Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Our Review

The Studio Trigger anime that saved a game: Night City — the chrome-and-misery megalopolis of Cyberpunk 2077 — becomes a ten-episode tragedy about David Martinez, a street kid who loses his mother to the city’s casual violence, gets illegal military chrome in his spine, and rises through the edgerunner ranks with a crew that becomes his family. Trigger’s maximalist animation is exactly the right vehicle: the action is seizure-glory, and the melancholy underneath is the point.

David and Lucy’s romance (the netrunner who dreams of the moon) is real, the crew (Maine’s bighearted captain arc) breaks you, and the ending is one of anime’s great gut-punches. Ten episodes, no fat. One of the best anime of the decade.

Verdict: Watch it. I really want to stay at your house.