Surprisingly mediocre given the rave reviews
I really wanted to like this show. I have played Cyberpunk through twice: once through the happy and and once through an "unhappy" ending and found the latter half of the story compelling.
But I just couldn't get into Edgerunners. It felt to me like it was more a questionable quality namedrop than a serious world building attempt.
The animation quality was poor to middling with what seemed like minutes of stills and 6 fps "straight to TV" animation.
The characters were also far too predictably stereotypical for the genre bordering on ridiculous caricature. With only one clown like goon being anything bordering original.
Lucy was just painful to watch. Don't get me wrong, I love the seedy sexiness of 2077 the game and enjoyed shows which show sex and nudity frankly such as American Gods or (the first series only of) Altered Carbon but found they way this show handled Lucy's purposefully, overtly sexualised character was more just pandering to the lonely male, one-handed watchers that make up a large proportion of our anime viewers than objectively telling her story, with a sizable part of her screen time and indeed our own screen filled with full-screen posterior views and literal closeups of her cameltoe (WTF?)
They tried to make her sexy, sultry and dangerous assassin but turned her into just another anime fan service. Heck, I almost felt sorry how they exploited her despite knowing she's just an animation.
The script itself is nothing more than typical noir pulp aimed at "edgy" Teens / Young Adults but the fact that it set in the entirely Adult (in both senses of the word) ultra violent world of Night City means that it can't seem to find its audience and the childlike, almost Doraemon-like animation style doesn't help.
Decent production aside, this show is typical, run-of-the-mill anime pulp best watched drunk.
Someone above equated the level of this show with that of Arcane and I almost chocked on my beers. Absolutely ridiculous.
If you like low budget, single-male targeted Japanese Anime pulp with poor voice acting : 8/10 If you just like Cyberpunk and Night City: 6/10 If you like Bladerunner : 5/10 If you were expected another League of Legends' Arcane level game adaptation: 3/10.
In conclusion: I guess this show was not made for the people like me who grew up with Pondsmith's Cyberpunk but more for the type of people we were when we began playing, 30 years ago and enjoy Anime.
But I just couldn't get into Edgerunners. It felt to me like it was more a questionable quality namedrop than a serious world building attempt.
The animation quality was poor to middling with what seemed like minutes of stills and 6 fps "straight to TV" animation.
The characters were also far too predictably stereotypical for the genre bordering on ridiculous caricature. With only one clown like goon being anything bordering original.
Lucy was just painful to watch. Don't get me wrong, I love the seedy sexiness of 2077 the game and enjoyed shows which show sex and nudity frankly such as American Gods or (the first series only of) Altered Carbon but found they way this show handled Lucy's purposefully, overtly sexualised character was more just pandering to the lonely male, one-handed watchers that make up a large proportion of our anime viewers than objectively telling her story, with a sizable part of her screen time and indeed our own screen filled with full-screen posterior views and literal closeups of her cameltoe (WTF?)
They tried to make her sexy, sultry and dangerous assassin but turned her into just another anime fan service. Heck, I almost felt sorry how they exploited her despite knowing she's just an animation.
The script itself is nothing more than typical noir pulp aimed at "edgy" Teens / Young Adults but the fact that it set in the entirely Adult (in both senses of the word) ultra violent world of Night City means that it can't seem to find its audience and the childlike, almost Doraemon-like animation style doesn't help.
Decent production aside, this show is typical, run-of-the-mill anime pulp best watched drunk.
Someone above equated the level of this show with that of Arcane and I almost chocked on my beers. Absolutely ridiculous.
If you like low budget, single-male targeted Japanese Anime pulp with poor voice acting : 8/10 If you just like Cyberpunk and Night City: 6/10 If you like Bladerunner : 5/10 If you were expected another League of Legends' Arcane level game adaptation: 3/10.
In conclusion: I guess this show was not made for the people like me who grew up with Pondsmith's Cyberpunk but more for the type of people we were when we began playing, 30 years ago and enjoy Anime.
- GraXXoR
- Sep 28, 2022