After seeing the in-game ad for edgerunners hamfistedly shoved in I finally just decided to watch it. Overall I was really disappointed come the end. I was hoping that there would be that Trigger magic that would take the mostly emaciated punk of Cyberpunk 2077 and make something more out of it, but while the first few episodes were fine, it ended up feeling like there was nothing there. Honestly it feels like Darling in the Franxx where Trigger was just there to animate someone's story with close to no creative freedom over where the plot goes
The anti-capitalist, anti-establishment nature of the punk in Edgerunners doesn't go any deeper than as set dressing that creates the motivations for the characters but is then left behind. David is deeply wronged by the system that exists in Night City, but nothing is really done with it other than setting him further down the plot.
The story feels like it's just retreading what the game already did. It's just a retelling of V's story but without the Relic and instead an even less nuanced look at cyberpsychosis. David tries to better his lot, like V, after living in the absolutely bleak Night City and the city ruins everyone for even trying. Jackie dies in the heist, Evelyn's fate is worse than death, Dex is unceremoniously executed in a dump, V is left with a Relic that's killing her and rewriting her personality. David similarly tries and ends up watching his adoptive family shatter multiple times with sad pitiful ends.
I get that it's just basically the personal story of David and the people he meets and David is one flawed motherfucker that only wants to see other's dreams through because he's left traumatized after his mother died, but there wasn't even a sad washed up rocker even talking about how the system itself is what fucked David.
It felt no different than those anime movies made for Dead Space years ago. Just a tie-in product.
TL;DR I was hoping for a proper Trigger show and I just got more of what the game already did.
Oh that's an interesting point on hopelessness. I've been thinking about this, and specifically in the context of the new cyberpunk expansion.
The thing i'm realizing is, cyberpunk 2077 is much more a noir story than anything else. The way they put so much narrative and emotional effort into night city itself as a living thing, the "try to do good but something always gets fucked", every powerful group is untrustworthy and working with them risks losing who you are, the consistent attempt to find glimmers of joy and genuine humanity in a fundamentally hopeless place. All of these ideas are very core elements of noir fiction and cyberpunk as a genre pulls from it quite often. Hell the most common mainstream "cyberpunk" thing, bladerunner, is a noir film and has a very nihilistic ending when it comes to fighting the capitalist structures at the core of it's world.
Basically, hopelessness isn't an integral part of cyberpunk, but noir definitely is a very common part of the genre which is why we get lots of stories where the goodest ending we can hope for is maybe protecting those you care about and getting out of the situation, not solving it.
In cyberpunk 2077 at the very least it's anti capitalist message is consistently shown. But like a lot of artistic works anti-capitalist doesn't mean shit about pro-communist and i would say it's definitely not pro-communist. Maybe pro anarchist with the nomads but even that's stretching quite a bit. I don't hate it for sure i think it does some very very interesting stuff artistically, specifically the work they put into making Night City feel like a place in it's design and writing really works, architecturally it has sprawl and density represented in such a way you feel like you're in an actual city not just a big carboard box like with most open world shit.