A year ago, Netflix earned its place in the Cyberpunk canon
On Sept. 13, 2022, CD Projekt Red, Studio Trigger, and Netflix released Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, an anime series based in the same world as CDPR’s 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077. The rough initial state of 2077 left potential Edgerunners viewers cautious, and the trailers seemed to promise an edgy, ultraviolent action anime with more in common with Ninja Scroll than Perfect Blue.
A year out, it’s almost silly to think about anyone having been cautious about the show. It’s 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, was an Annie Award nominee (a relative rarity for anime), and outright won Anime of the Year in Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards. It is, by all accounts, a masterpiece. Not only that, but it ended up being a pitch-black, razor-sharp satire of the dark future we’re hurtling toward, and an especially important one to revisit with the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.
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One could be forgiven for thinking the show’s satire would be shallow, given how heavy-handed the show’s parallels of current issues are early on. We first meet David Martinez, the protagonist, when he’s informed by his washing machine that he can’t wash his school uniform unless he pays a fee. His mother, Gloria, is exhausted by a night-shift job that leaves her and David with barely enough to survive, in a dirty, cramped apartment. David’s school is a privatized, megacorp-run charter school that gives him seemingly AI-generated lessons. And, near the end of the first episode, David finds himself trapped in an overturned car, watching his mother bleed out on the asphalt as paramedics walk right past her; she’s uninsured, so the “medical care” she does receive kills her.
[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.]
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