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First and foremost, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners greatest failure is to say anything meaningful about its very complex, interesting themes, within its crammed 10 episode run. Cyberpunk as a genre, especially Mike Pondsmith's world, has always felt brimming with possibility, but despite that, writers continuously fail to utilize its highly politicized and rich world. cybernetics, hyper-capitalism, coercion, class stratified access to technology

Cyberpunk Edge-runners certainly comes close, choosing to focus largely on the concept of "Cyberpsychosis" defined on the wiki as "a mental illness, specifically a dissociative disorder, caused by an overload of cybernetic augmentations to the body." Within the cultural context of Night City, cybernetic augmentation ... have advanced to a point where replacing entire portions of the human body with steel and computer is normalized and widely accessible, albeit stratified along class lines. The guide book goes so fair as to describe its setting as "a post-human society, where your meat body is little more than a tool to enhance for functionality or appearance."

This is an amazing starting off point for an anime! The intersection of technology, mental health, body horror, the limitations of the human mind, Theseus's paradox, it's a rich and fascinating thematic landscape that is near and to dear to me. Cyberpyschosis itself is a fascinating concept within Cyberpunks ultra capitalistic, everyone for themselves, brutal world. Cybernetics within the world of Cyberpunk are fundamentally coercive. They are mandatory for participation in society, not literally or legally, but in the sense that unwillingness or inability to participate places you farther down and behind in its capitalist society. In this way cyberpyschosis is interesting in so much that it is a a result of social coercion above all else. It's a way of describing how a larger societal rat race constrains us, pushes us apart from each other and ourselves, and forces us to invade our own bodies to survive in a cruel setting.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners attempts to tackle this potential, but ultimately gets lost in flashy violence and "oooo ahhh so cool wow technology ooo" leaving its messaging mixed. It doesn't have enough time to make David and Lucy's relationship natural, and it doesn't create enough stakes to make Davids decline have weight or feel like anything more than a simple icarus dive because "technology bad". It prioritizes blood, guts, and a forced feeling romance between a hot girl and a "relatable" protagonist to drive its plot forward, in order to get to its desired conclusion. Edgerunner's final tragedy fails to leave me feeling much other than disappointment.

The animation is beautiful tho its a visual delight :) personally love studio trigger.