Just a disclaimer, I haven't played the original game, nor am I a fan of Trigger or the cyberpunk genre.
Let's settle the main story really quick. David Martinez is a teenager who isn't rich but goes to rich kid school, with his single mother supporting him. Then she dies, he is left alone and quickly goes onto doing stupid shit which becomes progressively stupider and then he dies trying to save his friends? If you look on the story retroactively it is very very weird and many things don't make much sense. However, in the context of a great production and entertainment it was decent enough. This show sure is entertaining. It's like a cyberpunk Gurren-Lagan but instead of Simon we have Kamina as a protagonist. So that's where the first problem comes in, even though they try to hide it, but you can still see the Trigger style poking through every aspect of the anime. From character designs and interactions, to jokes and even backgrounds.
At the start of the anime we have a couple of opening shots where we see violence/crazy accidents going on in the city, however there has been 1 instance of that and right after we have the incident with David and his mom. Which you could definitely call a setup for future events, but I would definitely say there hasn't been nearly enough context provided for the stuff that happened. And how David's mom even died in the hospital. That shit was so funny, like she legit was fine and then died and we never got an explanation for that.
So that is a reoccurring theme in the show that there is a lot of stuff packed and very little unpacked, due to how short the show itself is. The setting isn't set very well for the events that we see happening. A lot of things and people we just gotta understand who they are and what they do along the way and I would say it's annoying. Everything that is extremely important is explained, but so many side things aren't even touched that it's hard to understand the world itself very well. My number 1 is obviously Cyberpsychosis. We see it so many times and we even get told the cause of it and are shown the mind of the person that has it but despite that, it feels like we still barely know anything about it. How and why people get it, is there a way to reverse it? Why would people risk getting it, when they could just downgrade right after having symptoms? Also how do symptoms correlate to having the disorder, will it come back eventually even if you downgrade? And why wouldn't you downgrade if it wouldn't come back? And that's literally 1 detail of the story. The corporations. There is so much stuff untold about it. Like we don't know almost anything about the world and that pisses me off.
Ok let's get to another part of the story and that's the whole point of what we have seen. 1st of all, there hasn't been a definitive antagonist in the entire story. Even the final ones in the final arc seem like they are barely even relevant to the world that they live in. So there is very little purpose to this whole story. And that's also where the deaths come in. So many people died for absolutely nothing. The only legitimate goal or dream we hear is Lucy wanting to go on the moon which is still just a wish. It isn't connected to anything in the story. We see our boy David, our main protagonist get shit on and die for absolutely nothing. And that's very annoying to say the least.
Now despite of everything I said and all the shitting I did quiet enjoy the show. While narratively and character wise it isn't great, it's still a decent show that's nice to watch with some tea or beer. The production is extremely well done so props to Trigger for that. Now here comes my speculation: because we didn't see the mc die (we saw implicit death) he is gonna be alive in the next part/season of the show where they will go deeper in the things I was upset about that weren't shown to us at all. So maybe it's copium but for now I am giving Cyberpunk an 84/100 and hoping that all my concerns will be addressed in S2. Epsilon out.