[SPOILERS AHEAD! ...NOT THAT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY BE READING MOST OF THESE REVIEWS BEFORE WATCHING IF THEY HAVE SPOILER WARNINGS ON THEM!]

The Story/Narrative & Characters

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners starts off simply enough, essentially being a story about how David Martinez, a typical delinquent, tries to get by, only to turn to a life of fighting alongside a group of people called Edgerunners who battle against Arasaka and their corporate ways, culminating in lots of violence, tragic deaths, and emotional pain for everyone involved. It grows significantly and becomes way more in-depth as the series progresses, and is paced well for being only ten episodes long. Personal and financial stakes for both the Edgerunners and Arasaka really add lots of tension to their conflicts and is a pretty major theme throughout the series that I'm sure ties back to the game and its own themes perfectly (which, yes, I would like to note now by saying I haven't played Cyberpunk: 2077 before watching this, but certainly want to after watching this anime.)

It's got lots of emotional weight, tension, and it's overall pretty nicely packed with lots of twists, gut-wrenching moments, and heart packed within its runtime. Overall, just really amazing stuff, and I was completely engrossed throughout.

Character-wise, Cyberpunk's cast is quite colorful, well-written, and complex. Characters of various abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and ideals all complement and define each other in their own ways. The camaraderie, especially with David, Lucy, Maine, Dorio, Rebecca, and Kiwi as the Edgerunners group, was one of my favorite parts of the series. I can't mention how great David and Lucy's chemistry is, though, either. It starts off how you'd kind of expect them to, but really twists into something pretty depressing as the conflict in the story progresses and naturally affects their feelings (especially with David due to his Cyberpsychosis worsening as the series progresses as well, giving him even more personal conflict on top of his responsibilites as the group's new leader post Maine and Dorio's deaths.) Everyone just has...really understandable and human motives. David just wanted to make his Mom and his group (who basically became his new family) proud and make an impact on the world. Lucy wanted to move on from her past with Arasaka and just live her life as a normal girl with David, and it's tragic how she ultimately doesn't get that ending, but that's just how it goes sometimes. Maine and Dorio ultimately threw their lives away to save each other and their crew's lives from the unrelenting force of Arasaka, which ultimately did damage to David and caused him to become what he sees post-timeskip, all chromed up and suffering the same fate as Maine, which is a nice subtle way of foreshadowing what happens to David later in the series, which lowkey makes his and Dorio's death feel a little meaningless, but in a tragic, good way writing-wise. Kiwi starts as another crew member for the Edgerunners, turns out to be a traitor who was working with Faraday, but ultimately, by the end, turns to help her crew when she realizes that she was going to get screwed over by him too, ultimately teaching the important theme of never trusting people in Night City. Given how a few of the people in the show can be towards each other, it is both a perfect send-off to her character and an appropriate lesson in context to the world they live in. Faraday wanted to climb to the top of Arasaka's corperate ladder (much like Gloria wanted David to do in the beginning and it serves as a dark telling of what could've happend had David taken that route like Tanaka was suggesting to him) and become someone in a place of power, but in the end flew too close to the sun trying to get what he wanted, not taking into account who exactly he was working with, and underestimating his opposition. I could go on, but you get the point. These characters have quite a bit going on with them, and seeing how all of their fates turn out...it's painfully beautiful.

Truly A+ writing overall, if you ask me.

The Visual & Sound Design

Visually, this show's gorgeous! I mean, come on, it's Studio Trigger, they've got Kill La Kill, Darling in the Franxx, Promare, and Star Wars: Visions under their belts, they make pretty solid stuff for the most part (at least visually, I can't speak on the quality of any of these shows as I've only seen small non-spoilered pieces of them and I'm simply grading them on their visuals in this case.) There are some amazing visuals here that are both effectively used for non-visual storytelling and just for flair (David's death being depicted the way it was definitely stuck out for me, and yet it still hit hard just knowing that he got flatlined there.) The fight scenes are excellent, lots of variety with shootouts, hand-to-hand, car chase, and they're all absolutely brutal and gory! It's amazing how a show can be breathtaking eye candy one moment and then turn into an absolutely gnarly bloodbath the next, but it's balance between the two really gives it the beautifully gritty vibe the game is also known for. Character designs are also really solid, varied colors and body types, lots of non-verbal characterization that gives you more insight into how everyone is, without just dumping exposition. I'm a sucker for details, so things like Night City being as pretty and well-detailed as they are, also just had my ears wandering and looking for other details while watching too, which actually isn't something a show manages to do too often for me. It's all just...wonderful, can't gush about it enough.

Okay, so there's one little knock I have on this series: there is a little something in the Sound Design (technically.) Now, it's not against anything technically; in fact, technically, the show's awesome! The amount of music that's both from the game (shoutouts to HEALTH and Dawid Podsiadło) and the original soundtrack composed by the legendary Akira Yamaoka and the also great Marcin Przybyłowicz and P.T. Adamczyk is also just brilliant! It's all effectively used for the perfect scenes, adding the right amount of tension, ambience, and emotion to the scenes they're all used in. The English Dub is also incredible! This show was one-hundred percent made to be watched in Dub (which I guess makes sense since this IS an anime based on a Western property, so maybe the direction with the English Dub was just better compared to the Japanese Dub.) Everyone just sounds...like how you'd expect them to be based on how they look, like a hand in glove.

So, the issue I personally have with it is the script for the Japanese Subtitles. They're not unwatchable, per se, but they do tend to butcher or just not at all translate some of the slang that Cyberpunk is known for into the dialogue there. You also don't get the character-specific accents that a few of the characters have, namely Gloria and Ripperdoc, who have Hispanic and Jamaican accents, respectively. It just doesn't capture the full vibe of the characters, and that in general steers me away from recommending the Japanese subs for that, really. In general, you lose out on a lot of what makes Cyberpunk's characters and world so rad, so it's overall just a downgrade from the dub.

This area would've been an A+, had it not been for that fumble, so I'm going to give it an A- simply because an anime that's as modern and wonderful as this should've been able to provide a great watching experience for people who want to watch either or.

The Verdict

With all of that in mind, I think it's safe to say that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an amazing series that captures a lot of the amazing aspects of the game, while also telling an amazingly emotional, tragic, brutal, story set within the world of the game and standing on its own an as a technically solid, well-written, and wonderfully animated, composed, and directed (minus the Subs) series overall for anime watchers. As someone who again hasn't experienced Cyberpunk: 2077 for themselves, this definitely got me motivated to actually pick it up and give it a try.

So, if you're a fan of Cyberpunk (both the game and the genre itself), love lots of gory action scenes, want an emotionally powerful story with complex characters, or just want something shorter and sweet to watch. It's an absolute must-watch! All I'd personally ask is that you watch the series with the English Dub since it's much more faithful to the source material and is just really solid overall, but it's up to you at the end of the day, and it all comes down to your personal preference.