I have a deep, abiding love for the cyberpunk aesthetic. I've worshipped at the altar of Sterling, Gibson and Stephenson. And unfortunately I'm going to have to hard disagree and express puzzlement with:
No one expected anything from Edgerunners, even fans of the franchise had forgotten it was coming out… but the series was incredible. It might outstrip studio trigger’s earlier Kill La Kill. Aside from a, somehow simultaneously, slow and rushed pilot-episode complete with poor dubbing (outside of ep1 the dub is amazing) the show is an exceptional and damn near flawless story harkening back to not just western Cyberpunk stories, but old-school kickass Cyberpunk Anime like Akira or at points even Cowboy Bebop.
Unless you are just constitutionally incapable of watching any anime…100% watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix… Its a 10/10 masterpiece.
The first episode is much weaker than the rest, but every episode doubles in quality til you hit episode 6 and it might just be one of the 10 best episodes of television ever made.
As a disclaimer, I haven't played Cyberpunk:2077 so I likely missed some minor tie-ins. But Edgerunners was a good series with an amazing aesthetic that profoundly failed to live up to it's promise. Here are the problems:
**** MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW *****
Gratuitous character deaths. Pilar dying in episode 4 was shocking, and let you know we're playing for keeps. By the time Rebecca and David explode into puddles of gore, it's impossible to give a fuck anymore because the entire team died in stupid ways that don't further the plot. Just watching violence for the sake of violence isn't particularly attractive.
Utterly pointless climax. The culmination of the series is just a reheated 'Do it for her' meme. Love interest is abducted. Main character acquires macguffin (okay, giant mecha suit) to rescue love interest, dying in the process. All other main characters die pointlessly, with one possible exception (Maine dying of cyberpsychosis. But also...what's Maine's backstory? Why is he randomly running in the desert? Why should I care that he's dying?).
Complete lack of meaningful character progression. Nobody has a relevant backstory. The closest thing we get is David's mom dying early in the series, which changes virtually nothing because David already had a pile of reasons to hate the corpos. Now he hates them more. Profound. Meanwhile, what do we know about Pilar? Maine? Dorio? Kiwi? Rebecca? All these characters die and it's just impossible to care because they're sad cardboard cutouts without motivations or actual stories.
**** Spoilers done ****
And because I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the good:
Incredible worldbuilding and aesthetics. The combat sequences with the Sandevistan and cybernetics more generally are fun as hell. David and Lucy's song is a major earworm.
We are almost certainly going to get more stories out of the Cyberpunk franchise, sequels, new series, new games (an expansion is already about to release for CP 2077) and between this and other Scifi properties that have come out recently, its very likely we’re going to see a widespread revival in Cyberpunk the genre… And I’m really looking forward to it.
Color me deeply skeptical. Cyberpunk and fantasy are fairly played out and at this point there isn't a whole lot of new ground to tread, just the occasional talented author who can write an excellent interpretation of the old formula. We'll keep seeing the occasional hit or new franchise, but there's not going to be a renaissance of talented authors bravely taking cyberpunk to new places.
By the way, does this site support spoiler text? The old >! !< doesn't seem to work.
All three of your points seem to miss a key aspect of the show: it's a tragedy. The characters don't 'level up' in a tragedy, they write their endings. Do people complain that Macbeth lacks 'character progression' or that Reservoir Dogs has 'meaningless deaths?' Each character earns their brutal ending by the way they conduct themselves.
The life expectancy of people doing shit like that is that of early WW2 British bomber crews. That was the realistic part of the show.
Main character acquires macguffin (okay, giant mecha suit) to rescue love interest
I believe you misremember. He acquires macguffin because he's hired to do so, but she gets abducted in the meantime so he uses it to try to free her, no ?
I believe you misremember. He acquires macguffin because he's hired to do so, but she gets abducted in the meantime so he uses it to try to free her, no ?
