Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ First Trailer Is Short And Sharp (And Very Colourful)

After CD Projekt Red’s video game Cyberpunk 2077 became a best seller (despite the hiccups and bugs) last year, Netflix announced it would be producing an anime set in the same world as the first-person RPG. While there have been hints of what the show will be about, Netflix has finally released the first snippet of the show in action, which is led by some big names in anime.

In this ultraviolent, over-the-top trailer (and a new clip) we see flashes of the characters and setting but not much of the story. With extra-bright colours — evocative of the game’s design — and a whole lot of gunslinging, the show looks to be visually in between other cyberpunk alumni like Trigun, Blade Runner, and the ‘90s Ghost in the Shell.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is produced by CDPR and Studio Trigger. Trigger almost immediately developed a house style when it produced its original anime Kill La Kill in 2013, and quickly got tapped for adaptions like Little Witch Academia, its criticially acclaimed takes on the Tsuburaya Gridman franchise in SSSS.GRIDMAN and SSSS.DYNAZENON, and original episodes in the Star Wars animated anthology Visions. Trigger is also responsible for the 2019 anime film Promare, one of my personal favourite animated films of the 21st century. Edgerunners will be directed by Promare’s Hiroyuki Imaishi — who directed the Visions standout short “The Twins” — and features character designs from Little Witch Academia’s Yoh Yoshinari. Based in part on a story idea directly from CDPR, the series’ screenplay comes from Gridman’s Yoshiki Usa and Trigger co-founder Masahiko Otsuka, and features an original score from Silent Hill legend Akira Yamaoaka.

According to the synopsis on the Cyberpunk website, “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.”

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners will release September 2022.