talking about the ones with very flashy visuals
Vinland saga season 2 as well I think
@@bloomper pretty sure that’s next year
A fun bit of lore that's essentially an "open secret" in Night City is that, in some cases, cyberpsychosis can truly be cured, at least to a certain point. Of course, actually curing cyberpsychosis is a lot less cost effective to these corps and the governments they control than a bullet to the head, so someone will only receive the proper treatment for it if they have something to offer, that usually being their displayed ability to fight. And thus, we have MaxTac, the members of which are themselves mostly recovered cyberpsychos.
There really isn't a cure, the closest thing is out of pocket paid therapy once a week to lessen it's effects permanently.
@@gaymansupreme I wouldn't say that considering the fact that some ex-cyberpsychos who received Braindance therapy can even install cyberware again.
@@gaymansupreme I mean that’s the thing though. There isn’t a cure in a traditional sense because the affliction itself is just poor mental health and the society that perpetuates it. If they weren’t chromed up they wouldn’t be cyber psychos, just regular ones. That’s the only difference.
Technically speaking they even exist today, only they’re called school shooters.
Then it's even more cruel that MaxTec are literally gunning for people that they know could be (or could've been) saved. The system really swallows everyone.
@@OnlyRoke Yep, and it should be considered as well that that is likely partially by design. MaxTac members have already shown their low humanity, so they care much less about who they kill and much more about being able to kill.
In all truthfulness, they still tread the line between cyberpsycho and not; they just have enough resources to stay cognizant and a short enough leash.
A *truly* fully recovered cyberpsycho through traditional treatment is a completely different person from their former cyberpsycho and non-cyberpsycho selves, and more humane treatment is technically still experimental, though we know through our own lens that there's no reason it shouldn't work.
Also of course, cyberpsychosis comes in all kinds of forms due to it being a blanket diagnosis to ignore the real problems, so it's likely that cyberware-induced cyberpsychosis is completely different from trauma-induced cyberpsychosis, and then there's always the psychopaths who just so happen to use cyberware to do more damage.
I absolutely loved Cyberpunk Edgerunners. The episode with Maine becoming a cyberpsycho is one of the best anime episodes I've seen all year, and the final fight was pretty damn intense too. At least Lucy got her dream fulfilled as a tiny sliver of hope in a depressing ending.
Seeing the entirety of the anime community praising this show this much make me so happy. I can’t wait to rewatch it and catching new details. A true passion project and a masterpiece.
Me seeing David Podsiadło, guy who looks like the nicest person you can meat on the street pull out a cyberpunk ost, blew my mind also that one Nieważne track in the party scene hits home like a truck.
Is the TH-camr Second-Thought Cyberpunk? I mean, that Guy sure criticizes and dissects the whole System.
Meet
@@slevinchannel7589 he gave bayarea a bump and platform, I'd call him punk for that
Cyberpunk Edgerunners has finally kicked Eden of the east out of the #1 spot of my top 10 favorite anime of all time, and it's been there for nearly a decade at this point.
Eden of the East was so good too! I never hear anyone talk about that and how great it was!
Fuck watched the show in 2024 and i have to admit that it gets to its point...i was expecting a cliché ending or atleast that the mc would have survived but i think that the one we got is the most well resembling one of the lore and the reality itself, where you couldnt powerup randomly or beat everything or everyone on the verge of death only thanks to your will or hopes. Afterall life is life and it doesnt forgives anyone. 10/10 with honesty 🎉🎉
I think it's worth mentioning that much of the music in the anime is directly from the game. HEALTH - Major Crimes and I Want To Stay At Your House by Rosa Walton and Hallie Coggins featured majorly in the show are both from the game. Big props to Trigger for working them in the way they did and seeing as the story of the anime was at least hashed out at the time of the games release, David has a drink named after him in the Afterlife, they might have even used them as inspiration.
Don't forget 'Who's ready for tomorrow' by Rat Boy, which is basically David's theme. The music is just SO FITTING and it ties the worlds together so beautifully. First time I heard Major Crimes in the show I almost teared up.