I disagree strongly... The entire point of edgerunners is that it comes at you fast and the characterization is done through animation, subtle character moments, implications that you read into it...
Also deaths aren't furthering the plot? The plot is they're punks trying to get rich and not die, and the tragedy is they know they probably will. You might as well complain the Deaths in "All's Quiet on the Western Front" not furthering the plot... that's the point, death can hit you at any time, you're not special.
I feel like you expected the story to be "And that's how we decided to do "Big important heroic thing" and advance "the good" and this is the story of our noble sacrifice..." no the point of edgerunners is they're just trying to achieve their personal ambitions, make it out alive, not be crushed by the world around them... and everything escalates because the intense friction and pressure they're under just achieving that.
We get the backstories for David and Lucy because they share them with eachother, the rest we get to gleen so much of their personalities, their values, what little part of life they're holding onto, just from how they behave an interact.
Its incredibly efficient show don't tell and it works remarkably effectively. There's a reason it has 100% and 96% on rotten tomatoes.
To some extent, De gustibus non est disputandum and all that. I grant that you can have different tastes that are valid, or that you can relate to characters that I find disinteresting. That being said:
I feel like you expected the story to be "And that's how we decided to do "Big important heroic thing" and advance "the good" and this is the story of our noble sacrifice..." no the point of edgerunners is they're just trying to achieve their personal ambitions, make it out alive, not be crushed by the world around them... and everything escalates because the intense friction and pressure they're under just achieving that.
Writing a quality story is orthogonal to whether the story is uplifting or has a happy ending. You can have a story whose message is ultimately nihilist or tragic, even one where every main character dies, and do it poorly or do it very well. In your mind, what differentiates Edgerunners from a lower quality tragedy or film/novel with similar themes? Or what changes could have been made to the plot that would make it better or worse?
For example, since you highlight it: David's relationship with his mother is never really examined. She knew he was talented, had big dreams for his future and made significant sacrifices to give him those opportunities. He completely rejects everything she wanted and turns to a life of a crime. That's fine, maybe he was even forced into it, but...doesn't he have any feelings whatsoever about betraying his mother's dreams and throwing away her sacrifices? Shouldn't he at least grapple with this a little bit? The closest we get is him laughing about being on top of Arasaka tower like his mom always wanted in the last episode.
You want to keep it grimdark and nihilist, but still have some emotional valence? Alright. His mom (who supposedly dies offscreen) was instead sold to human traffickers by the doctors to cover the unpaid medical bills. She ends up the pet of an Arasaka exec. David sees his mother one last time and her disappointment with what he's become just before being smashed by Mr. Smasher. Roll credits.
Or how about the fact that Pilar's death, while shocking, is utterly inconsequential to the story and other characters with deep connections to him? Rebecca is mad for that scene, they kill the nutjob, great...then nobody ever mentions him again beyond Maine suggesting that David take his cybernetic hands? The loss of her brother seems utterly inconsequential to Rebecca. If I'm remembering correctly, the next scene after Pilar dying is Lucy and David being intimate with neither of them seeming to care that their friend just died.
Contrast that to Ned Stark's imprisonment and death, which had huge consequences for the show and the characters. Rob has an emotional breakdown and needs to be comforted by his mother, highlighting the fact that he's a 16 year old boy in over his head. It marks the beginning of Arya's quest for revenge. Tywin and Tyrion bemoan Joffrey's excesses and realize the North will never sue for peace now. Jon nearly breaks his vows to ride south.
the rest we get to gleen so much of their personalities, their values, what little part of life they're holding onto, just from how they behave an interact.
no the point of edgerunners is they're just trying to achieve their personal ambitions
Really? How would you describe Kiwi's personality, besides mercenary, and why is she the way she is? How about Dorio? Why is Maine an edgerunner, what's his endgame, why is he addicted to cybernetics at the expense of his sanity? I don't even know the personal ambitions for...well, any of the characters besides Lucy wanting to go to the moon. David wanted to be an edgerunner, but he gets that in the first few episodes. What does anyone else want?
