#gotta finish edgerunners now i guess

[rats-hyperfixation-corner]

day 202 of roboposting until the boi gets in

idk what to do now i prolly will keep doing this until

A: he gets in as his own character

B: he is apart of venom's moveset

C: it is conformed we aren't getting more dlc

[animehouse-moe]

Cyberpunk Edgerunners: In Hindsight

⚠️Warning: Major Spoilers, Don't Read If You Haven't Watched⚠️

God, where do you even begin? I guess the thing that sparked it all was Edgerunners winning Anime of The Year at the Crunchyroll Awards for 2022. Given which titles were up for nomination, I think it was definitely deserved. From there it sparked all the memories of nearly every last moment from the anime. Reliving all 10 episodes in my head with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then I started listening to I Really Want To Stay At Your House on loop to cause further emotional damage before settling on this post.

I watched Edgerunners in a single sitting originally. I was still in University at the time and had an 8am class the day/night that Edgerunners released. So I went to sleep early and set an alarm for 3am or whenever the series dropped. From there, I watched it in the dead of night, silently, and from start to finish in one go. To quote Homelander, "... I gotta tell you, it was perfect. perfect. Everything, down to the last, minute details."

Sure, I'm a huge advocate of the fact that dropping it at 3am on a weeknight all at once is a super easy way to kill hype and viewership, but at the same time that made for an experience I wouldn't trade for the world. It was just me and Edgerunners that night. Nothing else. And it hit like a truck.

So where to begin, really? I guess Night City, the City of Dreams. I first came in to contact with Cyberpunk as a little high school student (yes, that long ago) 10 years ago now with this teaser trailer for Cyberpunk 2077. From that moment a decade ago, I had clung to the hype, the excitement, the notion that CD Projekt Red was going to deliver something unbelievable and out of this world. I battled through all the delays, all the criticism and challenges that came with 2077, and on release day I played for 10 hours straight (with bathroom trips, food breaks, etc of course). I was enthralled. The bugs didn't matter, the performance was trivial to me. It was like I was dreaming.

And Edgerunners replicated that feeling and heightened it even more. It was CD Projekt's dream distilled into 10 episodes of greatness. Beautiful, enough so to make me emotional just writing about it. It took the world that they spent so much time crafting, the characters and stories they spent forever perfecting, every ounce of their talent and craft, and produced something tangible. The anime is mapped perfectly to the Night City that CD Projekt brought to life, down to the most random of locations and roads. The soundtrack is entirely lifted from the video game. It's all there, it's nothing short of astounding.

Moving on from my intense hang up on the existence and overall execution of Edgerunners, I want to talk story. Edgerunners was the perfect story for Cyberpunk, for chasing infamy in the City of Dreams. The whole idea is the burden of dreams on David. How it affects him, how he only lives for those around him, how he himself doesn't have a dream outside of making the dreams of others come true. Standing atop Arasaka Tower, becoming a Night City legend, going to the moon. Sure, David comes off incredibly selfish, but that's because he has nothing else. He has no aspiration, he was and always will be an aimless kid that fell into the wrong spot. A victim, a casualty of Night City, along all the other Edgerunners.

The anime makes sure we understand that, that nothing that David does is for his own dream. He is burdened by his mother, by his adoptive father and mentor, by his girlfriend and savior. He carries the weight of their sins, of their lives, of everything they ever dreamed of. His mother's jacket and the Sandevistan, Maine's Gorilla Arms, Lucy's very life. It's very emotional, the kid that was never special was forced into defying Night City to make dreams come true. To carry the will of those that let him live on so that they can be vilified in the Afterlife, and so that David could live on forever in the Afterlife (a bar in Edgerunners for Night City, David has a drink named after him).

Love and camaraderie and companionship meld into one as David finds his niche in Night City to fight for. He stumbles, he makes mistakes and causes problems, he struggles and rallies against himself and the nature of his existence for the right to be, for the right to dream. And it ends up putting him 6 feet under in a pile of cybernetics among his friends who fought alongside him to do the same.

Edgerunners is a beautiful testament to Night City and the nature of Cyberpunk. Death, shortcomings, failure and tragedy, a constant sense of being wronged by life itself. But beside it in equal force is passion, resistance, hope, a sharp edge that is destined to be wielded against oppressor and abuser. It's the duality of existence, that no matter how much someone has been squashed underfoot, no matter how much suffering they're forced to endure because of their existence, they can dream. They can dream, they can fight against the fabric of reality for the right to exist, for the right to be remembered as something, someone. As a lover, as a hero, a friend, an Edgerunner. A legend.