' I think most would agree that this is a very strong a candidate for Anime of the Year '
Until the Chainsaw Man starts
@@chrislawlor6264 Even with Chainsaw Man in the running this still has a good chance to take it. Chainsaw Man will simply be the most popular.
I've heard so many good things about Chainsaw Man, that's the only thing it has going against it. I've heard that it's like the second coming of christ, but Edgerunners came out of no where. I started watching expecting absolute shit, I'm just a sucker for cyberpunk anime, fuck was I surprised.
@@xXAkirhaXx so the anime is only gonna adapt the starting of the manga with like 12 episodes. We won't be getting into the main story until the second season sadly
@@judgment5265 Good point but riddle me this. Why is Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga so popular in the first place?
To quote Lucy
“ In this city you’re not remembered by how you live, but by how you die.”
I think it exactly what happened to the game it surely was a memorable launch when it became what it is at launch.
Your reading on cyber-psychosis is bang on, by the way. It's a direct parallel to drug addiction and the attendant destruction it causes to the person who experiences through it: nearly all addicts become so because of the severe untreated trauma they experienced.
Yeah - I interpreted it as a microcosm of addiction as they're shown often KNOWING that they're slipping and won't stop. It's very similar to a lot of addicts stories.
That’s what I was thinking too. The drug addiction parallels are very clear to me
Pondsmith himself said cyberpsychosis is more comparable to the mental effects of steroids on bodybuilders in the form of "roid rage"
While it destroys the person on a mental and personal level, it also destroys the people around them... both figuratively and... very VERY literally
Rebbeca is such a good character you can see why Trigger told the game studio what they could do when they asked Trigger to take her out.
what? where?
@@SRCepTer cdpr voted Becca out of the show cuz there are no lolis in nc. Trigger said she stays or they walk. Cdpr let her stay and we got the best character of the show
@@albasu_ When I first saw an image of her without watching the show, I thought "loli" because it was an anime, but after, she just seemed like a a very short woman with anger issues and a couple screws loose. Which is a compliment, because sis was bursting with personality way beyond "loli".
@@joyc.e.7511 completely agree. The whole crew has their charms but Becca is exploding with personality. And along side being a little murder gremlin she genuinely cared for our mc and his happiness. She was tragically human in such an inhuman world
She reminded me a lot of Harley Quinn lol😅
Rebecca's original augment's were probably just related to her eye's visual accuity and detection but by part 2 the giant hands had 2 major reasons. The first reason was a dedication to her fallen brother who had hand Augmentations and even danced at the parties in his place and as for the second reason, it was to reduce recoil in her dual wielding nature because she saw she failed when she had the first shot the Cyberpsycho but all she could use were pistols and a normal shotgun flung her. In part 2 She was able to Dual Wield Automatic heavy guns and fire a shotgun multiple times when David Froze.
Your line about Lucy's digital and analog hacking abilities was a thing of beauty. Your writing is always solid.
Edge Runners was the first time in a while where I thought "This is great" and not "This is great for an anime"
I totally know what you mean. There are several anime that get the same reaction out of me. FMAB, Hunter X Hunter, AOT, Made in Abyss, etc. It's like, the story and characters are very well written without the obvious anime tropes that can make anime exhausting sometimes.
for a guy who doesnt watch anime at all, i actually think the show is amazing. some badass deaths, extreme gore, great characters (rebecca is my favorite, crazy yet charismatic, just like Vaas), and a great (but also expected) ending. the only sad thing about it was that it only was 10 episodes long. 😅
David taking short cuts to edgerunner was his first mistake. Trying to be main after how main went out was his second. Not leaving the city and buying a but load of upgrades and swanky penthouse was his third.
Only 15 seconds and I already know that Geoff has made about 6 million enemies with that opening line alone lol.
They might be mad but Johnny Rotten doesn’t even think he’s punk www.nme.com/news/music/sex-pistols-72-1328837
@@mothersbasement OK, fair enough, I guess. Probably the only thing I've ever 100% agreed with Johnny Rotten on lmao.