In your mind, what differentiates Edgerunners from a lower quality tragedy or film/novel with similar themes?
Withe reason Edge Runners works as a tragedy is because the characters dig their own graves without alienating themselves totally from the audience. That's hard to do. If you make your characters mistakes too obvious, the audience can't empathize anymore (lots of B slasher films fail this test.) If the consequences seem too arbitrary, the audience loses interest because it's just capricious fate.
Kiwi believes in being a heartless mercenary, but when the time comes to actually do it, she realizes it's not what she wanted after all, way too late. Tragedy. We don't really get much characterization of Dorio, but her attachment to Maine does her in.
Rebecca is mad for that scene, they kill the nutjob, great...then nobody ever mentions him again beyond Maine suggesting that David take his cybernetic hands? The loss of her brother seems utterly inconsequential to Rebecca
She spends the rest of the show being as reckless as possible until she finally pushes her luck too far. She also gets huge cybernetic hands, echoing her brother's style. She's loyal to David against all reason.
Or what changes could have been made to the plot that would make it better or worse?
One change that might have made it better? Make the mecha suit cooler? Remove 'Choom' from the script? Drop the school subplot, that felt kinda pointless? I can't think of any major flaws in the execution of the themes. They could have gotten away with not killing off Rebecca (go slightly lighter) or having Lucy remove her helmet on the moon (to go way darker.)
To make it worse is easy. David could have lived. They could have had the power of love conquer Cyberpsychosis. They could have failed to foreshadow everything so well. They could have added tons of gratuitous sexual peril. They could have shown the entire thing as some other kid watching a BD of David's life and ended it with a stupid comment. They could have done Lucy's arc without the moon thing.
having Lucy remove her helmet on the moon (to go way darker.)
Reading this made me tear up. Perhaps I've an overly sensitive emotional system which would explain my philosophical view of things is so bleak as to allow me to not feel anything most of the time.
I was waiting for it to happen. The way she gives a defeated little arm raise in the sun... I really thought that was going to be it. But they ended it on a hopeful note; David may have died for nothing, but Lucy still has her second chance.
I wasn't. Women aren't like that. They don't kill themselves on a whim.
She'd wanted to get out of Brazil, go to the Moon, and she got there.
I presume netrunners can easily find legitimate employment.
And a sad, very intelligent and attractive woman working in some tech company would have an easy time finding some solid partner and fulfilling her biological imperative.
I feel like you're disappointed they didn't explicitly have a scene for every character where they monologued about their Tragic Past like a Kojima game.
Every character has a really well defined disposition, attitude, set of motivations, and yes backstory... the show just doesn't stop to tell you them, you catch their story through glimpses of their personality, lifestyle, decisions, stylistic choices... you know like real life.
Maine andDorio's names, character designs, interactions, and dialogue tells you everything that narrative essential about their characters and back stories, without having to spell it out.
Kiwi's interactions and relationships with Lucy, Faraday, Maine and Falco are all you have to see to start drawing out the past of her character... Even her design, she specifically chose Cyberware that didn't have a mouth and would prevent her from being expressive, purposefully alienating herself from everyone around her, fleeing the interpersonal Trauma implicit in everything she does.
These are characters are incredibly designed characterized and fleshed out, unique backstories and personalities are implicit in everything about them, StudioTrigger just followed the show don't tell school of thought (as you expect from litteral animators and artists) and embodied this in their characters and actions instead of stopping the show's breakneck pace.
And as for the characters who's inner monologues we do get ,its incredibly rich!
The entire reason David keeps doing merc work instead of ditching and enjoying his modest wealt and girlfriend is he feels he needs to become a great success in order to live up to his mother's dreams and retroactively undo his abandonment of her ambitions through success, He feels he needs to continue Maine's ambitions so as to render Maine's tragedy a success...
