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Overall : 4/10

I went into this anime fully knowing that I wasn't the target audience for this. Cyberpunk (neither the game nor the genre) was a huge preference of mine. But any genre could be good if executed well, which in my eyes in this case, in particular, it wasn't.

At first, I thought that I watched the show wrong and that it was actually good. But then I scrolled into the forums to see that people were correlating some of the most climatic moments of the show with the game and that their feeling of excitement was up to some extent coming from the second ... exposure to those scenes. As someone who didn't play the game, I felt none of that. It isn't the studio's fault, they were churning out a promotional piece for a game they made... Just that I wasn't the target demographic.

The show went into the story (if you can even call that mess a story) expecting you to care about the world and all the psychosis bs. Which ended up being the main theme of the story. This show wasn't about losing a loved one, or rebellion, or underdogs becoming the main dogs, or unlikely relationships, or camaraderie. This was a show about going batshit crazy because you modded your body too much.

Which I found kinda stupid considering that they got these implants to survive (be it from bullying or from grief). And then decided to sabotage their body knowing that it would kill them, for a reason that should matter less to them than survival, and even after seeing the negative impacts of it.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way.

Art:
The animation was great. But I mean compared to the same rinse and repeated fantasy isekai animation that we get every season, any animation is great. The characters stayed on model, and the lighting was intense, and well placed for the most part. (except for that bullying scene.) But at the same time takt op. destiny had a similarish aesthetic vibe (tho it wasn't cyberpunk) was better animated, so while cyberpunk edge runners' animation was good, it was still worse than SAO.

It was dark and gritty and gorey and horny. Really fcking horny. If you didn't tell me otherwise, I would've assumed the storyboarder was drawing with a dic in his hand. There would be either someone naked or someone shagging in every half of an episode.

I mean, all power to it, but this was their way of showing the maturity of their characters. Make them shag. It was such a surface-level depiction of a debauched society that it takes you out of it. Pregnant women throwing up, dudes with torches on their groin going to town, the relationship in the last couple of episodes. Drug abuse. They were just forcing down the 'this is not for kids' agenda while writing a story as a 4-year-old would.

You might then say, how were they supposed to do it then? How do you show a messed up society without showing sex and tits everywhere? I don't want to compare A to B, but in this case, you compare it directly to The Batman. There were no tits blazing, but you wouldn't call Gotham a happy place. Contextual clues made Gotham more messed up than Night City.

Characters:
This anime did nothing to make me care for the characters. Every member of the crew kept shooting themselves on their feet. The loli was annoying. Lucy was an entire mess (not in a good way). David's personality kept changing so much that in every other episode he just felt like a different character living in the same body. It would've been alright if he was the main focus, but there were like 8 different characters at the same time competing for attention... Well, 15 if you count David's MPD.

I don't think realistic character development should play the biggest role in shows (if you want realistic character development just look around you) but if you're making a show that lives and dies off how a person adapts to his surroundings, then it should at the very least not be jarring.

The relationship between Lucy and David was strained at the beginning. She thought that he hated her because she did almost get him killed right at the start by ratting him out to Maine. But then within one minute (not a hyperbole), they went from awkward af, to tonguefcking each other under the moonlight. Then cut to the next episode, they shagged (cuz maturity // their idea of maturity is like when Shawn Mendes started writing songs about sex).

This relationship made David take his own life to fulfil her dream. So yeah, their relationship should have been front and central, not a minute-long session. It's like they expected the viewers to assume everything that happened in their relationship off-screen and understand his infatuation with her.

Most of the relationships formed in this anime were through montages, which I'll be honest did nothing for me. To me, everyone still felt like a stranger.

Add to that the almost fact that everyone died. The characters were all meaningless. In all honesty, I prefer everyone dying in Akame than in this. Because at least in Akame, it felt like I gave the slightest shit about the characters. In this when they died, I was like 'oh well, that happened.'

The mother was the most sympathisible character and she died the death of a plot device.

Story:
This was by far the worst part. I won't even talk about the pacing or the lack thereof. But just the idiocy of the story was unreal. It was like they were putting together a puzzle, but if they cut the puzzle pieces to make them fit.