Fore being objectively correct lol
Made some friends too. Fuck the Pistols. Bunch of wankers. Shouldn't be in the same breath as the Ramones, Clash, Damned, etc.
@@mothersbasement Check out Chill Goblin's video on how Chumbawumba is infinitely more punk than Sex Pistols. It's a good time.
I think the most amazing part of it all is how influential this show has been on the cyberpunk fandom itself. The game has shot up in players, both new and old, and I think this gives a lot of hope for future anime adaptions of games.
“I Really Wanna Stay At Your House” is quickly making it into my top 10 anime songs along with “Before My Body is Dry” also from a Trigger anime
Funny thing, you mentioned having not played the game at this time, and yet you managed to hit the nail on the head for what Cyberpsychosis actually _is,_ according to the game.
The fact that you managed to figure this out from the Anime _alone_ is a sign of great writing.
Cyberpsychosis is, at its core, a catch-all term for when stuff like defective or poorly-installed technology, drug use, nervous breakdowns, PTSD, and the like all build up to the point where the affected finally _snaps,_ with the implants often serving as nothing more than a catalyst for those underlying issues to boil to the surface in a violent way.
The residents of Night City just find it easier to sweep all of those issues under the mantle of "Cyberpsychosis" rather than actually deal with those problems. Hell, corpos who believe themselves to be undergoing cyberpsychosis get taken out by corporate _hit squads_ rather than be taken to a medical retreat as they would have outsiders believe.
Thought it was a psychosis cus they lost their humanity.
@Ra's VRTG Mike Pondsmith himself said the "humanity" stat was essentially one's mental stability - as he puts it, "Humanity is not just a measure of one aspect of personality, but an overall measure of several elements including the subject's ability to emphasize and relate with others, their ability to absorb and rebound from mental and physical stressors, their ability to show compassion and flexibility to others, and whether they are able to balance their worldview through other methods."
As he puts it, David, in spite of his socioeconomic status, was arguably a lot better off than most people living in NC. Think about it. He actually had a shot at the golden towers, a loving mother, and even when it all went to crap, he was still able to bond with Maine's crew and meet Lucy.
V is able to handle everything you slap onto them because having Johnny in their head means they have someone to bounce off of and talk to when dealing with all the crap they see throughout the game.
The most tragic character is actually Gloria.
Just imagine what she would feel if she would see her son descend into downward spiral into villainy and became exactly what she did not wanted him to be.
Once he murdered that woman in episode 8, he became everything that is wrong with Night City.
that moment was when he condemned himself in the shows plot. there was no way he was gonna live that down.
Dam so true
Absolutely. The beginning felt dull tbh as it was all kinda glanced over imo but it was very well revisited later on to what it amounted.
Yeah, unfortunately they didn't spend a whole lot of time setting up Gloria, they kindof just gave us some exposition dumps in the first episode (albiet, that was latter elaborated on slightly). I'd say that was one of the flaws of the show, because as a consequence we didn't really get invested in Gloria as much as we could have been. I think people got the point, but I don't think it was delivered quite as well as it could have been. I feel like it could have done better as a 12 episode series, because some parts felt a bit rushed. But it can also be the case that the setup overstays its welcome. It is what it is though, still a masterpiece.
I don't agree with this. I've seen people say this, but I think she still would have ultimately been proud of David. For the most part at least. Obviously he did bad things that she would not condone, but the dream she had for David was not David's dream, he found his own dream in helping those he loved achieve their own dreams. And he died doing that. I think at the end of the day Gloria would have been proud of that.
I think she would recognize that he did the best he could with what he was left and made his life and death mean something. Which is way more than almost anyone else in Night City.