He's fleeing his Trauma by embracing the very danger that caused it.
That is very strongly characterized and very subtlety handled, and every character is like this!
This is how in 10 episodes they can cover so much ground at such a break-neck pace, and with so much style, because their writing, artstyle, plotting, and even music is operating at maximum efficiency.
Bernd
Fighting algorithmic racism like John Henry
KulakRevolt 1yr ago·Edited 1yr ago
Think I've said this before, but I don't know that "not dying" was realistically on any character's agenda. Rebecca was always going to die in a stupid fight with someone much tougher; her progress in the show was in being killed by the strongest guy in the setting rather than some bouncer she got mad and pulled a gun on.
Maine was always going to go psycho and die destroying everything and everyone he cared about. Kiwi was always going to die in some stupid triple-cross backstabbing she thought she was smart enough to pull off, etc.
The whole story was about dying a little harder and becoming a legend doing it.
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Notes -
I have a deep, abiding love for the cyberpunk aesthetic. I've worshipped at the altar of Sterling, Gibson and Stephenson. And unfortunately I'm going to have to hard disagree and express puzzlement with:
As a disclaimer, I haven't played Cyberpunk:2077 so I likely missed some minor tie-ins. But Edgerunners was a good series with an amazing aesthetic that profoundly failed to live up to it's promise. Here are the problems:
**** MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW *****
Gratuitous character deaths. Pilar dying in episode 4 was shocking, and let you know we're playing for keeps. By the time Rebecca and David explode into puddles of gore, it's impossible to give a fuck anymore because the entire team died in stupid ways that don't further the plot. Just watching violence for the sake of violence isn't particularly attractive.
Utterly pointless climax. The culmination of the series is just a reheated 'Do it for her' meme. Love interest is abducted. Main character acquires
macguffin(okay, giant mecha suit) to rescue love interest, dying in the process. All other main characters die pointlessly, with one possible exception (Maine dying of cyberpsychosis. But also...what's Maine's backstory? Why is he randomly running in the desert? Why should I care that he's dying?).Complete lack of meaningful character progression. Nobody has a relevant backstory. The closest thing we get is David's mom dying early in the series, which changes virtually nothing because David already had a pile of reasons to hate the corpos. Now he hates them more. Profound. Meanwhile, what do we know about Pilar? Maine? Dorio? Kiwi? Rebecca? All these characters die and it's just impossible to care because they're sad cardboard cutouts without motivations or actual stories.
**** Spoilers done ****
And because I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the good:
Incredible worldbuilding and aesthetics. The combat sequences with the Sandevistan and cybernetics more generally are fun as hell. David and Lucy's song is a major earworm.
Color me deeply skeptical. Cyberpunk and fantasy are fairly played out and at this point there isn't a whole lot of new ground to tread, just the occasional talented author who can write an excellent interpretation of the old formula. We'll keep seeing the occasional hit or new franchise, but there's not going to be a renaissance of talented authors bravely taking cyberpunk to new places.
By the way, does this site support spoiler text? The old >! !< doesn't seem to work.
All three of your points seem to miss a key aspect of the show: it's a tragedy. The characters don't 'level up' in a tragedy, they write their endings. Do people complain that Macbeth lacks 'character progression' or that Reservoir Dogs has 'meaningless deaths?' Each character earns their brutal ending by the way they conduct themselves.
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The life expectancy of people doing shit like that is that of early WW2 British bomber crews. That was the realistic part of the show.
I believe you misremember. He acquires macguffin because he's hired to do so, but she gets abducted in the meantime so he uses it to try to free her, no ?
Yes, you're correct.
For the other point, see my response to Kulak.
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I disagree strongly... The entire point of edgerunners is that it comes at you fast and the characterization is done through animation, subtle character moments, implications that you read into it...
