Sequels to anything successful are often more volatile, pushing the envelope in ways their predecessors did not and endeavoring to branch beyond the confines of what came before, as if they were hell-bent on taking more risks. As such, the best-case scenario is for a sequel with a polarizing, rebellious, rough-around-the-edges vibe compared to its progenitor. Worst-case, they’re a shameless cash grab of weaponized nostalgia. Anime Expo, where the first episode of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 premiered to a modest 6,000 people at the Crypto Arena ahead of its fall release on Netflix, was a secret third thing compared to how we expect sequels to typically wind up.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2’s premiere was hedonistically paradoxical: it’s both a sequel that expands itself outward, weaving a bigger, bolder, ambitious tale, while also feeling viscerally intimate and small-scale. What’s left is the start of a beloved anime series that’s far and away the most grounded we’ve ever seen Night City, while being the most consequential and bombastic. Translation: It was absolutely preem, choomba.
One thing that makes Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, animated by TRIGGER and returning writers Bartosz Sztybor and Masahiko Ōtsuka, stand out from its predecessor is that it doesn’t deign to resign itself to being a second part to previous protagonist David Martinez’s tale. It’s no follow-up, but an entirely different beast unto itself.
As if living up to Sztybor’s pre-premiere panel sentiments like Apollo’s gift of prophecy, if the first of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a Michael Bay movie—flavoring Night City through a romanticized viewpoint of what it means to be a living legend through David’s eyes—Edgerunners 2 is a more grounded, Martin Scorsese-like depiction of the city that always wins. It’s a second glance that interrogates what sacrifice looks like, and most poignantly, posits what it means to be human in a commercialized, post-transhumanist world.
To get us there, CD Projekt Red and TRIGGER didn’t have just one main character. We’re following four new chooms from four vastly different walks of life, liable to traumatize us more than the last season did. There’s Weak Kingsley (Clancy Brown), an Edgerunner existing as a shadow of his former self; D (Nazeeh Tarsha), a Netrunner for the Snake Nation nomads with tons of unchecked emotional baggage; Roman Carax (Valeria Rodriguez), a young cinephile documenting everything wrong in Night City; and Talia Yang (Kimoy Lee), a chromed-out woman from the Corpo walks of life hanging with the gonked-out Maelstrom gang.
Despite having more proverbial plates to spin, telling a tale from four different perspectives coalesces in such an interesting way, even in this premiere, that the furthest thing from one’s mind is our previous heroes and where the surviving crew wound up. It’s this new group’s time to shine, and they’re all I can think about after having witnessed the first of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2‘s ten-episode second season on the biggest screen possible with an arena full of strangers.
It’s clear from the premiere’s opening moments that this is a love letter to cinema from CD Projekt RED and TRIGGER. Not the big summer blockbusters we’re used to seeing referenced to death, but cult classics and deep cuts that you catch yourself reminiscing over and carry with you throughout your daily life. It’s the anime equivalent of Léon: The Professional, and more pointedly, it’s giving City of God.
The same can be said for its anime aesthetics, which bring throwback designs like big hair vents and distinct, lanky silhouettes. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 is a 90s-baby-feeling anime if there ever was one. It also takes viewers on one of the most strikingly, exceptionally singular visual journeys the medium has seen in a long time. Appropriately, the way in which we see this grotesque, gruesome, and utterly FUBAR depiction of Night City thus far is through the lens of Roman’s camcorder.
