Has anyone else out there watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix? It looks like Netflix is continuing to turn video games into cartoons, this time with Cyberpunk 2077.
I enjoyed it, but I didn’t like the characters as much as in Castlevania and the art wasn’t as beautiful as Arcane. I was surprised to see how many things they took from the video game, but I wasn’t sure if someone who wasn’t familiar with the universe would be able to easily follow along (e.g. in terms of jargon or what abilities the characters were using).
My least favourite part was how they had the female netrunners operating nude instead of wearing netrunner suits (like the male netrunners used). That just seemed tacky.
For what it’s worth, the crotch areas were about as detailed as Ken and Barbie.
It was a little bit strange having some characters looking vaguely similar to the NPCs from the game and other characters being full-out anime bonkers.
I’m three episodes in, and so far, not a fan. The animation is gorgeous, but the storyline is meh and I’m just not feeling the characters. Probably not going to go on.
The universe was first created in 1989 in the table top role playing game Cyberpunk and further expaned in the 1991 with the second edition Cyberpunk 2020. This is where we first saw Arasaka, the Sandevistan booster, and characters like Adam Smasher, Alt Cunningham, and Johnny Silverhand. But you don’t really need to know any of that, or to have even played the video game, to follow the show. It’s pretty standard cyberpunk (genre) stuff and it’s old hat by now.
I quite enjoyed the show overall, though I had to overlook the “animeisms.” Like the scene in the first episode where the cyberpsycho was just shrugging off point blank shots to the face and the Sandevistan giving someone super speed akin to the Flash. But I liked the chracters as well as how they handled cyberpsychosis. They did a much better job than the old table top RPG ever did with it and I thought it worked well for the story.
Rebecca: We’re having a moment here!
Adam Smasher: Were.
The only thing I thought was pretty confusing was the Sandevistan; I don’t think they really explained what it was doing at all (e.g. is he moving at superspeed? is he stopping time?).
P.S. Before this show, I thought that “Sandevistan” rhymed with “Sandanistan”, not “Afghanistan”.
but I did not realize it was a Netflix series…