Also deaths aren't furthering the plot? The plot is they're punks trying to get rich and not die, and the tragedy is they know they probably will. You might as well complain the Deaths in "All's Quiet on the Western Front" not furthering the plot... that's the point, death can hit you at any time, you're not special.
I feel like you expected the story to be "And that's how we decided to do "Big important heroic thing" and advance "the good" and this is the story of our noble sacrifice..." no the point of edgerunners is they're just trying to achieve their personal ambitions, make it out alive, not be crushed by the world around them... and everything escalates because the intense friction and pressure they're under just achieving that.
We get the backstories for David and Lucy because they share them with eachother, the rest we get to gleen so much of their personalities, their values, what little part of life they're holding onto, just from how they behave an interact.
Its incredibly efficient show don't tell and it works remarkably effectively. There's a reason it has 100% and 96% on rotten tomatoes.
To some extent, De gustibus non est disputandum and all that. I grant that you can have different tastes that are valid, or that you can relate to characters that I find disinteresting. That being said:
Writing a quality story is orthogonal to whether the story is uplifting or has a happy ending. You can have a story whose message is ultimately nihilist or tragic, even one where every main character dies, and do it poorly or do it very well. In your mind, what differentiates Edgerunners from a lower quality tragedy or film/novel with similar themes? Or what changes could have been made to the plot that would make it better or worse?
For example, since you highlight it: David's relationship with his mother is never really examined. She knew he was talented, had big dreams for his future and made significant sacrifices to give him those opportunities. He completely rejects everything she wanted and turns to a life of a crime. That's fine, maybe he was even forced into it, but...doesn't he have any feelings whatsoever about betraying his mother's dreams and throwing away her sacrifices? Shouldn't he at least grapple with this a little bit? The closest we get is him laughing about being on top of Arasaka tower like his mom always wanted in the last episode.
You want to keep it grimdark and nihilist, but still have some emotional valence? Alright. His mom (who supposedly dies offscreen) was instead sold to human traffickers by the doctors to cover the unpaid medical bills. She ends up the pet of an Arasaka exec. David sees his mother one last time and her disappointment with what he's become just before being smashed by Mr. Smasher. Roll credits.
Or how about the fact that Pilar's death, while shocking, is utterly inconsequential to the story and other characters with deep connections to him? Rebecca is mad for that scene, they kill the nutjob, great...then nobody ever mentions him again beyond Maine suggesting that David take his cybernetic hands? The loss of her brother seems utterly inconsequential to Rebecca. If I'm remembering correctly, the next scene after Pilar dying is Lucy and David being intimate with neither of them seeming to care that their friend just died.
Contrast that to Ned Stark's imprisonment and death, which had huge consequences for the show and the characters. Rob has an emotional breakdown and needs to be comforted by his mother, highlighting the fact that he's a 16 year old boy in over his head. It marks the beginning of Arya's quest for revenge. Tywin and Tyrion bemoan Joffrey's excesses and realize the North will never sue for peace now. Jon nearly breaks his vows to ride south.
Really? How would you describe Kiwi's personality, besides mercenary, and why is she the way she is? How about Dorio? Why is Maine an edgerunner, what's his endgame, why is he addicted to cybernetics at the expense of his sanity? I don't even know the personal ambitions for...well, any of the characters besides Lucy wanting to go to the moon. David wanted to be an edgerunner, but he gets that in the first few episodes. What does anyone else want?
@Bernd @Evinceo
Withe reason Edge Runners works as a tragedy is because the characters dig their own graves without alienating themselves totally from the audience. That's hard to do. If you make your characters mistakes too obvious, the audience can't empathize anymore (lots of B slasher films fail this test.) If the consequences seem too arbitrary, the audience loses interest because it's just capricious fate.
Kiwi believes in being a heartless mercenary, but when the time comes to actually do it, she realizes it's not what she wanted after all, way too late. Tragedy. We don't really get much characterization of Dorio, but her attachment to Maine does her in.
