If I’m being completely honest, the existence and success of Cyberpunk Edgerunners is bittersweet for the homie. I LOVE the Cyberpunk universe and the game (I was running that shit on PC at launch and sidestepped most of the justifiable bitterness that came when it dropped). I was still invested in the universe when the first Edgerunners dropped and fell in love again with the universe at large. Not just my badass, sideswipped, netrunning stealth assassin V from my save files. Don’t even get me started on Phantom Liberty.
What’s difficult for me is the timing of Edgerunners, more accurately, the timing of properties that came before. We have seen so many of our favorite video games just get TERRIBLE adaptations or additions to their world in different mediums. The Halo franchise is shooting about 30% from the field. Final Fantasy produced tech demos for years. Y’all remember the Mass Effect anime? No, no you don’t. Forget a separate column, to cover the Resident Evil movies, animation, etc. would be its own, unrewarding series. My point is, we live in a time when both video games and the adaptations they spawn (Castlevania, Arcane, Sonic, etc.) are just taken much more seriously. Who knows how many bites at the apple Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry have after their…less than inspiring break from the genre takes they have left.
But I digress.
When Edgerunners dropped, it was an instant classic for a few reasons. They nailed the tone, they nailed the dread, they gave us new characters in a city we helped shape in our own game. Great animation, story, and trademark Night City heartbreak. The anime was so good, including its representation of familiar characters, it even made them go make changes in the game itself (David’s jacket, Cyberware capacity, Adam Smasher’s mechanics). That’s some legacy shit.
We don’t know a ton about Edgerunners 2 except it looks as chaotic and unyielding as its predecessor. We don’t know a ton about the characters yet, and honestly, that was not the goal of this trailer. The goal was for you to see how much shit can get fucked up in a two-minute window. Mission accomplished. What we do know is that we’ll be following a young filmmaker obsessed with showcasing the world and its inhabitants around them. That may sound like our protagonist is innocent since he’s not a merc or beholden to one of the megacorps, but this is Cyberpunk, yo. Very few make it out alive.
No specific date yet, but Fall 2026 is like…tomorrow. So I imagine we’ll get more info soon, especially with Anime Expo around the corner. Ten episodes, chrome to the wall. Can. Not. Wait. I’ll need something to do between breaks of GTA VI anyway. Small, small breaks.
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