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Oct 14, 2022
This will be as much of a review as my way to analyze my thoughts on the series. The focus here isn't so much technical as on how the series "work". But first, a couple of points.
Visual: 10/10
The series looks incredibly good, Trigger style. This means that while some moments and actions are less fluid than others, much of the movement works anyway because of smart ideas rather than sheer abundance of frames.
It's plenty of visually impressive scenes and concepts that sell way better than just going for an highly detailed style would have allowed.
The way the Sandevistan action and the cyberpsychosis are made are
...
a perfect example.
Audio: 8.5/10
The sound effects work all the time, but I wouldn't be able to name more than a few particularly good ones.
Music was great overall, in particular the first episode "walk to school" is impressive in how much it works in selling the decayed hellhole in which David lives.
Story and Characters: 8/10 or 10/10.
Here comes the real point I need to talk about. I am not here to praise the show like it's God himself, but it's narratively better than what some people try to say. Yes, it's simple and effective, and that's all it should be. The first 3 episodes flow naturally into one another an then they might feel a bit too fast, but it works given the nature of the setting. We don't get to see how stuff evolves, we see the big moments, and it works. Hell, it basically has a time skip in full shounen style lol.
Yet, at the same time, I am also inclined to agree with some of the more excessive praise on certain points.
THIS IS A 10 EPISODE ORIGINAL ANIME BASED ON A WESTERN IP, we should analyze it as such, not comparing it to a 12 "possibly 1st season" adapting an established manga or light novel.
With this perspective, Edgerunners is incredible, absolutely great, in how tight the plot and development of the characters are.
Most originals don't half the stuff this well, and they work with 12 episodes, not 10!
And not only that, it has 2 clearly separated "arcs" that work in so little time and one of the single strongest 1st episodes I have seen in a while, which doesn't even need to rush to the "big plot" to hook you in but rather focuses on setting up Night City, David and the world he lives in. Absolutely incredible.
Character-wise they are definitely simple, but there is a consistent logic and a clearly well thought psychology for all of them, from David to Lucy and all the secondary with them.
Lucy is particularly interesting to me because of how she manages to look like a manic dream pixie girl, then like another trope and then show her actual character over time. Even if she was kinda out of some episodes, she still felt like an entire story on her own.
Style: Cyberpunk/10
There are two ways Cyberpunk used to work basically, western and anime. Some anime were basically more western than not (check, Ghost in the Shell), but the sensibility in japanese cyberpunks have always been a bit different than western novels.
Just consider Battle Angel, Bubblegum Crisis or Texhnolyze compared to the og Neuromancer.
It's thus interesting to see an anime using a western IP in such an... anime way, but still managing to remain consistent (more or less) with the original feeling. Yeah, this anime is *a bit* over the top compared to what you might play in the game, but that's besides the point. The story feels fitting for the world, and the way they go about narrating it 100% pure Cyberpunk when the genre has a bit of hope and isn't outright grimdark.
It's a story of a bunch of lowlife underdogs scrapping by and being violent mercenaries working for whoever pays them and doesn't bite them back. A bunch of lowlife scum that isn't actually that much scummy and tries to be a professional at their job rather than wrecking havoc just to "stick it to the Man".
It's the best kind of Cyberpunk story, one about an hopelessly capitalistic society where Corporations hold too much power but in the fringes and cracks of this world some people find another way of living and, through strife and connections, try to find their own way in life, may it be rebelling against the system, trying to correct it, just being dicks and living for themselves or, in this case, aiming for something big and high even if the world doesn't seem to care.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jun 20, 2021
So, I'm 100% biased towards this show and I willingfully admit it.
I have given it a 10 for my personal experience with it, but trying to critical is either 8/9, depending on what you value more.
Art & Sound.
I have a soft-spot for the style of this show and, in general, for late 90s and early 2000s shows. They have a unique feeling between older shows and what more common style (including how the animation is handled) we will get to see with late 2000s and the start of 2010s seasonal anime.
Here and there it's sprinkled with quite well animated sakuga moments, but
...
overall it's pretty average.
The same can be said about the design of the characters. I really love some of them while others are... just strange. Not bad, strange. I will never get why a commoner nobody like Winia has such a complex jacket, but whatever.
The OST were quite effective but I wouldn't call them remarkable. They do their job very well as background for the scenes on screen. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad thing, it's totally fine.
The same can't be said about the OP and the ED. I really enjoy those two.
Story:
Well, without going into spoilers, Scrapped Princess definitely looks as what will be a fantasy+SF twist adventure with an high focus on the character interactions, but after a couple of episodes it becomes clear that no, this isn't true. The overall adventure is there if you think about it from a purely technical PoV, but it's almost never the focus.
All the struggle and narrative tension isn't about Pacifica and sibling will see in the next episode, but which character they will meet and what contrast will come out of it. At times it's with this character, at times it's between the main cast itself, at times it's about the drama of being human.
Shannon fights and Raquell cast spells, but they are so above anyone else around them that apart from rare exceptions (like, let's say, a poison using assassin and supernatural monsters) they are rarely in actual danger.
What the story of Scrapped Princess is about isn't the next fight or enemy, it's about how those troubles affect the lives of these characters, their ideas and ideals, their relationships and their feelings.
Overall, it's a story about what it means to be human and what's important for each of us as individuals.
Characters:
It's hard to speak here without spoilers, but without a doubt Pacifica and Shannon must be seen both as protagonist.
Sure, Pacifica has the most lines and she is the focus of the story, but without Shannon PoV much of the tension and "feels" are lost.
He is simply the hero of his own story, and the series could have 100% worked by focusing on him as well.
Beyond them, I don't think that anyone is a negative, quite the episode.
All are humans, with their flaws and strengths, their doubts and decisions to make. The series don't spend too much time on most of them (Seriously, Seness is the only flaw here. She deserved way more screentime. She still gets the best gag of the show, so i'm fine) in favour of the main cast but.... eh, it's still effective.
The idea that these are people with their own minds and feelings come across quite clearly.
After all, in real life, rarely people say all they think and feel, body language and actions speak a lot on their own. And of course, animated characters on a screen aren't as realistic as people when they do so, but there is a reason why there are so many still cuts with characters changing expressions.
Overall, I had a good time, even if this series carries an unbreakable feeling of melancholy for me. It's strange to say about a series which definitely tries to have a light tone for like 50% of its time, but the other 50% is very oppressive.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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