×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
This Week in Anime - Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a Certified Crowdpleaser


Goto page 1, 2  Next

Note: this is the discussion thread for this article

Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 2:19 pm Reply with quote
I mostly left the show disappointed, the visual and direction were going to carry the show trough any kind of story, so why go for the laziest most cliche one? Take some chance trigger. This feel like in a few years people will still share the sakuga moment but nobody will remember anything about the story beyond a vague "oh it was really tragic", which wasn't even that earned imo.

Do agree that the gremlin was the best character of the show, but here again that work mostly against the show because she thrown so much shadow at Lucy and her and David relationship makes a mockery of David/Lucy.

Adam Smasher is indeed in cyberpunk 2077, and he's a fairly important character with a pretty similar impact on the story and part of a whole revenge subplot spoiler[(essentially the game final boss)].
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Erulogos



Joined: 19 Apr 2021
Posts: 27
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 3:09 pm Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
I mostly left the show disappointed, the visual and direction were going to carry the show trough any kind of story, so why go for the laziest most cliche one? Take some chance trigger. This feel like in a few years people will still share the sakuga moment but nobody will remember anything about the story beyond a vague "oh it was really tragic", which wasn't even that earned imo.


This is really due to the nature of the project. I have no doubt it was initially pitched as a really expensive ad/image rehab for Cyberpunk the game, so it pretty much had to take place in Night City where they could drop visual and name Easter Eggs. But that also meant they couldn't reshape the world in any major way. No huge damage to Arasaka, no killing of important to game lore characters, etc. So they went with a pretty classic dystopian cyberpunk tale, people living hard and fast, burning bright and crashing spectacularly. It isn't a new story, but then again how many truly are these days?

meiam wrote:
Do agree that the gremlin was the best character of the show, but here again that work mostly against the show because she thrown so much shadow at Lucy and her and David relationship makes a mockery of David/Lucy.


I can see the bones of the David/Lucy relationship, but I do wish they had given the show another couple of episodes so they could have filling in a bit more with both those two, and some other characters and plot points. I suspect a combination of budget and possibly pacing the series so the viewer walks away feeling something of the manic energy of the setting led to them doing 10 rather than say 12 episodes. Still i agree with many reviewers that this isn't a fatal flaw for the series, it just keeps it from that perfect score, the difference between A- and A+.

meiam wrote:
Adam Smasher is indeed in cyberpunk 2077, and he's a fairly important character with a pretty similar impact on the story and part of a whole revenge subplot spoiler[(essentially the game final boss)].


You can even assault him with a weaponized dildo if you are so inclined, and I imagine after Edgerunners many thousands of gamers have done precisely that.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ResistNormal



Joined: 06 Dec 2011
Posts: 117
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 3:26 pm Reply with quote
I felt parts of this show.

I remember having to max out my credit card to pay for my mom cremation.
Couldn't even afford any kind of delivery, had to drive her ashes to the funeral myself. because of traffic my mom was late to her own funeral.

Then I got a bill for 8k for her two day stay in "rehabilitation" center of a nursing home where she died. (She stop taking her meds to end herself, knew the cost of fighting cancer would ruin us.) Never paid that bill, said there is no estate, you keep trying to collect from a corpse. I always give the bill collectors the address of her unmarked grave if they want to collect.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 3:42 pm Reply with quote
Erulogos wrote:
meiam wrote:
I mostly left the show disappointed, the visual and direction were going to carry the show trough any kind of story, so why go for the laziest most cliche one? Take some chance trigger. This feel like in a few years people will still share the sakuga moment but nobody will remember anything about the story beyond a vague "oh it was really tragic", which wasn't even that earned imo.

This is really due to the nature of the project. I have no doubt it was initially pitched as a really expensive ad/image rehab for Cyberpunk the game, so it pretty much had to take place in Night City where they could drop visual and name Easter Eggs. But that also meant they couldn't reshape the world in any major way. No huge damage to Arasaka, no killing of important to game lore characters, etc. So they went with a pretty classic dystopian cyberpunk tale, people living hard and fast, burning bright and crashing spectacularly. It isn't a new story, but then again how many truly are these days?

Even within the limitation of the project, there were so many way this could have been different. I mentioned in the review thread, but the story could have easily been about David mom joining Maine group to pay for her son school. I honestly can't even think of a single action anime where the main character is a mother (even non action its really hard). But no, another corpse on the pile of mother killed by anime to motivate their boring son to go on adventure. About the most original aspect of that part of the story is that she didn't have the typical anime mom hairstyle.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cookiemanstah



Joined: 09 Dec 2013
Posts: 546
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 3:51 pm Reply with quote
Has Trigger ever made a genuine turd or something very medicore even if that is very subjective? I don’t know which of their works is outright disliked but I’ve liked all of them, some just less than others.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Los Nido



Joined: 26 Jun 2022
Posts: 132
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 4:03 pm Reply with quote
cookiemanstah wrote:
Has Trigger ever made a genuine turd or something very medicore even if that is very subjective? I don’t know which of their works is outright disliked but I’ve liked all of them, some just less than others.


Maybe Inferno Cop if you're not into those crude, barely-animation Flash animation shorts like you see on Adult Swim.

I overall liked Edgerunners but the story behind Rebecca is really funny after watching that interview on Twitch about how CDPR didn't want loli characters in their IP but Trigger put their foot down on the issue and demand she stay. And then Rebecca ended up being the breakout character so I'm happy Trigger was able to do what they wanted.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4352
Location: New York
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 4:04 pm Reply with quote
cookiemanstah wrote:
Has Trigger ever made a genuine turd or something very medicore even if that is very subjective? I don’t know which of their works is outright disliked but I’ve liked all of them, some just less than others.


