An anime based on what was supposed to be one of the biggest video games of all time has landed on Netflix with great reviews and very little fanfare; it’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a companion piece for fans of the much maligned Cyberpunk: 2077 video game.
The ten episode series arrived on Netflix today and is set in the video game’s main world of Night City. The series follows protagonist David, a struggling student who can’t afford to pay for school so he becomes an Edgerunner and delves into the city’s seedy neon underworld.
It’s a story about youthful rebellion and making your own way in the world. Here’s the official synopsis, courtesy of CD Projekt Red (developers of the video game) and Trigger Studio.
“Cyberpunk: Edgerunners tells a standalone, 10-episode story about a street kid trying to survive in a technology and body modification-obsessed city of the future. Having everything to lose, he chooses to stay alive by becoming an edgerunner – a mercenary outlaw also known as a Cyberpunk.”
The show already has a 92 percent audience score on the ratings site Rotten Tomatoes, and several news outlets have given it rave reviews. The video game site GameSpot.com gave the show a 9 out of ten and called it a “hugely successful anime.”
The site IGN also gave it a 9 out of ten review, saying “It’s a wild ride, but worth every blistering second, choom.”
So with the accolades, why isn’t the show getting more attention? Most of the blame falls on the fiasco that was the game’s launch, which ended up with CD Projekt Red being forced to apologize. The whole thing was even more complicated because the game promised to usher in a new era of gaming.
This is the same studio, after all, that brought us the incredibly magical game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The company eventually admitted that it didn’t focus enough on adjusting the game for consoles and that led to a number of glitches and bugs that basically ruined the player experience.
“Despite good reviews on PC, the console version of ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet,” CD Projekt Red cofounder said after the botched release of the game. He said he took the blame for the mishaps and that it wasn’t the “fault of any of our teams.”
“Believe me, we never intended for anything like this to happen,” he said. The game was so bad that Sony announced it would offer refunds. There have been some fixes since, but the damage was done.
Because of this, the rollout for what looks like a high-quality anime is being marred by these unfortunate realities. That doesn’t mean, however, that it won’t eventually find an audience. Check out the trailer for the show below.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is currently streaming on Netflix.