This anime went way harder than it ever needed to, but thankfully did and really added flourish to the created world. Between the foreshadowed events, the building sense of dread, the futility, it still gave you glimpses of hope through the show. It perfectly sets you up for heartbreak, in the most beautiful way. Im really curious to see how they could possibly do a season 2. Possibly making the series a consortium of vignettes of different fatally fated protagonists fighting the system, or leading to something where our heroes from season 1 still persist. Either way, this anime got me back into the game (that even at its broken state at launch) that I love.
thats how I would do it, make it a once a year tragedy kind of thing. Shit would develop a MASSIVE following
Jokes aside it makes me so happy seeing how many people are watching and loving this anime. I was afraid it would become underrated but it wasn’t thank god “I really want to stay at your house 😭😭”
Same here! I'm so hyped about the hype!
I think the romance between David and Lucy was done so perfectly that the best moments of the show were when they were just sitting and talking
You know a video is well written when you can't tell, just from listening, when the speaker transitions from segment to segment (save for that corpo shillery sellout segment). Subbed.
How I desperately there was 3 episodes between 6 and 7 instead of a time skip to witness the growth of David and Lucy's relationship and David's cybernetic growth, rather than a time skip.
that would have been soooo! nice!
It seems nice in retrospect, but it probably would mess up the pacing and the way the anime hits the emotional notes
Yeah, that's probably the only criticism I have of the show- it feels a bit too quick in the middle. I'd want to see more of David's time in the gang, get to know the others more.
For instance, as it is, Dorio hardly gets anything to do by herself, like she doesn't get any kind of big moment of her own.
Like a true Trigger show, the characters always manage to get to space somehow
Spoilers below.
Well, one of them, at least… 😢
This is probably one of my all time favorites in recent memory, and the fact that this is technically an adaptation of a video game/ttrpg just blows my mind.
Can't adapt the TRPG mechanics. But the setting and established lore serves as a decent canvas for story telling.
for anyone who dosent know David Martinez has a drink in his name in the game that has been there ever since release so yes they didnt come up with this characters , they have been in the lore from the start .
Did the game include any details? Otherwise it may have been just a name.
Well, yes and no. Production wise Edgerunners was actually in the works well before release. Studio Trigger was working on this with CDPR since 2019 at the very least according to interviews so it’s very likely they just put the drink in to get ahead of things since they already had enough of the plot figured out by then to do it.
@@svankensen With the 1.6 Edgerunners update, areas you see in the anime (that already existed in the game at launch, but obviously had no meaning) now in game are tied to the Edgerunnners questline and you can find easter eggs from the anime in the game world. Such as being able to enter Rebecca's apartment, finding guns that were unique to the anime characters and upon completion of the Edgerunners questline you get David's jacket as a wearable outfit.
So I think it is safe to say CDPR, had all this planned from the beginning and the game may have been rough technically at launch
...but lore, world and character wise...even day 1 you could see the passion. Only NOW are a lot of people seeing the bigger picture of how much passion was thrown not just into the game...but the whole Cyberpunk acquisition as a whole.
And with CDPR giving the blessing to the modding community to go to town...who knows what we will see.
@@AtmonTheExectioner I don't feel a power fantasy game is the best medium to tell cyberpunk stories. There was a fine bladerunner adventure game. And games like syndicate, with emphasis on the setting and in teams, not the individuals, were also a good way to tell cyberpunk stories. Hell, even shadowrun, with all their silly stuff, does good work. But a game where you are a singular force, changing the world, go completely against the themes of the genre. It is just aesthetics, not the content. This anime, on the other hand, did a great job communicating the tragedy of living in such a world.
@@svankensen I never said that, though building David's Sandevistan build in Cyberpunk 2077 is OP...
The game of Cyberpunk isn't about saving the world as a one man army. It's about trying to save yourself from your inevitable death. And depending on your choices...you may walk away with your soul intact...you may die a legend...or you may fade away with no one remembering who you were.
They just nailed it. They didn't cheap out, got the best people for the job and it just works. Amazing show and great addition to the franchise and genre alike.