If you add in co-productions and adaptations, there’s a few.

This isn’t one of them, hell, it’s actually gotten me wanting to play Cyberpunk (now that it’s apparently been patched up).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Rogueywon



Joined: 01 May 2011
Posts: 249
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 6:16 pm Reply with quote
I thought the anime was fantastic.

And now I'm going to get controversial... I also thought the game was fantastic. On a par with Witcher 3 and probably better than it once it hits its stride. Ok, I played it on a PC with a decent spec, so I missed the worst of the release woes (and that console release was inexcusable), but there is still a hell of a game in there, provided you accept it for what it is. What it isn't is "Grand Theft Auto: Night City", despite some of the pre-release marketing. And thank god for that, because it's a lot better than GTA.

The article notes how sheer bloody awful Night City is and how everybody constantly lives with the risk of being dragged down into the muck by it. The game - if you can play it without immersion breaking stuff - absolutely captures that. I don't think I've ever seen a piece of media nail atmosphere so well. It also deserves props for fantastic voice work - my female corpo-background V had possibly the best English-language voice acting I've ever heard, with a perfect mix of desperation and bravado.

One day we'll hopefully be able to talk about the game, not the release mess, and that would be fantastic. Because as much as people raved about the Bloody Baron after Witcher 3 came out, that's got nothing on Cyberpunk's Jailhouse Jesus.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Erulogos



Joined: 19 Apr 2021
Posts: 27
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 7:22 pm Reply with quote
Rogueywon wrote:
I thought the anime was fantastic.

And now I'm going to get controversial... I also thought the game was fantastic. On a par with Witcher 3 and probably better than it once it hits its stride. Ok, I played it on a PC with a decent spec, so I missed the worst of the release woes (and that console release was inexcusable), but there is still a hell of a game in there, provided you accept it for what it is. What it isn't is "Grand Theft Auto: Night City", despite some of the pre-release marketing. And thank god for that, because it's a lot better than GTA.

The article notes how sheer bloody awful Night City is and how everybody constantly lives with the risk of being dragged down into the muck by it. The game - if you can play it without immersion breaking stuff - absolutely captures that. I don't think I've ever seen a piece of media nail atmosphere so well. It also deserves props for fantastic voice work - my female corpo-background V had possibly the best English-language voice acting I've ever heard, with a perfect mix of desperation and bravado.

One day we'll hopefully be able to talk about the game, not the release mess, and that would be fantastic. Because as much as people raved about the Bloody Baron after Witcher 3 came out, that's got nothing on Cyberpunk's Jailhouse Jesus.


I am just starting another look at Cyberpunk 2077 thanks to Edgerunners, so we'll see if it has matured a bit with time and patches. I did play it at launch and through the first couple of major patches, also on PC so i didn't have the most horrifying of technical issues either, but the game at the time seemed underwhelming. Driving was abyssmal, melee combat floaty, netrunning and smart guns neutered compared to the demo gameplay and/or pre-release feature promises, and while the world itself and side gigs were excellent, the main story was less about V and more about finishing Johnny's story.

None of that made it a terrible game, I'd say the way they realized Night City as an environment practically made it worthwhile, and as you say the voice work in it is good to great (I also subscribe to Fem!V supremacy, much as I subscribed to Fem!Shep supremacy once upon a time in Mass Effect,) but it was hardly a perfect game, and didn't deliver on the pre-launch hype and promises. Still worth a look for anyone hunting for an open world shooter with a ton of flavor though.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
CrypticPurpose



Joined: 15 Jan 2020
Posts: 320
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 7:25 pm Reply with quote
Hopefully one day, someone will release proper subtitles for this and I can actually watch it. The current ones by Netflix barely match anything being said.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Gem-Bug



Joined: 10 Nov 2018
Posts: 1192
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 8:24 pm Reply with quote
CrypticPurpose wrote:
Hopefully one day, someone will release proper subtitles for this and I can actually watch it. The current ones by Netflix barely match anything being said.


I've rambled about my issues with this series in the review thread, but I will say that the English dub is excellent.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Heart of the Foreign God



Joined: 13 Apr 2019
Posts: 41
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 8:34 pm Reply with quote
The storyboard paid very much attention with the setting, playing the game you can visit the vast majority of locations the story takes placespoiler[ (and Rebecca's shotgun can be found at Arasaka plaza)].
By playing the game first or watching the anime, both complement the overall experience of the other in a way we will rarely see executed as well as this.

spoiler[and of course, as a genuine Trigger anime, it ends in space.]
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Nimbly9





PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 9:17 pm Reply with quote
Edgerunners turned out a lot better, I think, than anyone expected. Very clear there was a lot of love poured into it, especially the animation and music. Would I have liked a few more twists and turns in the plot? Sure, but that's not really why we tuned in.
Back to top
Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3627
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 10:20 pm Reply with quote
Gem-Bug wrote:
CrypticPurpose wrote:
Hopefully one day, someone will release proper subtitles for this and I can actually watch it. The current ones by Netflix barely match anything being said.


I've rambled about my issues with this series in the review thread, but I will say that the English dub is excellent.


Yeah, usually I watched subs, but I decided to watch dubbed because of it being tied to the game and wasn't disappointed.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2091
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2022 10:22 pm Reply with quote
cookiemanstah wrote:
Has Trigger ever made a genuine turd or something very medicore even if that is very subjective? I don’t know which of their works is outright disliked but I’ve liked all of them, some just less than others.


Kiznaiver kinda fell flat with fans.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group