Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Cyberpunk: Edgerunners pulled in 14.88 million hours of viewing during its first week on Netflix, and that was enough to put it in the service's top ten. The animated miniseries premiered on the 13th of September 2022. It follows David Martinez, a street kid fighting to survive in the criminal underworld of Night City. His chosen path is to become an edgerunner, a mercenary whose body is packed with cybernetic enhancements. The show was made by a Japanese animation studio, yet a Polish video game company supervised it. Why would a game developer hand its world to animators? What does David risk by chasing legend status in a city that eats its young? And what did the audience do once the credits rolled?

  2223212

• 2. Night City

  ›

  Night City sits between the Free States of North and South California, and it runs on its own rules. The city is a dystopian metropolis scarred by obsessive body modification, rampant gang violence and corporate warfare. A corrupt municipal government makes every problem worse. Six districts divide the city, and powerful megacorporations control them. Arasaka is one of those giants, and Militech is its rival. The Cyberpunk universe itself comes from Mike Pondsmith. The anime spends most of its time in Santo Domingo, the oldest, poorest and most industrial district. Its story runs from 2075 to 2076. Into that district steps a student who, on paper, has no business in the underworld at all.

  2017229

• 3. David and Lucy

  ›

  David Martinez is talented, but he is always short of money. He attends the prestigious Arasaka Academy, and his single mother pays for it in a grim way. She works as a paramedic, and she sells cyberware taken from corpses on the black market to cover his tuition. Then a sudden tragedy upends his life. Soon afterward he meets Lucy, an enigmatic young outlaw and netrunner. She hates Arasaka deeply, and she dreams of escaping to the moon. Lucy brings David to a crew of edgerunners that takes jobs aimed at the Arasaka Corporation. He joins them and discovers an unusually high tolerance for cybernetic implants. A local ripperdoc known as Doc installs the hardware and supplies the immunosuppressants that David needs to keep it.

  2172026

• 4. Maine's Crew

  ›

  At the head of the crew stands Maine, and he takes David under his wing. His girlfriend serves as second-in-command. Another member is a cold, stoic veteran netrunner who acts as Lucy's mentor. Two siblings round out the firepower and the repairs. Pilar is a foul-mouthed techie, and his younger sister Rebecca is a trigger-happy firearms expert. A nomad drives the getaway vehicle. Outside the crew, a well-connected fixer has ties to both Militech and Maine's team, and he hopes to climb the corporate ladder by joining Arasaka. Looming over them all is Arasaka's ruthless head of security, a legendary supersoldier who is fully cybernetic. Alec Newman voices him in English, reprising a role he played in the video game Cyberpunk 2077.

  20217

• 5. Trigger Meets CD Projekt

  ›

  On the 25th of June 2020, a livestream called Night City Wire revealed that CD Projekt and the studio Trigger were teaming up. The series was created by Rafał Jaki and made as an original net animation miniseries. It stands as a standalone prequel to the game Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red. Hiroyuki Imaishi directed. Masahiko Otsuka and Yoshiki Usa wrote the scripts, and Yoh Yoshinari designed the characters while also serving as animation director. Yuto Kaneko and Yusuke Yoshigaki worked as assistant character designers. Hiroyuki Kaneko was assistant director, and Hiromi Wakabayashi held the post of creative director. Years after the premiere, Aniplex issued the series on a Blu-ray Disc set on the 28th of May 2025.

  1910115

• 6. The Sound of Edgerunners

  ›

  Akira Yamaoka composed the music for the show. Its opening theme is "This Fffire" by Franz Ferdinand. The ending theme is "Let You Down" by Dawid Podsiadło. The series also borrowed songs from the in-game radio stations of Cyberpunk 2077. One of them, "I Really Want to Stay at Your House" by Rosa Walton, played a prominent role in the story and drew strong praise. Reviewers noticed the whole soundscape, not only the single track. That attention to music became one thread in the show's critical welcome.

  1416131527

• 7. Critics and Creators

  ›

  Jonathon Wilson wrote for Ready Steady Cut that "in many ways, this is the Cyberpunk story the Cyberpunk game wanted to tell and couldn't." Matt Kim of IGN admired how the show explored hostile life in Night City. He noted that the focus fell more on the city than on some of its characters, and he called the series "a wild ride, but worth every blistering second". Kambole Campbell of Polygon praised its "visual language for various in-game concepts" and the "sonic diversity in its score". Campbell also judged the best quality to be "its ability to depict the psychological unmooring of its characters without feeling inauthentic." Game director Hideo Kojima called it "a miracle of squeezing the trigger to the world". He compared its art and world design favorably with the 1990 OVA series Cyber City Oedo 808. Mike Pondsmith wrote, "It's like seeing my brain in a big screen anime."

  2526272829

• 8. A Long Awards List

  ›

  The show's name turned up at ceremony after ceremony. In 2022 it appeared among the IGN Awards for Best Anime Series and The Game Awards for Best Adaptation. It also featured at the 28th Manga Barcelona Awards in the category of Best Anime Series Premiere. The next year brought the 50th Annie Awards, with a nod in Best Storyboarding for TV and media. The 7th Crunchyroll Anime Awards listed it across a remarkable range, from Anime of the Year to Best Score, Best Director and Best Opening Sequence. Voice work earned separate categories for both English and French performances. Japan Expo's Daruma awards and the 13th Newtype Anime Awards added more entries, including Best Soundtrack.

  The anime's success fed a gradual reappraisal of Cyberpunk 2077. After the series arrived, the game saw a significant jump in both sales and players, and its total reached 20 million units. In November 2022, R. Talsorian, publisher of the tabletop Cyberpunk game, announced plans for an Edgerunners expansion. A month earlier, CDPR community manager Satoru Honma had told Famitsu that no second season was planned. He added that any future project would be "something completely different" instead of a continuation. Then on the 19th of September 2024, Netflix released a short teaser for a new tie-in with the game. CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski had already signaled more animated tie-ins.

  In July 2025, CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, a standalone sequel series bound for Netflix. Most of the original creative team is returning. Kai Ikarashi will direct. Bartosz Sztybor will write, produce and act as showrunner, and Ichigo Kanno will design the characters. Masahiko Otsuka comes back as scriptwriter. The sequel tells a new story with a new cast, separate from the first series. Other media have already spread the world further. A prequel manga by Asano debuted on Kadokawa's Comic Alive+ website on the 13th of December 2024, and Dark Horse Comics will publish it in English. Lucy joined the fighting game Guilty Gear Strive as a playable character on the 21st of August 2025, and a Wuthering Waves collaboration is planned for 2026.

  3132333436