(smallest possible spoiler for ending) The one thing I have to say is that I respect Trigger's restraint with the whole final scene. They could've made me "ano-hana bawl my eyes out" but instead chose to really focus on what little happiness the show had left, and THAT is the most punk thing they could do in the face of the negativity surrounding each and every one of us. Excited to watch it again and really figure out how much I like it
Part 2 to this Anime/This-Video-here: 'Is the US becoming a Dystopia?' by Seocnd-Thought.
While the implants can cause cyber psychosis, its suggested the blockers/injections they take to combat it actually increase the rate that they lose control in the long term.
It brings them back in the moment, but its suppose to cause neurol degeneration which seems to be the biggest contributor to cyber psychosis. Its a hidden side effect of the injections/blockers which isn't publically known to the people who take it. It's mentioned in the anime's ending song video (actual video).
Arcane and Cyberpunk Edgerunners should be compulsory study material for anyone who wants to do adaptations from videogames!!
Castlevania as well
@@NRG56 I'd say the sonic movies, Detective Pikachu, and the new Mario movie look like decent to good adaptations from their games. It's just that Arcane, Castlevania, and now Edgerunners are superb examples of top-tier representations of the games they stem from. We are finally getting enough content to see a scale of bad (old Mario movie, Warcraft) to all time greats (Edgerunners, Arcane).
I agree with that.
The point you brought up about this being a world that doesn’t allow for happy endings, is the whole concept of the dystopia in which Cyberpunk and anything within the genre takes place. There are no happy endings, you either die in a blaze of glory, or live content because you either succeeded or failed completely and have to live with the consequences. You wont have complete victory, you have little winning moments. And Edgerunners is just the best demonstration of this concept
In the original TTRPG the name of the stat you lose when you get more cybernetics is humanity. The old idea is that the more machine you become, the more you lose touch with your humanity.
Imagine being an amputee with prosthetics and sitting down to play a TTRPG that says you have less humanity than other people.
@@geoffreyprecht2410 they changed that in the most recent edition. Prosthetics won't effect humanity.
@@geoffreyprecht2410 yeah they changed it so its only the cyberware prosthetics that give you superhuman abilities.
Its nice when companies realize their mistake and fix it.
Also, you just have to love the HUGE, BOLD TEXT credits for Cyberpunk 2020’s creator Mike Pondsmith in the op. Just fills you with joy.
Considering Mike Pondsmith is a huge anime fan, he was probably very happy about it.
I didn't notice the foreshadowing in the opening until I watched the last episode. I knew I was in for a ride.
Cyberpunk 2020 was my first TTRPG, so seeing such an amazing adaptation of Mike Pondsmith’s world (2077 was also really great, despite glitches), just makes me really damn happy.
That other fluid that squirts in this anime was completely unexpected and I was stunned for like a solid 30 seconds like "Netflix really let them get away with that...holy shit" and I loved every second of it
I loved Edgerunners. It truly felt like that it was a production of a 90's anime.
I love how the final shot of the entire series can be seen as hopeful or deeply sad depending on how you interpret it.
Is Lucy lifting her arms to bask in the sun just like David did in their shared BD, content to live on with the gift he gave her? Or is she reaching up to take off her helmet so she can be together with him again?
If she offed herself after all the trouble the rest of the team went through to get her to the moon I’m pretty sure Becca would smack the neon out of her hair on the other side 😂
I hadn't thought of that second possibility and now I'm sad.
@@slackerswordsman42 Honestly, that is what I was expecting her to do when I was watching it for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised when she didn't.
From her smile even after her vision/memory disappeared it seemed like she was going to keep living because of the sacrifice
@@camerontrivett1772 Yup, she recognized that she was up there because of David. She was sad, but there wasn't an air of despair of in that scene. She just reached out and felt the sun like David did during the BD.
This Anime single handedly made me go back to the game which I had not touched since finishing it almost 2 years ago.
Trigger did so good and made me fall in love with that world all over again!
"I really want to stay at your house" is now the universal trigger for all the trauma we experienced in this show. Really just brings a tear to your eye 😢
Praise to Mr Mike Pondsmith for toiling for decades to craft a world that can produce these kinds of epics