Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a first look at the Netflix anime of Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk

The trend of the moment includes the 80s, survival horror and Cyberpunk. The announcements of these days, in particular of the Summer Game Fest, do nothing but confirm it, and even more the Netflix Geeked week, a great opportunity for fans of living room cinema to discover the future news of the most famous digital video library.

In the context of day 3 of this week of announcements dedicated to new animation products, we have come to unveil the trailer for the highly anticipated Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Directly from the guys of CD PROJEKT RED comes a series entirely dedicated to the universe of an RPG that has transcended paper to become a cult among gamers.

The effort is not one-dimensional and the Poles of CD PROJEKT RED have joined the energies with the Studio Trigger team, founded by the duo Hiroyuki Imaishi and Masahiko Ōtsuka. Both bring with them the great experience gained in GAINAX, since the time of Neon Genesis Evangelion, up to Gurren Lagaan of which Imaishi was Series Director. And this is just the past of this couple, who then went on to develop Trigger's artistic path with Kill La Kill and Little Witch Academia.

CD PROJEKT RED, after collaborating with Netflix for the shared event of WitchCon, returns a year later to travel a path of united communication for the new trailer of the new animated series, which will be released in September 2022.

So let's take a first look at Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

Finally face to face with Edgerunners

An evocative image from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners The anime series dedicated to the universe of Cyberpunk returns to the headlines by finally showing itself after the announcement of a couple of years ago. The adventures will be inspired by the setting offered by the recent Cyberpunk 2077, in a graphic design totally devoted to classic Japanese animation, stylistically linked to the anime tradition of the Japanese team that accompanies its development.

Edgerunners originates from "realistic" script bases in the context of Cyberpunk, but uses the graphic style to develop extreme and crazy animations, resulting in a very original combination, according to the creators. The adventures of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners will tell the setting of Night City in ways that promise to be still unexplored and unexpected.

A daily scene from Night City According to the synopsis, EdgeRunners tells the adventures of a boy from name David struggling with Night City, with its vices and difficulties. Ours chooses to live as an edgerunner, or an outlawed mercenary, known as "Cyberpunk". Surely the proximity to the video game, still fresh in the memory of the players, allows the public to get closer to what will be the references and the quotes. These are not necessary elements to understand the plot, so much so that the director of works Hiroyuki Imaishi confirms that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a product for everyone, even those who are not accustomed to the universe of CD Projekt RED.

Edgerunners Inc., in the Cyberpunk 2020 universe, is an expansion that brings with it Streetemps, or an "employment" agency for edgerunners, based on the call to arms through the match of the individual's skills and not on communication of the assignment. Its nature "bordering on legality" allows it to act without being banned in the city, while acting with methods that are not strictly orthodox. We believe that a context of this type is what will accompany the adventures of David and the rest of the characters of the adventure.

David the protagonist and his systems David is a little boy who comes from a very tough neighborhood, he is linked to his mother and just wants to be accepted by the world around him, but knowing Night City it is clear that this scenario is not destined to last.

Lucy is the other protagonist of the adventure. Her figure is more mysterious, she has a hazy past that hides more dangers than David might be ready for. But she too fights for freedom and for what she cares about. To glue the Cyberpunk universe there is certainly cyberware, that is the systems, which have led the humanity of Night City, always at war between evolution and injustice, into a cycle of curse, and which will take an important place in the narration of the Edgerunners company.

David using the Sandevistan skill Sandevistan is used several times in the images shown in the presentation, a skill that after an injection of adrenaline speeds up the user to the point of making the eyes live of those who watch a sort of bullet-time and David, like other characters, makes extensive use of it.

From behind the scenes we learn that the aspect of the figure of the edgerunners that we want to develop in the series is that of the pirate urban who claims his personal freedom, of a man who cannot change the balance of Night City, but can ensure that there is also a place for him in the turmoil of the metropolis. The immersion of the game and the evolution of the character give way to a deeper vision of society and of the relationship it has with the individual, trying to develop a communication bridge between the setting and the public.

The images shown from the event

A scene from Cyberpunk Edgerunners The trailer opens with the presumably the protagonist, struggling with an individual named Katsuo, whose intentions are not revealed. After which the scene moves to a close-up of an optical system of what we will later discover to be the netrunner Lucy who a few moments later is engaged in a last-second hacking, incited by two supporting actors named Maine and Kiwi. br>
After this first phase, the camera moves to the profile of a sector of Night City, and a sign that mentions Kiroshi, the best-known manufacturer of optical systems. From then on the action presses on, the rhythm triples in intensity and this translates into a climax of increasingly strong and colorful images, between heart-pounding action and a mix of colors of the metropolis by day, but above all the mystery and the charm of the night.

The excess of action scenes that we can expect from the series In addition to the trailer, a small unreleased clip of episode 4 was shown, struggling with the Gang Maelstrom: a criminal gang dedicated to drug trade, made up of fanatics, recognizable by frightening implants that cover part of their face. After a "Mexican" stalemate, the group of criminals comes out defeated by ours, grappling with what would appear to be a full-blown rescue. The scene is widely re-proposed as seen in a very similar one present in the videogame, even if in its technical realization it distances itself widely.

What to expect

A stalemate scene in a bargaining at Night City On a visual level, the guys at Trigger took CD PROJEKT RED's work with Cyberpunk 2077 and took it to a totally different aesthetic level. The anime style is a tool to bring to excess the chromatic factor and the intensity of the images, as well as the tones of the same. The animation in Edgerunners develops a "geek" but popular sentiment, far from the childhood legacy of the genre in the European false imagery, typical of overseas productions at the turn of the millennium. In a nutshell, Edgerunners intends to do according to the canons of the Japanese anime what has recently been done on Netflix by another product of videogame origin, Arcane, and which seem to want to open a rosy season for the transmediality of playful IPs.

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