Cyberpunk and, to some extent, Steampunk have been two themes, who are criminally underused in our current Pop-culture. Especially Cyberpunk, depicting a dystopian future of the digitalization currently taking place, was bound to be a major success, if a company decided to create a new IP based around it. CD Project Red, a polish game studio which got famous by their last game, the highly praiseworthy game The Witcher 3, had high expectations to meet following that release. They decided to meet these by working in cooperation with Mike Pondsmith and base their new game around the universe depicted by his Cyberpunk board game. Finally, on the 10th December of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was released following one of the biggest, if not the biggest hype train in the history of gaming.
However, it’s not going to be remembered as one of the greatest, but as the worst release in the history of gaming and while they’ve been trying their best to fix the game (and in my opinion, succeeding at that), it’s no exaggeration that the Cyberpunk IP has been tarnished. And that finally brings us to this review and why I think that while this anime is close to a masterpiece, it’s probably going to be disregarded because of the aforementioned situation. Nonetheless will I try my best to try to offset this, as this anime is probably one of the best gateway anime created so far and a great show all around.
Alright, enough introduction, let’s dive right in!
Disclaimer: This isn’t going to be an analysis of the show as I’ve never played the Cyberpunk board game nor seen enough anime to justify my opinions, but a review.
Let me preface this review by listing the one trait this show is missing that might turn some people off: It’s shallow characters. Don’t get me wrong, in my opinion the protagonist David has some character development throughout the show and all of the main cast is very likeable and has distinct personality traits to tell them apart but unfortunately that’s where it ends. Based on good old Trigger-tradition are the characters usually one dimensional but really great and likeable in that. And in my opinion, that’s not even a tradeoff. Instead of trying to create believable, multi-faceted personalities and ultimately half-assing it because of the focus in the show, they stuck to what they can do best: Great cartoon characters. Don’t go in this anime expecting characters from Serial Experiments Lain or the likes and try to enjoy what is happening on your screen.
And oh man did Trigger outdo themselves here. It’s like a shounen protagonist revealing their final trump-card in the final fight of the anime. This is the pinnacle of 2D-Animation, no doubt about it. This show has jawdropping visuals and I found myself pausing and rewatching almost every episode multiple times just to watch my favourite scenes over and over and over again. The visuals and animation leave almost every other anime, heck even other Trigger shows in the dust. And honestly, there’s so much to say about it, that you should just experience it yourself. Yes, they are THAT good, after watching this you’ll be looking differently at every other anime just based on their animation alone. And as I mentioned earlier, this anime should be the basis on what other anime’s animation should be judged upon.
Going hand in hand with these breathtaking visuals is excellent sound design. If you watch this anime with good headphones or speakers, you are going to be blown away by the sheer force of the explosions in this one, it’s almost feels like a Michael Bay movie at that. Unfortunately, the OP is quite lackluster in my opinion but the ED makes more than up for it by being an absolute banger which has a permanent spot in my playlist starting now.
Last but not least do I wanna mention, that the pacing in this anime is crisp to the touch. It’s only ten episodes long and it uses this screentime magnificently. Something is ALWAYS happening and there’s next to no irrelevant scenes being shown here which makes it a jam packed binge session as it’s going to be quite hard to leave on an episode.
And while the name Cyberpunk might be a curse nowadays, at the same time it could be an opportunity to show people, who are interested in Cyberpunk, but have never given anime a serious try before, the beauty of the latter as it’s directly connected to the Cyberpunk 2077 video game.
So if you are reading this and haven’t seen this show yet. Drop everything and watch it right now. You won’t regret it.
