Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Proves That Anime Is The Right Medium For The Genre

gamerant.com:

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners comes from the franchise that brought the world the beloved tabletop RPG and the chaotic mess of a video game that was 2077. The franchise is making its first proper leap to the screen, and it's doing so with the perfect style, look, team, and sense of history.

Cyberpunk has been around for decades, though it was named back in 1983. Only five years after Bruce Bethke coined the genre's moniker, writer Mike Pondsmith and publisher R. Talsorian Games laid claim to it with a hit tabletop game. That bold titling decision ensured that the franchise remained inseparable from its genre, even as both grew much more popular.

Cyberpunk 2077 Lore We Want More of in Edgerunners

Edgerunners is an anime adaptation of the same universe occupied by the original RPG, all of its sequels, and the CD Projekt Red game. It's the first television adaptation of the property to be produced, and it comes to Netflix via the beloved Studio Trigger. Trigger is best known for its bombastic visually spectacular series like Kill la Kill, BNA: Brand New Animal, and Promare. The pitch of a Cyberpunk anime created by Studio Trigger is a no-brainer and fans are thrilled. A lot of big video games choose to head for the top shelf with movies or 10-episode live-action streaming series. Dozens of properties will be doing that over the next few years and plenty more will likely be promised and left unfinished. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, however, is the rare example of a great adaptation pitch.

Anime is not the origin point for the cyberpunk subgenre. It originated with mostly American literature in the 80s, which was inspired by the New Wave movement in sci-fi. The defining work of the genre in the United States is Dave Gibson's Neuromancer, but