Just the first episode was stupid.

Let's go over how I think this played out.

1. The main character (David) needs to be desperate.
-Let's make a random gear of his we introduced in 30 seconds put him under massive debt.
-Let's kill his mother, so he loses his income. How do we do that? Let's make her undergo a car crash, that could've very easily been avoided by just hitting the brakes. But there are other ways to kill her in the scene which make a lot more sense? What do you mean to make one of the stray bullets actually hit her? Make another car crash into theirs after she suddenly tries to hit the brakes? Making the car swerve out of control when she hits the brakes? Bullshit.
-But she still has some savings left right? That's simple, make David out to be a complete dunce.
There was a part of the episode in which the doctor said that visitations weren't part of the package. And David believed that. I can't believe how dumb you have to be to believe that. It was clear that she died in the first day, the doctor disallowed visits, so he could keep her in the hospital while stacking up bills, only to then use a convenient excuse to get rid of her draining David of his savings.
-Let's make him get bullied by the most cliched of bullies. So that he has to leave the one safe space he has.
-Done, he's vulnerable, broke and in debt.

2. The main character (David) needs to be part of the crew/
The mother was an important character. Not because she was David's mother and had an impact on him (the fcker barely even cared that his mother died), but because she worked a shady business on the side to ensure her son's future, a shady job that could conveniently place military-grade equipment within his reach, and inevitably turn him into the main character. Ofc she also has ties with the crew which made them cut the thieving btch some slack.
Ah also, let's let Lucy who he conveniently had a secret crush on beforehand also be a part of the crew.

This was only the first episode. Not all episodes were this bad though. The second episode was good. But the show was convenient and forced together. To the point that I stopped caring for the story near the end. Talking about the ending it was abysmal and the least satisfying conclusion I've seen since shironeko project. But maybe it was because I didn't play the mission in cyberpunk.

That being said, Lucy's character design was bomb. Also, I think I accidentally skipped over the part in which they explained what edge runners were. God this is long.

This review section is infested with 9s and 10s making you actually want to pick this up. I recommend not doing that because this is more than just a little dreadful.

Story: (3/10)
The story gets good from time to time. Especially when our main character has some growth. But that isn't nearly enough to make up for the bs it pulls.
This manga like many others wants to focus on 'realism' rather than entertainment. You can see how I put realism in quotations there. It's because the only time the author decides to pursue realism is when he should be hyping stuff up. Every interaction at the ... start is unrealistic. Every motivation is unrealistic. Every non-tournament match is unrealistic. The only time he decides to pursue realism is when it gets to the tournament matches.
His realism is him trying to make the work as painful as he can. Which is so incredibly dumb. Are you reading this to be in pain? Are you perhaps a masochist? Or are you someone who looks at the characters struggling and go like, 'wow! that's a deep story! im a critic now!'? If you're any of those, just read this and 'enjoy' yourself. I can't stop you from lying to yourself.
{spoiler: they don't win a match until late into the manga... not 40-50 chapters late... im talking 180-200 chapters out of the 220 something chapters out in English rn.}

Art: (5/10)
Nothing special. Nothing that stands out, Everyone has duck-like lips to match the title I guess.

Characters: (2/10)
Oooh boy! They are disgusting. Utterly disgusting unrealistic messes. The best part about this show's cast is the MC. But even despite being the best part, he has so little backbone and is such a simp for Madoka that he isn't even good. Talking about romance, it's NTR and you can't convince me otherwise. MC like Medoka who was built up to be best girl, Madoka undergoes moral degeneration and even after making it out goes to someone other than the MC. I have a whole blog post about this so I wouldn't go into much detail.
The second female likes the guy, but he's dense and she's bland. Her personality trait is clumsy.
We also have the I'm a delinquent but also a secretly nice guy and an 'I was hiding my true power all along guy.'

Enjoyment: (1/10)
This manga kept me up at night as I kept on wondering why and how I managed to inflict this much damage upon myself. If you're reading this to have a good time... don't. Don't even come near this. It's unholy.