The following contains spoilers for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Episodes 1-10, now streaming on Netflix.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a Netflix anime series from Trigger that's based on the popular video game franchise created by Mike Pondsmith. Set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, the Edgerunners storyline follows a teenage boy named David Martinez, who resides in Night City with his mother and attends the Arasaka Academy as a top student. After an unforeseen car crash results in his mother's untimely death, David drops out of school and becomes an Edgerunner when he meets Lucy and her leader, Maine.
In many ways, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a love letter to Cyberpunk 2077. Not only does David have strong narrative parallels to Cyberpunk 2077's protagonist, V, but even the episodes are structured in such a way to resemble the game's missions. In the same way that V's missions in the game feel like self-contained stories that are part of a larger narrative, each of Edgerunners' 10 episodes is a self-contained story that builds toward an overarching storyline. Given this narrative structure, it feels as though the anime would've benefited strongly from a more user-interactive approach, similar to another Netflix movie, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
For viewers unfamiliar with the British television show, Black Mirror is an anthology series set in an alternate future where technology is highly advanced but also works to the detriment of humanity. Though set in the same universe, each episode is a self-contained story that focuses on a different cast of characters and satirizes the technological aspects of everyday life in the worst way possible.
Since it focuses on satirizing technological advancement, Black Mirror has covered everything from social media, dating apps, rideshare, internet trolling, video games and even British politics. It was only a matter of time before Black Mirror would satirize role-playing games in a clever way, and it happened with 2018's Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
The storyline for Bandersnatch is pretty straightforward: in 1984, an English teenager by the name of Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) decides to adapt a choose-your-own-adventure novel called Bandersnatch into a videogame and fails. How Stefan fails, however, is up to the viewer since the interactive Netflix movie allows viewers to make decisions for Stefan, leading to many possible life paths and endings. One of the movie's endings depicts Stefan discovering he's a character in a Netflix movie with millions of viewers controlling his actions.
Since gamers play as V in Cyberpunk 2077 and control their appearance and actions throughout the game, Netflix missed a huge opportunity to capitalize on the game's RPG premise with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. For a truly immersive experience, Edgerunners could've been made into another interactive movie in which viewers get to control David's actions and explore different life paths and endings for him, just like gamers get to do with V. In fact, one of the perks of playing as V in 2077 is that players get to choose the character's gender -- male, female or non-binary -- and customize their look.
Allowing viewers to choose the main character's gender and appearance in Edgerunners would easily invest them in the storyline, and let them choose the character's life paths. This is something else gamers get to do with V: they can choose one of three life paths for them, in this case, Corporate, Streetkid or Nomad. Since David in Edgerunners ends up fulfilling all three life paths as his storyline progresses, it would be a more exciting experience for viewers to get to choose one of those paths and see where his story goes, while being able to choose the other two paths later on.
Allowing the viewers to choose David's life paths would also keep his story unpredictable with the opportunity to explore many endings for him, just like gamers get to do with V. Even though all of V's life paths end with them dying, players still get to decide how it happens. By being able to choose David's ending through a series of decisions in Edgerunners, viewers can find an incentive to keep revisiting the storyline and try different life paths until they land on an ending they like.
All in all, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an enjoyable anime that could be even better as an interactive movie to give a non-gaming audience a taste of the Cyberpunk 2077 experience.