My motivation
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an anime released in 2022 and based on the video game Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red. The video game came out in late 2020, but on release was rather disappointing for most players, because of the amount of bugs the game suffered. After a sum of updates fixing every bug, the game could be appreciated by a lot more people. The game was based on the game series of Mike Pondsmith. I loved watching the anime. It is a very powerful 10 episode show and after watching it I immediately bought the video game. It is beautiful how the Anime portrayed the city and playing the game gave me a feeling I never felt before. Edgerunners in my eyes is a very emotional anime which touched my heart. I never felt more affected by an anime than this one. Its beautiful visuals, touching story and a group of characters where almost everyone feels relatable. Every side character in this anime has a significant effect on the main character. Besides these aspects the sound design is beautiful and the collection of songs taken from the video game are astonishing. When listening to the song “I really want to stay at your house” I still get emotional.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’s setting
In 1996 the event known as The Collapse begins in the U.S., because of the Central American Conflict. This conflict set in 1990 is a war between the U.S. and Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. In 1994 the World Stock Market Collapse occurs. After the murder of the president and vice president martial law is established. Since the next in line didn’t want to take the offer of being president the Congress had to deal with the issue fast. There was no movement in the process and after a while the Secretary of Defense, Jonathan Seward spoke up: “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress, now is the time for action. This body has chosen not to act on the crisis we face. If someone does not take action now America is doomed. I will not allow this to happen. As the ranking member of the executive branch of the government I have signed an Executive Order suspending the Constitution of the United States. As of this moment, martial law has been established and will remain in effect until this crisis has passed. At this time several units from the Central Command are positioning themselves around the capital. Each of you has been assigned a squad of Army Rangers, at your homes, for protection. This session is suspended until further notice. Thank you.” The collapse causes the U.S. to rely on the large corporations making millions of Eurodollars on the back of a suffering declining population. These corporations sell weapons, robotics, cybernetics, pharmaceuticals, communications and biotechnology. These companies operate above the law. Almost everyone walks around with a gun at all times, because of the large amount of robberies and flat out murders.
The story of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes place in 2076 one year before the video game. In Episode one we can see the dystopian city and district our main character lives in. Night city is located in Northern California. Santa Domingo is located in the South West of Night City.
24 Minutes Of Hell
We get to meet with military Lt. Col. James Norris or that’s at least what we think. After the annihilation of Norris our so called Cyberpsycho (“Cyberpsychosis is a mental illness, specifically a dissociative disorder, caused by an overload of cybernetic augmentations to the body”) we see our main character David Martinez who was watching a braindance (“A technology that allows to record any play back someone’s experience, including their physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts.”) of the event. Although this might seem insignificant at first at the end of our 24 minutes of hell we will see that the murder of Norris was the only way for David to ‘progress’.
The next morning David goes to school after having a talk with his mother. Gloria is a mother everyone would wish for and she does everything for her son to succeed. Their talk gets interrupted by a news report saying that Lt. Col. James Norris has died and David is excited seeing his mother on television. David’s mother works as an emergency medical technician(nurse). After this talk David goes out of the apartment that him and his mother live in and we see him walking to school. The walk to school, although having an excited background song, shows us the horrors of Night City and how growing up in such an environment can corrupt anyone.
https://youtu.be/Fn9gKhU_2_Q?si=_POig6ZxFsma6PnZ
If you pay attention to every detail in this video-clip, you can see the addiction to drugs, sex, fighting, cybernetics. Addiction is a very expressed topic in this anime. Concerning signs can also be seen such as “SECURITY 24hr CCTV SURVEILLANCE AGGRESSIVE INDIVIDUALS WILL BE SHOT”. After the horrors of the poor side of the city we see giant skyscrapers with huge billboards. If we pay attention to the billboards we can see all sorts of companies promoting their cybernetics, self-driving cars, braindances, weapons, etc. Another thing you might notice is the companies names frequently being Japanese. After The Collapse Japan became one of the countries with the most power in the world. Since the U.S. can’t do anything, but life of the money they get from the corporations they just have to accept all the ‘poison’ the companies feed its population. A big part of the population turned into criminals or got addicted to all sorts of stuff.
Tanaka Katsuo’s Strong Arms 400
After arriving at school and being scolded by his AI-teacher, we meet David’s bully. For me Katsuo is nothing, but another stepping stone for David. Katsuo bullies David for his tech and the way he got in the Arasaka Academy. Katsuo for me is clearly the product of his upbringing. His father is Arasaka a high- ranking executive on the Arasaka Academy board. Without his father having this job, Katsuo would have been another struggling kid probably not even attending the Academy.
During one of the classes David’s illegal software he got installed so his struggling mother didn’t have to pay for it causes the school system to get damaged. After this event David and his mother are sitting in the principal’s office. David is being scolded for what he did and him and his mother drive home. This drive was a very emotional one for me, because David’s mother starts crying saying that she only works for him and that her dream is for David to be at the top of Arasaka Tower (Arasaka is portrayed in the anime as the biggest corporation). After this beautiful interaction their car gets caught in a drive by shooting meant for the car next to them and after getting to know a character which reminded me a lot of my mother we see her lying down in the open, after the cars crashed.
This scene is shocking, because when the trauma team arrives which is the equivalent of our ambulances they check if Gloria Martinez has a subscription to their program, but she doesn’t and we see a character that we got to know and love laying there presumably dead.
After dropping his mother of at one of the worst hospitals in the city he goes to their apartment and finds the cyberware that Norris used laying on his floor. His mother took it after being sent to the scene. The next day he goes to school and he gets beat up by his bully in an alley. Katsuo uses his cyberware the Strong Arms 400 to beat up David.
Beat up he goes and checks up on his mother but the hospital informs him she died. David takes Gloria’s cremated remains home. After only one episode I felt really bad for David and it is shocking how we see him and his mother talking about her dream and then a couple minutes later a character I got attached to is now a name on a urn.
We then see David walking home and being called by Katsuo who mocks him and his mother’s death. The last thing we see is David looking at the bag with Norris’s cyberware and the only thing he wants is revenge.
https://youtu.be/KlLt_gGCPI4?si=20bgJjpXWxB-qnWM
The death of a dream
The first episode was very touching for me, because I saw a normal teenager who was very relatable, get his life thrown upside-down in only 24 minutes. His mother who reminded me a lot of mine, because she is also a nurse dies and the dream she had for him also died in that moment. I would say that even after one episode this show is a masterpiece. Every little point is connected and reminds me of the butterfly effect. If one of the small and seemingly unimportant events didn’t happen. The story also wouldn’t have happened.
It has been said something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.
“The idea that something small, like getting coffee, can have much larger effects, such as altering your career is called the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect rests on the notion that the world is deeply interconnected, such that one small occurrence can influence a much larger complex system.”
In The Vocation of Man (1800), Johann Gottlieb Fichte says "you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby ... changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole".
Sources:
The Collapse. (2023, 24 september). Cyberpunk Wiki. Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/The_Collapse
Let You Down. (2023, 22 november). Cyberpunk Wiki. Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Let_You_Down
Cyberpsychosis. (2023, 30 november). Cyberpunk Wiki. Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpsychosis
Braindance. (2023, 17 juli). Cyberpunk Wiki. Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Braindance
Timeline. (2023, 19 november). Cyberpunk Wiki. Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline
The Butterfly Effect Quotes. (z.d.). imdb. Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879/quotes/?ref_=tt_trv_qu
The Butterfly Effect. (z.d.). The Decision Lab. Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/economics/the-butterfly-effect
Butterfly effect. (2023). Geraadpleegd op 9 december 2023, van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
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