She spends the rest of the show being as reckless as possible until she finally pushes her luck too far. She also gets huge cybernetic hands, echoing her brother's style. She's loyal to David against all reason.
One change that might have made it better? Make the mecha suit cooler? Remove 'Choom' from the script? Drop the school subplot, that felt kinda pointless? I can't think of any major flaws in the execution of the themes. They could have gotten away with not killing off Rebecca (go slightly lighter) or having Lucy remove her helmet on the moon (to go way darker.)
To make it worse is easy. David could have lived. They could have had the power of love conquer Cyberpsychosis. They could have failed to foreshadow everything so well. They could have added tons of gratuitous sexual peril. They could have shown the entire thing as some other kid watching a BD of David's life and ended it with a stupid comment. They could have done Lucy's arc without the moon thing.
Reading this made me tear up. Perhaps I've an overly sensitive emotional system which would explain my philosophical view of things is so bleak as to allow me to not feel anything most of the time.
I was waiting for it to happen. The way she gives a defeated little arm raise in the sun... I really thought that was going to be it. But they ended it on a hopeful note; David may have died for nothing, but Lucy still has her second chance.
I wasn't. Women aren't like that. They don't kill themselves on a whim.
She'd wanted to get out of Brazil, go to the Moon, and she got there.
I presume netrunners can easily find legitimate employment.
And a sad, very intelligent and attractive woman working in some tech company would have an easy time finding some solid partner and fulfilling her biological imperative.
Fictional character
It wasn't a whim; I assumed she went to the moon specifically for that purpose.
On a tour bus. It's not implied that she can stay and even if she could life on the moon is, in reality, bleak.
Not when Arasaka wants you dead.
I think that the authors of the show have a more nuanced view of what that means.
Is the Moon ran by Arasaka ?
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I feel like you're disappointed they didn't explicitly have a scene for every character where they monologued about their Tragic Past like a Kojima game.
Every character has a really well defined disposition, attitude, set of motivations, and yes backstory... the show just doesn't stop to tell you them, you catch their story through glimpses of their personality, lifestyle, decisions, stylistic choices... you know like real life.
Maine andDorio's names, character designs, interactions, and dialogue tells you everything that narrative essential about their characters and back stories, without having to spell it out.
Kiwi's interactions and relationships with Lucy, Faraday, Maine and Falco are all you have to see to start drawing out the past of her character... Even her design, she specifically chose Cyberware that didn't have a mouth and would prevent her from being expressive, purposefully alienating herself from everyone around her, fleeing the interpersonal Trauma implicit in everything she does.
These are characters are incredibly designed characterized and fleshed out, unique backstories and personalities are implicit in everything about them, StudioTrigger just followed the show don't tell school of thought (as you expect from litteral animators and artists) and embodied this in their characters and actions instead of stopping the show's breakneck pace.
And as for the characters who's inner monologues we do get ,its incredibly rich!
The entire reason David keeps doing merc work instead of ditching and enjoying his modest wealt and girlfriend is he feels he needs to become a great success in order to live up to his mother's dreams and retroactively undo his abandonment of her ambitions through success, He feels he needs to continue Maine's ambitions so as to render Maine's tragedy a success...
He's fleeing his Trauma by embracing the very danger that caused it.
That is very strongly characterized and very subtlety handled, and every character is like this!
This is how in 10 episodes they can cover so much ground at such a break-neck pace, and with so much style, because their writing, artstyle, plotting, and even music is operating at maximum efficiency.
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Think I've said this before, but I don't know that "not dying" was realistically on any character's agenda. Rebecca was always going to die in a stupid fight with someone much tougher; her progress in the show was in being killed by the strongest guy in the setting rather than some bouncer she got mad and pulled a gun on.
Maine was always going to go psycho and die destroying everything and everyone he cared about. Kiwi was always going to die in some stupid triple-cross backstabbing she thought she was smart enough to pull off, etc.
The whole story was about dying a little harder and becoming a legend doing it.
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